Category Archives: Police State

The IRS wants to be a spy agency too!

That monument of responsibility and ethics known as the IRS is buying it’s own surveillance equipment.  You know, like cameras that can be hidden inside a plant.Watch movie online The Transporter Refueled (2015)

News that the IRS is looking to buy surveillance equipment comes at a particularly challenging period for the agency.

In recent weeks, the IRS has been thrust into the public spotlight after Republicans complained that the government agency was motivated by politics, targeting right-wing Tea Party groups that are critical of the Democratic Party and US President Barack Obama.

At the same time, the government agency is coming under fire for wasteful spending.

Last week, a report by the Inspector General detailed nearly $50 million in wasteful spending by the agency on conferences, including IRS employees receiving room upgrades at luxurious Las Vegas hotels, spending $135,350 for speakers, and another $50,000 on a parody video based on the ‘Star Trek’ television show.

Meanwhile, the government agency appears to have broken the very rules it sets down for taxpayers, that is, being able to prove all of its expenses.

The NSA claims it only spies on foreigners. And those foreigners are pissed.

In order to defuse the huge embarrassment caused by the recent leaks about the NSA Prism program by Edward Snowden, President Obama assured Americans that the NSA’s massive communications dragnet targets only those in other countries, not U.S. citizens.  While that might sooth the concerns of most Americans, it’s of little comfort to the citizens of other countries, many of whom tend to think of the U.S. as an ally sharing similar values on things like, say, communications privacy.

From Reuters:

[R]evelations of a huge, secret U.S. Internet spying program have raised awkward questions for allies, forced to explain whether they let Washington spy on their citizens or benefited from snooping that would be illegal at home.

U.S. law puts limits on the government’s authority to snoop at home but virtually no restrictions on American spies eavesdropping on the communications of foreigners, including in allied countries with which Washington shares intelligence. That means Washington could provide friendly governments with virtually unlimited information about their own citizens’ private communication on the Internet.

If that weren’t enough, this story has made enough of an international splash to cause some citizens of those other countries to have second thoughts about allowing their own governments more power to invade their privacy.

Is it possible to actually record and store that much communications data?  Apparently the answer is yes.

Former NSA employees Thomas Drake and Bill Binney told SPIEGEL in March that the facility would soon store personal data on people from all over the world and keep it for decades. This includes emails, Skype conversations, Google searches, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, bank transfers — electronic data of every kind.

Binney, a mathematician who was previously an influential analyst at the NSA, calculates that the servers are large enough to store the entirety of humanity’s electronic communications for the next 100 years — and that, of course, gives his former colleagues plenty of opportunity to read along and listen in.

Despite the role of instant communications in the various uprisings throughout the Arab world, most western people aren’t aware of the threat to all governments posed by today’s access to mass communications.  Cell phones and the internet provide the means for an unhappy populace to organize an almost instant insurrection.  A revolution that would take weeks and months to build in the past can accelerate in hours given the right trigger event.   It’s not a matter of “if”.  It’s a matter of “when”.

Am I the only one?

  • Am I the only one who gets a laugh out of TV news anchors asking, with a straight face, current and former government officials whether the NSA is broadly collecting the internet data from U.S. citizens knowing that those officials either don’t know or are bound by oath not to reveal classified information, a category to which electronic data collection obviously belongs?
  • Am I the only one who thinks Obama’s denials are hollow?   I mean, a couple months ago he would probably have claimed no one at the IRS is targeting conservative non-profit groups for extra scrutiny.
  • Am I the only one who finds the denials of outfits like Google and Facebook unconvincing given the fact that they are bound by the law to not divulge the extent to which the government is collecting data from them?   And let’s not forget that the law indemnifies them should they suffer any consequences as a result of their cooperation with the government.  Hell, for all they know, a backdoor could have been installed in their equipment by the manufacturer without their knowledge.
  • Am I the only one who thinks, given the government’s clear lack of regard for the privacy of ordinary citizens, that data encryption is the only recourse left for people who don’t want the government recording everything they say and do?
  • Am I the only one who thinks that, regardless of all the outrage over the NSA data collection, nothing will be done about it and, in fact, it will continue to get even more extensive.
  • Am I the only one who thinks that, instead of urinating on the very Constitutional protections that define the U.S., a more effective way to fight terrorism is for the U.S. government to quit incessantly interfering with the political processes of middle eastern countries, quit supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and quit launching drone strikes targeting people we don’t even know to be enemies.

Glenn Greenwald joins the ranks of whistle blowers targeted by the U.S. government

Yesterday, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, a personage frequently referenced on this website, released an article exposing how the NSA has technology giving them direct real time access to the servers of the nation’s largest internet networks, essentially permitting them to collect the private communications of millions of people both internationally and domestically.  From the sound of it, the NSA has the technology to reach into servers and gather the information it wants without the permission or intervention by the service providers.  The only assurance that the agency won’t abuse this power is based on their promise not to do so.

From the New York Times:

The article, which included a link to the order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department, which has aggressively pursued leakers.

That, all by itself is a stunning revelation, not only confirming what many already suspected, but clearly exposing the denials on the part of Obama officials as blatant lies.  But, the story is just beginning.  As a result of yesterday’s article, Greenwald is rightly anticipating an aggressive response on the part of the Obama Justice Department.   The Obama administration has already established himself as the leader in pursuing whistleblowers, having already charging more whistleblowers than all previous presidents combined.  This puts Greenwald on the same U.S. government shit list as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and others.

While whistleblowers are heavily demonized as being self-interested traitors by government officials, Greenwald makes this point:

They could easily enrich themselves by selling those documents for huge sums of money to foreign intelligence services. They could seek to harm the US government by acting at the direction of a foreign adversary and covertly pass those secrets to them. They could gratuitously expose the identity of covert agents.

None of the whistleblowers persecuted by the Obama administration as part of its unprecedented attack on whistleblowers has done any of that: not one of them. Nor have those who are responsible for these current disclosures.

They did not act with any self-interest in mind. The opposite is true: they undertook great personal risk and sacrifice for one overarching reason: to make their fellow citizens aware of what their government is doing in the dark. Their objective is to educate, to democratize, to create accountability for those in power.

Governments rely on secrecy to give them the power to dominate any narrative about what government does.  And, just like a cop who routinely fabricates a story to cover up his abuses of power, the government likes to control what citizens know.  But, just as abusive cops are increasingly being exposed with video evidence, government abuses are being exposed by leaks from whistle-blowers.

In a democracy, where people are supposed to wield the ultimate control over government, transparency is critical.  It is virtually impossible for a citizen to cast a meaningful vote on election day if his government is intentionally keeping him ignorant.  When the U.S. government fires a missile from a drone and kills eleven children, it is doing so in the name of and under the authority of the people of the United States.  And retaliation for those kinds of attacks can be expected to fall on ordinary American citizens.  This is not rocket science.  The power to watch what people say and do its the power to control what they say and do.  Governmental harassment of activist groups is always preceded by surveillance.

Since the U.S. government is increasingly relying on secrecy in order to avoid oversight or challenge, the role of the whistle blower becomes increasingly more critical.  Furthermore, the government, now having more to lose from leaks, cracks down on whistle blowers, making it far more dangerous to be one.  And that’s what makes people like Manning, Assange, and Greenwald heroes.  There is no doubt it takes an immense amount of courage to challenge an entity as powerful as the U.S. government.  What’s worse is knowing that the evidence so far uncovered by whistle blowers shows the U.S. government to be an unscrupulous and ruthless opponent.

 

Nassau County DA proudly creates crime for fame, fortune, and something to do

This is another story of a parasitic politician feeding on ordinary people to get some free news coverage and create a name for herself in the sex crimes arena.  In the process, she destroys people’s lives while  accomplishing absolutely nothing of value for the community.  As part of a sting operation, Nassau County, New York arrested 104 men trying to solicit an undercover cop.  The DA then followed that up with a self-serving press conference and gratuitous public display of the mug shots of all the men before they’ve even been prosecuted..

As Reason Magazine’s Jacob Sullum says in the New York Daily News:

It is hard to imagine a bigger waste of law enforcement resources than “Operation Flush the Johns,” the month-long sting that resulted in 104 arrests announced by Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice on Monday.

Like the drug war, the preferred strategy for anti-prostitution crusaders is to set up a sting operation and con people into committing a crime.  As with most victimless crime, both parties engage in the transaction voluntarily, so neither one complains to the cops.  As attitudes about consensual “crime” have relaxed, “women’s rights” organizations have stepped up their strategy of trying to characterize all prostitution as human trafficking wherein women are forced into the business, usually as children.  To the anti-prostitution movement, any woman who says she’s doing it voluntarily, is simply in denial.  It would be hard to conjure up more of an insult to the intelligence and free will of women.

As with the drug war, keeping prostitution illegal benefits no one, least of all women in the profession. It forces suppliers and customers into a dangerous underground market where real crime thrives and there are few protections.  To claim it’s for their own good is the height of arrogant hypocrisy.

In the 1920s, the U.S. experimented with alcohol prohibition and found it to be a complete and utter failure.  We now see history repeating itself with similar prohibitions.  In an effort to limit the hazards of some activity, government outlaws the entire activity, but human proclivities are rarely so easily suppressed.  In the end, such a prohibition becomes little more than a full employment program for control freaks, law enforcement neanderthals, judges, prison employees, and overly ambitious fame-chasing DAs.

Thanks to people like District Attorney Kathleen Rice women are less safe, not more safe.

Cops demand video of them beating a man to death. You know, so they can safeguard the evidence. *wink wink*

A Bakersfield woman and her boyfriend were just leaving the Kern Medical Center last Tuesday night when they claim to have witnessed eight cops attacking a man and beating him with nightsticks until he was dead.

According to the Bakersfield Californian, both the woman, Sulina Quair, 34, and her boyfriend recorded the beating on their cell phones and told the 911 operator she was “sending it to the news”.  Nothing stirs cops into action quite like a threat of having their behavior recorded for the whole world to see.  Video  makes it extremely difficult for them to fabricate a story.  By early the next morning, they were at the woman’s house demanding that video.

“We had stopped by Taco Bell to get something to eat, and we were eating and at about 3 a.m. two detectives showed up, barged in without my permission and demanded to see my boyfriend for his phone,” Melissa said.

In that video, Melissa said Friday, it is very clear that the deputies were beating Silva. At one point, she recalled,  the deputies had Silva hogtied and they lifted him and dropped him twice and asked if he was still with them.

She said she and her boyfriend were essentially kept captive inside their own home until they released their phones.

Quair and her boyfriend apparently already guessed the implications of turning the video over to the very people (or their associates) likely to be incriminated by the video.  Kern County is no stranger to police corruption and misconduct.  The attorney for the family of the beating victim, David Sal Silva, is doing his best to keep public attention focused directly on the Kern County sheriff’s department.  Without that attention that video would probably mysteriously disappear.  Even with the attention, there are no guaranties that it will ever see the light of day.  And when cops lose evidence that incriminates them, they very rarely face any repercussions, so they have very little incentive to safeguard that video and every reason to make it magically disappear.

To witness a crime committed by a gang of cops and then being forced to turn over the only evidence of that crime to the cops themselves has to be frustrating.

“I have been crying a lot and his voice just plays over and over in my head,” Quair said Friday. “I sit there and I can still hear him choking in his own blood, trying to gasp for air.”

Eventually people are going to realize that they need to post the video on Youtube before they tell the cops they have video of police misconduct.  The safest way is to record the video and immediately send it to someone else so the video can’t be destroyed when the cops confiscate the phone.  In fact, cell phone apps are becoming available to help bystanders record cops and automatically send the recording to a third party.  The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) offers one such app.

All your emails and phone calls are recorded

With the Boston bombings having become a perpetual fixture in all network news reporting, media outlets have been interviewing anyone and everyone who can claim to be an expert in crime or terrorism investigations.  One such expert is former counter terrorism agent, Tim Clemente who recently came right out and said that everything you say on the phone is recorded so it can be accessed later.

The discussion on CNN’s Out Front was about whether Katherine Russell, wife of Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, might have had prior knowledge of the bombings.  And how might they be able to ascertain that?  By reviewing past phone conversations between the two.  Calls made before the bombings and before they were under investigation. When Out Front anchor, Erin Burnett challenged Clemente on that claim, Clemente responded:

“All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

Welcome to “the land of the free” where the government does is becoming increasingly secretive about what it does at the same time as it is increasing surveillance over  everything us citizens say and do.

Greenwald’s whole article is here.

Wednesday Afternoon links

  • Two Texas cops indicted for illegally initiating a roadside body cavity search of two women stopped for littering.  The male officer who initiated the stop was charged with theft and the female officer who conducted the cavity search was charged with two counts of sexual assault and two counts of official oppression.
  • The FBI is pursuing real time Gmail spying power as top priority for 2013.  Because, if you have nothing to hide, why do you need privacy anyway?
  • Two years after being ordered to by the the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, the TSA is finally initiating the public comment period required before they can set up the full body scanners they’ve already been using since 2007.
  • Cost for a one-night stay in Paris for the Vice President?  $585,000.50   More than $100,000 more than his stay in London which only cost a measly $459,338.65  So, how many federal jobs could be saved from sequester if Biden were to do what VPs are supposed to do: nothing.

If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal.
If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative.
If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate.
If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.

“Need” now means wanting someone else’s money.
“Greed” now means wanting to keep your own.
“Compassion” is when a politician arranges the transfer.

Afternoon Links

  • Fifth Circuit rules that Benedictine monks can make and sell low cost caskets in Louisiana referring to the regulation as “nonsensical”.  Up to now, state law forbade anyone except state license funeral homes from selling caskets.  You know, to protect the people.  Such a law would instantly be recognized as sleazy political corruption by anywhere except in “the land of the free”.
  • No charges will be filed against a New Jersey man who posted a picture on Facebook of his son holding “what appeared to be a military-style rifle”.  From what I’ve heard through various news sources, it’s pretty obvious the cops, acting on an anonymous tip called into a child abuse hotline, used intimidation tactics to try and get permission to search the house and record the serial numbers of his weapons.  Well, you know, anything to protect the children…
  • Kill Anything that Moves is the name of a new book about Vietnam that I just added to my Amazon wish list.  The reason you have to read numerous books about war is no other governmental activity generates so much official and mainstream media bullshit.  We will never hear the story of what the U.S. really did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Egypt, Mali, or Syria until everyone who played a role in it is dead.  By then  most of us will also be dead.
  • The “Rise of the naked female warriors“.  I wish two things.  First that they had a position I believed in and second that they weren’t always protesting in places so far from where I live.  They clearly favor using nudity and sex as a means to get attention.  But, they oppose women using nudity and sex to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.  The same story in U.S. media outlets would, of course, be edited to satisfy those who vociferously claim to be offended by nudity in order to make sure no one else can see it.
  • Obama declares that the oxymoron, Mideast Peace, is not an oxymoron just as every U.S. president since WWII has done.  Peace will remain perpetually unlikely as long as neither the Palestinian nor Israeli (or U.S.) governments would benefit from it.  Obama supports a two-state solution which is exactly one state beyond what the Israeli government is willing to agree to.