Falling Further and Further Down the Rabbit Hole

Is anyone else questioning reality? Is anyone else asking how things in America could spiral so totally out of control in what is historically faster than the blink of an eye? Our country slipped from the enjoyably reassuring and positive (if less successful than hoped for) Obama administration into the Mariana Trench of political dysfunction and ineptitude. After electing the first African American president, an accomplishment many of us never thought we’d see in our lifetime, we suddenly fell into a dark canyon of seething, writhing white reptiles determined to take us back to the Pleistocene age.

How surreal is it? Somehow, Donald Trump became president of the United States. Donald Trump, a man who unquestionably represents everything that is, and ever was, wrong with America. Greed, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, you name it, it’s part of Trump’s DNA. The man is a walking medical chart of every ailment from which America suffers. His repulsive behavior knows no bounds. He is tacky, unsophisticated, unworldly, lacking intellect, wit and empathy. Every public situation in which he finds himself is awkward and uncomfortable. Even his wife finds him reprehensible.

Yet here we are, struggling to cope with a situation that thriller author Tom Clancy probably tossed out as too unrealistic. Who would believe the plot? A narcissistic man/child millionaire grows tired of the entertainment biz and decides to run for President of the United States, and wins. What? Wait, what about all that “checks and balances” stuff and the beauty of the democratic process and the will of the majority, blah, blah, blah. That’s all it is. So much ink on parchment paper. We thought it meant something, but obviously we were wrong.

And the icing on our surreal Cake? The downfall of the Trump administration may come courtesy of the true dark lords, our intelligence agencies. Trump has chosen to go to war with the CIA, NSA and others in that community, and that could ultimately prove to be the biggest of his many, many mistakes as president. The Russian debacle is the one scandal that could bring Trump and his administration down, and it is clear that the intelligence community is not on Donald’s side on this one, and further revelations could actually push Republicans in Congress to act against Herr Trumpenstein. So sane America find itself in the position of cheering for the spooks, whose undemocratic and unconstitutional efforts have had us screaming “foul” in the past, to dethrone the nut job who slipped into the White House while we were looking the other way.

Hold on to your seats, because as long as Trump is president, we’re going to keep falling down that hole.

Watch what you say around your toaster: The current state of U.S. surveillance

It is not a conspiracy theory to say that Americans are losing their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms at an alarming rate. “Losing” isn’t quite the right word. They are being taken from us by the U.S. government in the name of security. Whether or not you have ever committed a crime in your life, whether you have everything or nothing to hide, you are probably being monitored by our government in one way or another.

I’m no terrorist. Why me, you ask? Because they can, and here’s how:

• Police can track you and your car through an automated license plate reader (ALPR), which is now being used by many U.S. law enforcement agencies.
• Elementary school students might soon be required to wear a garment with a microchip in it to track their movements. It’s happening now in select schools around the country.
• Secret government documents, published by the media in 2013, confirm the NSA obtains full copies of everything that is carried along major domestic fiber optic cable networks. It is intercepting and storing virtually all digital communications on the Internet.
• The government takes photos of the envelopes of every piece of “snail mail” that is sent.
• Nearly two-thirds of the American public – 197.4 million people – live within a “constitution-free zone” within 100 miles of land and coastal borders. The safeguards guaranteed by the Constitution do not apply in these areas.
• Surveillance cameras, traffic cameras and surveillance drones have become ubiquitous. By 2020, about 30,000 unmanned drones are expected to be deployed in the United States for the purpose of surveillance and law enforcement.
• The U.S. government is currently running at least 30 separate mass surveillance programs (There are probably many others that are secret).
• Your cell phone and vehicle location can be monitored by “Stingrays,” false cell phone towers containing sophisticated spyware that can capture your cell phone calls.
• It was recently revealed that Ancestry.com gave Idaho police DNA samples they had received for genealogical searches of family histories. The police had no warrant or court order for the DNA.
• It goes without saying the government is likely capturing your cell phone conversations, but the FBI now has equipment that can activate your phone’s microphone and listen to your conversations when you think the phone is off.
• Customs officials can search your computer or other electronic devices for no reason.
• Government agents have been caught attaching GPS devices to cars of people who have not committed or been charged with any crime.
• Children at schools around the country are conducting security drills that would simulate a lockdown, bomb threat, active shooter or terrorist attack.
• Special high-tech streetlamps are being installed in American cities that can be used as surveillance cameras or to record personal conversations.
• The FBI, the Pentagon, Homeland Security and at least 40 other agencies routinely spy on and infiltrate peace groups like the War Resisters League, Code Pink, and United for Peace and Justice, as well as the Occupy movement.
• The TSA is moving beyond airport security and is now conducting inspections at subway stations, bus terminals, ports and highway rest stops.
• Privacy International, a group that monitors the surveillance policies of nations around the world, ranks America as one of the most invasive and abusive surveillance states on the planet.
• The government has the ability to spy on you through your computer’s webcam or microphone.
• In 2013, leaked NSA files revealed that tech companies (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo) had cooperated with US authorities to facilitate monitoring of people’s use of their applications, like email and social media platforms.
• “Black boxes” are currently installed in between 90% and 96% of all new cars. And starting in 2014, all new cars will include black boxes that can track your location.
• Our government has the ability to spy on you through “smart appliances” connected to the Internet. We now have to watch what we say in front of our toasters.
• The government is currently testing a surveillance system called FAST that, when installed, measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person’s gaze, to judge a subject’s state of mind. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject. It’s called a “Pre-crime” sensing device.

Your car is a surveillance target

Orwell-creep continues as we learn that over 2 million cars purchased with subprime loans are outfitted with GPS-based kill switches that can be used to turn off your vehicle if your payments are late. Cars have been killed in dangerous neighborhoods, at stoplights and while driving on a freeway. If you’d like details on the how and why of these devices, check out the story in today’s Salon.

My concern is the ever-advancing tentacles of the corporate state winding their way into our private lives. If I had written a blog a year ago saying I believed cars were having kill switches installed I would have been laughed at as another conspiracy nut. But here you are. Kill switches in cars. Today the NSA, CIA, FBI, DEA and other government agencies are deeply entrenched within the corporate world and are constantly developing new ways to insert themselves into our lives.

It doesn’t take a very vivid imagination to see where this is going. There will be a day when all cars not only have kill switches, but will be built with technology that allows the government to track them, listen in on conversations and, ultimately, take control the car. All of this will come under the auspices of fighting crime, in the same way that the war on terror lead to massive illegal surveillance.

The American security state is out of control. With little regulation and the ability to make up the rules as they go, the NSA, CIA and others wipe their boots on the Constitution as they develop newer and more devious ways to embed themselves deeper into your private life.

In the crosshairs of the surveillance state

An article in the most recent issue of The Atlantic titled, “Does John Brennan know too much for Obama to fire him?” looks at an issue that I have brought up a number of times before. I think it is very possible that we are in a situation where the CIA, NSA and other spy agencies are allowed to virtually write their own playbook because they have potentially damaging information on top officials in Washington, including Obama.

The author of the article guesses that the information in CIA Director Brennan’s case might be related to illegal drone attacks that violated international law. Very possible, I agree, but it could be any number of things in Obama’s past that Brennan might hang over the President’s head. As I’ve said before, the extortion of those in the executive and legislative branches does not have to be explicit at all. No threats have to be made. You can assume that if you made an embarrassing misstep in your past, the CIA and NSA know about it too.

It will take a future President with a whole lot of courage (if there is such a thing) to truly rein in America’s bloated surveillance state.

Privacy is a thing of the past

Snowden’s documents have made us aware of the most glaring intelligence abuses of the NSA, but as someone who follows numerous alternative news sites, even I was amazed and deeply disturbed by how many devious avenues our government has in place right now to spy on its citizen. The Bloomberg Business Week article here presents a detailed graphic of the myriad ways in which your private data can be intercepted and stored by the government.

The U.S. surveillance monster has tentacles reaching into every aspect of our daily lives, seeing, hearing and monitoring everything we do. As prescient as Orwell was about the future, even he could not have imagined a scenario like the one in which we find ourselves today. Unless you go completely off the grid to a cave in the Yukon, privacy is a thing of the past.

We have completely lost control of our government.

Spy agencies turning to Snowden as convenient scapegoat

In something of a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the failure of our intelligence agencies to foresee Russia’s plan to invade Crimea, there’s this: It’s Edward Snowden’s fault.

According to an article in today’s BuzzFeed, hints and whispers coming out of the surveillance community are about trying to pin our Crimea intelligence failure on leaked Snowden documents. They somehow gave Russia a leg up on our spooks. Sorry, I just snorted coffee out of my nose. I’ve also heard that climate change and the Washington landslide are being pinned on Mr. Snowden.

There seems to be a large group within the intelligence community who really, really hate Edward Snowden, and it’s clear they will stoop to anything to try and discredit him. As is apparent, they’re not above shifting blame for their own failures to the fugitive hacker. The charges are ludicrous, but even if they weren’t, our spy agencies know that Snowden is not in a position where he can defend himself, so they can make up pretty much anything about him and toss it to the media. Glenn Greenwald does a pretty good job of batting back the insane claims of the agencies, but it’s a large task to take on.

We need to take anything and everything Washington, D.C. says about Edward Snowden with a huge grain of salt.

They come after you. Pelosi admits reps are cowed by intelligence community

Back in October I wrote a post speculating that the reason why Congress has been so lax in its oversight of the CIA and NSA is that the House and Senate members know that if they push too hard, these surveillance agencies could come after them with embarrassing information. No one has any firm evidence that this is the case, but it did seem to make sense to me as a distinct possibility. Now, however, there is some indication that this may in fact be something more than speculation. According to a March 13 article in Roll Call, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi praised Sen. Diane Feinstein’s courage for alleging the CIA spied on members of the Senate Intelligence Committee in this statement.

“I salute Sen. Feinstein. I’ll tell you, you take on the intelligence community, you’re a person of courage, and she does not do that lightly. Not without evidence, and when I say evidence, documentation of what it is that she is putting forth. You don’t fight it without a price because they come after you and they don’t always tell the truth.”

They come after you. Here is the most powerful person in the House of Representatives telling the American people that even if you’re a Senator or Congressperson, the intelligence community will seek retribution if you cross them. Isn’t this admitting that blackmail is being used to keep representatives in line? Again, I’m sure that it is not overt. No one has spell this out. You just know that if you get on the bad side of the NSA or CIA, embarrassing events from your past can suddenly become very public. And, as Pelosi states, they’re not above making up shit about you.

How do you rein in a monster like this? Who has the guts to even try?

The American government is seriously out of control

The newest revelations that the CIA was conducting surveillance on Congressional committee members looking into the CIA is mind boggling. No one seems to be in control in Washington. The intelligence community is now a shadow government, operating in its own world on its own terms, and no branch of government has the power to rein it in. As I’ve said before, Bush and Cheney created a monster that now has a life of its own and answers to no one.

If you haven’t already, sign one of the numerous petitions online or write or call your Congressperson and tell them you want Congress and the President to put a stop to NSA and CIA mass surveillance. They currently have no accountability. Their leaders can lie to Congress and get away with it, their budgets are secret so we have no idea how billions of our tax dollars are being spent (although you can be sure a large portion of that is being used to spy on you), and they are involved in numerous operations that have little to nothing to do with national security.

On top of all of this, evidence is emerging that we (the CIA) played a part in instigating the turmoil in Ukraine in another attempt at regime change, which is of course, turning out to be an international nightmare.

It’s time to raise our voices and put a stop to this madness.

We can’t trust government to police itself

One important thing the ongoing Snowden NSA revelations should make clear is that large-scale conspiracies do exist. There may have been bits and pieces leaking out and some intelligent guesses about the surveillance of Americans prior to Snowden, but without his courageous actions, we would still be largely in the dark about the illegal, unconstitutional and outrageous actions of our spy agencies.

It bothers me when people blithely lump all “conspiracy nuts” together. It has been an effective tactic, and one that government officials and the mainstream media love to use, but we the people should be smarter and more discerning than to be taken in by that. We used to depend on the news media to be the government watchdog (Edward Murrow, Jack Andersen, Woodward and Bernstein), but that is no longer the case for a lot of reasons, so it falls on the shoulders of individual citizens to risk their careers and their lives to uncover these government misdeeds.

Whether it’s 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination or any government related claim, conspiracy debunkers always ask how could all of the people involved in the conspiracy keep quiet for decades? Well, the NSA revelations demonstrate that illegal government activity involving certainly hundreds, maybe thousands of people worldwide, could be kept under wraps for nearly 10 years. If Snowden hadn’t come along, it may have gone on in secret for another 10 years.

Not all conspiracy theories are true or even believable, but we do have to acknowledge that sometimes they are very real and, if no one has the guts to poke around in the hole with a stick, they will never be revealed. Leaving the government to act without any checks and balances, as we are seeing, is an invitation to disaster.

Say "No" to mass surveillance

A note to anyone who might be interested (and you should be) that today is the day the internet is fighting back against the government's mass surveillance tactics. Go here and find out how to contact your representatives and let them know that you oppose the illegal spying of the NSA and other federal agencies.

60 Minutes (of government propaganda)

CBS is getting a lot of flack about its recent 60 Minutes homage to the NSA. There was a time when the venerable news magazine would have torn the secret agency a new one, but those days are long gone. Who needs government-controlled propaganda when you have the elite owners of the media to do your bidding for you?

We’ve lost control of our government and our media. The only news and opinion outlets with enough guts to tell the truth are a handful of progressive blogs that have zero influence in the corridors of power. Oh yeah, and a couple of comedy shows on TV. There is no “check” or “balance” to keep the government even somewhat honest anymore, and, as secrets dribble out of Washington now and then, we know they are taking full advantage of the situation.

What we are witnessing today is the devastation of unrestrained capitalism. Money is running, and ruining, every aspect of society, from elections to wars to climate denial. Those at the top of the food chain have more money than they know what to do with, but they continue to make life miserable for the 99 percent. Their greed seems to know no bounds as they gleefully bleed the American middle class dry, which seems self-destructive to me because there will come a time when no one will be able to afford the cars or appliances or electronics their companies make. They don’t seem to care about that.

The 60 Minutes celebration of the NSA is simply one more symptom of our terminally ill empire.

Car hacking: The next big scandal?

Journalist Michael Hastings, who had written a scathing critique of General Stanley McChrystal in Rolling Stone, died this past June in a car accident in LA. His car hit a tree at high speed and caught fire. There are plenty of sources on the Internet where you can find out more details about this, but there are some who suspect that the computer in Hastings’ car was hacked and that someone other than Hastings was controlling the speed and trajectory of the car.

This got me thinking. What if the NSA and CIA were working with car manufacturers the same way they are working with telecomm companies, and incorporating code into automobile computers that only they can activate? So if they wanted to, they could track your vehicle, listen to conversations in the car, take over the cars controls or deactivate it completely.

Sound far-fetched? Perhaps, but after the Snowden leaks, would you put anything past these people?

The President asks us to trust him, yet everyday there are new reasons not to

After the revelations came to light of the NSA’s massive domestic surveillance program, the President and other’s in his administration and in Congress are in full damage control mode, claiming that they are not reading the emails of Americans, everything they’re doing is legal, blah, blah, blah.

My question is, why should we believe you, Mr. President? Everything this administration does is implicitly followed by the phrase, “Trust us. We know what’s right.” Why should we trust you? In 2007 you said this:

“That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do no more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.”

Were you lying then? What made you do a complete about face? You once called for transparency, but this is the least transparent administration in American history. And on top of everything else, you want to prosecute whistleblowers, the very people who are shedding the smallest amounts of light on the activities you say are completely legal and appropriate.

You’ve lost the trust of millions Americans, and rightly so. Your actions are clearly unconstitutional and immoral.

The surveillance state: Did Obama drink the Kool Aid or was he even invited to the party?

There are some days when I just can’t stop myself from indulging in a conspiracy theory. The theory is a simple one: Barack Obama is merely a cardboard cut-out, a face of the presidency who’s great at giving speeches and mingling with the common folk, but isn’t actually in charge of anything. He doesn’t make the important decisions; someone, or some group of people, make those. He is Madison Avenue’s concept of a President.

It’s either that or Obama is one of the shrewdest, most calculating, most manipulative individuals to ever hold public office.

I can come up with no alternatives after reading the story that broke yesterday about the NSA conducting widespread domestic surveillance on millions of Americans. And when I say “widespread,” I’m talking about capturing the call histories of every single Verizon customer in America, and very likely, customers of other communications companies as well.

Is that the sound of the Founding Fathers turning over in their graves?

The White House is defending the practice with the, “We’re keeping you safe from terrorists” canard, but this response is patently ridiculous. First of all, let’s put the threat in some perspective. The odds of being a terrorist’s victim on a flight: 1 in 10,408,947. Odds of being killed by lightning: 1 in 500,000. It reminds me of the old joke about the guy walking around the city streets carrying a large rifle. “What’s that?” he’s asked. “It’s an elephant gun,” he responds. The first man says, “That’s insane, there aren’t any elephants around here.” The rifleman replies, “Right. It’s working.”

 This type of untargeted, massive domestic surveillance is absolutely, unequivocally unconstitutional. Perhaps Obama really didn’t understand this point. Oh wait, he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. What convoluted rationale does he tell himself to justify a program that ignores the basic lynchpin of our system of justice: innocent until proven guilty? Or, is he simply kept out of the loop?

There are groups out there, specifically the Electronic Frontier Foundation, that are actively working to bring this lawlessness to a stop, but it gets even more difficult when you have an overly compliant Congress that continuously puts its stamp of approval on these illegal actions.

As many others have said before me, the loss of liberty doesn’t happen with a clap of thunder, but in tiny, incremental, barely perceptible steps over years. I say “barely perceptible” because there are those few canaries out there that try to warn us, yet they are often ignored until it’s too late. While we slept, the government took it upon itself to spy on you and everyone you know. That’s not tinfoil hat stuff anymore. It’s the world in which we live.