The FISA Court Revives the All-Seeing Eye

As if anyone needed any additional evidence that America is no longer a democracy, and no one really should, the FISA court, with the support of Obama, just gave the NSA authority to crank back up its massive surveillance program that the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled, and Congress agreed, was illegal.

How can an administration simply reject the court’s ruling and the will of Congress? Because there’s no one to stop it. Not the law, not the other branches of government, not the American people. Bush and Cheney built a monster after 9/11 that rules with Sauron like powers from Ft. Mordor, Maryland. For reasons that we can only guess at, Obama has bent over backwards to give the NSA what it wants — access to everyone and everything.

In some areas, such as healthcare and civil rights, Obama has pushed America forward despite massive resistance, but when it comes to the post-9/11 surveillance state, he has been a public and private cheerleader of the Orwellian overreach of our government spies. How can anyone take Obama seriously when he talks about the rule of law or what an example American democracy is to the rest of the world? He’s willing, even eager, to give our spooks carte blanche when it comes to invading our Constitutional rights to privacy.

And the future looks no brighter. If anyone, Republican or Democrat, other than Bernie Sanders wins the White House, and he’s a very, very long shot, the surveillance state will continue humming along, collecting data on you, me and everyone else on the planet.  September 11, 2001 will be remembered for many things, not the least of which is the creation of an all-seeing monster with the ability to reach into everyone’s private lives, and no brave Frodo to stop it.

Brennan tells Senators, “You’re not the boss of me.”

The Senate is continuing to investigate the CIA’s admitted role in hacking into the Senate Intelligence Committee computers during an investigation into the CIA. In a particularly interesting development, CIA director John Brennan refused to tell Senators who ordered the eavesdropping on the committee. This incensed a number of Senators, as it should have, because the Senate Intelligence Committee is charged with oversight of the CIA, theoretically. 

Brennan’s refusal to accept the Committee’s authority reveals a lot about the attitude of the CIA and NSA toward oversight in general. They ain’t buying into it. Even more interesting will be the Senate’s reaction to this high-level “fuck you.” Our spy agencies have clearly grown too large and too powerful to be reigned in by a bunch of whining Senators. They see their work as beyond criticism or control and can keep a lid on anything by simply calling it a secret for national security reasons. And lord knows Obama won’t step in to help. He’s as cowed by the CIA as anyone in Washington, DC.

What will the incensed Senator’s do? Challenge the all-mighty surveillance state? Doubtful. Brennan and his buddies know too much.

The U.S. and U.K. equate journalism with terrorism

Last August, Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda was held and questioned for nine hours at Heathrow Airport by British security agents. The hazy justification for the detention revolved around the Snowden leaks, and Miranda challenged this rationale in British courts. Today, a lower UK court released its judgment that the action was justified because the release of the Snowden documents was tantamount to “terrorism,” and anybody even remotely connected to the event was fair game for government scrutiny.

Greenwald argues, and I agree with him, that this mindset basically equates journalism with terrorism. If, as a journalist, you expose anything that the government finds displeasing or embarrassing, you can be labeled a terrorist and the courts will uphold this absurdity. At the same time that Snowden is being nominated for a Nobel Prize, the U.S. and UK governments are treating him, and anyone associated with him, as a terrorist.

If you’re old enough to remember the Cold War, you’ll recall horror stories about the USSR and East European governments eavesdropping on dissidents and journalists, steaming open letters, and bugging embassies. This was child’s play compared to the surveillance tactics and technologies of the 21^st century. The real horror story today is that these sophisticated technologies are being employed relentlessly by the world’s most advanced democracies, ostensibly to fight terrorism, but in reality for a variety of nefarious purposes.

We have become that which we demonized less than a generation ago. When you think about it, the only real justification for our current lawless surveillance tactics is that whatever we do is okay because, America. Just remember, you or I could be the next David Miranda.

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?

Shelley tried to warn us. Creating monsters never ends well

The AntiWar.blog blog (redundant much?) has an article today entitled, “The Surveillance State is a Gigantic Beast that Values Self-Preservation, not National Security.” The article covers a topic that I’ve written about a number of times — the monster that Dr. Bush and Igor Cheney built now has a life of its own and its will to survive trumps all other concerns.

Those who defend the current surveillance state do so for a lot of reasons, but despite what they say in public, defending us against terrorism is a ways down the list. Power, reputation, perks, protecting turf, job security, pet projects, funding, supporting corporate America’s intelligence needs…these are the real obstacles to reform, not terrorist threats.

Like Dr. Frankenstein, Bush created a monster that refuses to be constrained by the rule of law. Obama may defend it in public, but my guess is that he is as afraid of it as we are and he has little power to bring the creature to bay. And, no one, not even a president, wants to get on the monster’s bad side.

Bumbling U.K. agents should concern us all

Of all the side stories spinning off of the Snowden saga, yesterday’s report that U.K. “security experts” invaded the offices of the Guardian newspaper and destroyed computer hard drives in an attempt to stop any further revelations has to be one of the most mind boggling.

The security experts were from GCHQ intelligence agency, which had earlier demanded that the paper’s editor either hand over all Snowden related materials or destroy the files. When the editor refused, the agency sent in the so-called experts to physically smash the hard drives of the newspaper’s computers.

There’s so much wrong in this single event it’s hard to know where to begin. The first issue is the embarrassingly thuggish approach taken by a government agency. It’s like a scene pulled from the script of a bad mafia movie. “You want I should break his thumbs, Boss?” “Not yet. Just bust up the computers. We’ll save the fun stuff for another time.” What sly and sophisticated tactic will the government try next? A dead fish wrapped in newspaper? Cutting off the head of the editor’s pet hamster and putting it in his bed?

The second part of this PR disaster is the apparent ignorance displayed by the security experts regarding current data storage capabilities. Smashing hard drives to stop further security leaks is like smashing a TV set to stop the broadcast of a television show. It’s as if the U.K.’s security experts were frozen in 1995 and just thawed out yesterday.

All of this brilliance comes from an agency in charge of the country’s most important secrets. And in our country, Obama has the nerve to scoff at people concerned about the possible abuse of blanket surveillance.

The surveillance state: An American vampire

It must feed.

Like a vampire, the surveillance state (SS) abhors sunlight, performing its business under cover of darkness were it can peek surreptitiously into people’s lives undisturbed by oversight or prying villagers. Its lifeblood is information, secrets, the private parts of your life that no one else has access to. Its hunger is insatiable. Not satisfied with focusing solely on “the enemy,” its pale fingers reach out farther, to those who had never considered being terrorists or, for that matter, committed any crime. Let’s suck information from them all, it said, eyes wild with the thought of such unchecked power.

By day, the SS is nearly invisible, and when noticed, those under its pall provide it with the necessary cover to remain beyond accountability and unchallenged. Its coffin is protected from discovery by ancient incantations involving “national security” and “state secrets” used to lull the initiated into acceptance and obedience. Occasionally, an intrepid vampire hunter will peel away the layers of protection and expose the hideous monster that exists in the corners of the windowless government rooms, yet the vampire’s powerful protectors always seem to find a way to turn the hunter into the villain before permanent damage can be done.

The SS lives and grows in the dank, black night of despair and fear. It thrives on our terror, becomes stronger as we grow weaker, stands taller the more we cower in the corners of our villages. We can’t believe it has become so powerful. How did we allow this to happen? Although all signs point inward, we refuse to acknowledge our part in the process, and lower the blinds while turning up our TVs louder.

So it will feed and grow, as long as we let it. And there will come a day, perhaps not that far off, when it will be strong enough to emerge from the darkness because it will no longer fear anything or anyone.

What’s happened to Al Franken?

To hear Minnesota Senator Al Franken defending the NSA domestic spying program is very dispiriting. The one time progressive Democrat has stepped over to the dark side, just like Obama. I sent a letter to Franken expressing my disappointment in the representative’s response to the NSA revelation. If I know anything, it is that if the former SNL member were a private citizen right now, he would be front and center criticizing the government’s surveillance overreach.

It’s interesting to me how much the insular Washington scene has changed Franken and Obama. It’s as if they were recruited into a cult that separates members from family and friends and in this case, average Americans. The big picture is shrunk to a narrow perspective. They’ve been hypnotized by charts and graphs and serious people who convinced them that what they’re doing is for the good of the country. The fact that they are let in on “secrets” makes them believe that they know better what’s good for the country, and they adopt a patronizing, “If you only knew what I know” attitude towards citizens who challenge them.

I had great hopes when Franken was first elected to the Senate that he would carry forward the lonely but necessary efforts of Paul Wellstone to challenge the status quo and work toward peace and a progressive agenda. Unfortunately, Franken has disappointed by asking us to blindly trust the government as they shred the Constitution in the name of security.

Check out my new novel Fall Lake. The link is below my photo.

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.