Thursday, September 15, 2016

Do You Feel Safe?

NSA is algorithmically capturing these keystrokes and archiving them in a technical database as you read them. They do this because this post mentions several subjects that their scanning algorithms prioritize: themselves, and Edward Snowden, among others.

Moreover, I am an American expatriate living overseas, and a survey of my pattern of life reveals that I interact with government employees in sensitive positions, as well as with ranking foreigners, and I was formerly employed by the federal government myself. So following its own rules, outlined in EO12333, NSA is within its rights to archive these words. It is legal. You could even say that it is defensible.

At this point, only NSA knows how long that they retain such data, and we would not be overreacting if we just assumed that it would be forever. I will say that I do not feel protected by such oversight.

You and I were never asked if we wanted NSA to mirror the internet, ostensibly to "protect us." The American people were never asked, "would you like us to spy on your every digital interaction and to archive everything so that we can survey it with algorithms whenever we like? In perpetuity?"

Think for a moment on what this means. It means that every word that you ever utter on the internet, in a private message, in an email, in a forum, can be catalogued and presented for an NSA analyst surfing keywords pertaining to you in XKEYSCORE.

I do not know whether a CIA supergrade actually was reading the email of Snowden's girlfriend, as is depicted in Oliver Stone's recent movie. I highly doubt it. If it did happen, well before Snowden ever went to Hong Kong, then an investigation needs to be mounted.

I suspect that this is poetic license by Oliver Stone. I wish that he did not do things like this. Because it is possible to make the same point by citing an actual fact that really did happen. Because a CIA supergrade probably could read your girlfriend's email, assuming that a host of prerequisites were satisfied. Even CIA has to follow rules. So does NSA.

What is true is that the Obama regime continued a system of suspicionless mass surveillance initiated by Dick Cheney that evolved into the most comprehensive mechanism for tyranny in the history of mankind. We just do not talk about it, or think about its implications, or even bother with overseeing it, because we are busy going to the mall.

Our deep state overlords depend upon our apathy as they burn through their billions in black budgets perpetrating FVEY. If you rebel at the notion of a deep state, then call them the mandarins of the national security state. Same people. There is no effective Congressional oversight. Nobody, and I mean nobody, knows the entirety of what they are doing. "Protecting us." So they say.

I have long said that Snowden should be granted safe passage back to the US to testify under a writ of immunity before a Special Committee on Mass Surveillance. Such a committee is overdue, as the last time that the American intelligence community was scrutinized was in 1976, with the Church and Pike Committees in the Senate and the House respectively.

After Snowden explains himself under oath, and helps us understand how our government spent trillions of dollars in classified black budgets that the Congress granted them, then we should ask ourselves whether Snowden should be pardoned or not.

First, gentlemen like Dick Cheney, Michael Hayden, and Keith Alexander have some explaining to do. Under oath.



This post was first posted on my Facebook page.