Sunday, May 18, 2014

Is a New Major Greenwald-Snowden Bombshell Disclosure to Be Dropped?

It looks like it and it appears to address my concern that the Snowden disclosures so far have not revealed any of the targets of NSA spying (SEE: Why I Am Not Impressed with the Edward Snowden NSA Leaks, So Far)

Justin Raimondo writes:
There are more revelations, but the Big One, as Greenwald has made clear, is yet to come. In an interview with GQ magazine, he had this to say:
"I like to think of it as a fireworks show: You want to save your best for last. There’s a story that from the beginning I thought would be our biggest, and I’m saving that. The last one is the one where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues. This will be the finale, a big missing piece. Snowden knows about it and is excited about it."
So what could this explosive story be? Last [Monday] night on "The Colbert Report" he dropped us a hint: "One of the missing pieces," Greenwald said, "is on whom is the NSA spying?" He gives us more in the first part of a two-part colloquy with Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now’:
"You know, one of the interesting things is, obviously, people are very aware of the COINTEL abuses. I know you’ve had people on your show who actually participated in the break-in of the FBI and took the documents that unveiled that program. People are aware of J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses. The nature of that series of events is that the United States government looks at people who oppose what they do as being, quote-unquote, ‘threats.’ That’s the nature of power, is to regard anybody who’s a threat to your power as a broad national security threat. And a lot of times people will say, ‘We don’t yet have the reporting in this case that shows that kind of abuse.’ And a lot of that reporting is still reporting that we’re working on and that I promise you is coming."
 My blood ran cold when I heard Glenn say that, for two reasons.
The first is that if this is true – if the US government is now targeting political dissidents with its hi-tech tools, just as J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI did using the primitive technology of the 1960s era – then our liberty is for all intents and purposes gone.
We’ve been told that the rationale for this all-pervasive surveillance is to target "terrorists" and protect the country from their evil plots: but if the reality is that they’re going after garden-variety "radicals," i.e. targeting Americans because of their political views – and getting away with it – then we are living in a police state no better (and in some ways worse) than anything the world has yet seen.
You can order Greenwald's new book here.

7 comments:

  1. Will you be surprised to learn the NSA is targeting political dissent ?

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  2. The only thing that will stop them is a dollar meltdown and a severe reforms like in Greece. As long as the Fed is pumping out money and doping everyone like addicts no one will care to stop them.

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  3. Never Forgetting a Face


    Making his rounds at the trade show, Dr. Atick, a short, trim man with an indeterminate Mediterranean accent, warmly greeted industry representatives at their exhibition booths. Once he was safely out of earshot, however, he worried aloud about what he was seeing. What were those companies’ policies for retaining and reusing consumers’ facial data? Could they identify individuals without their explicit consent? Were they running face-matching queries for government agencies on the side?

    Now an industry consultant, Dr. Atick finds himself in a delicate position. While promoting and profiting from an industry that he helped foster, he also feels compelled to caution against its unfettered proliferation. He isn’t so much concerned about government agencies that use face recognition openly for specific purposes — for example, the many state motor vehicle departments that scan drivers’ faces as a way to prevent license duplications and fraud. Rather, what troubles him is the potential exploitation of face recognition to identify ordinary and unwitting citizens as they go about their lives in public. Online, we are all tracked. But to Dr. Atick, the street remains a haven, and he frets that he may have abetted a technology that could upend the social order.

    Face-matching today could enable mass surveillance, “basically robbing everyone of their anonymity,” he says, and inhibit people’s normal behavior outside their homes. Pointing to the intelligence documents made public by Edward J. Snowden, he adds that once companies amass consumers’ facial data, government agencies might obtain access to it, too.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/technology/never-forgetting-a-face.html?

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  4. Disappointed to see Justin Raimondo come to a realization so late on the police state encircling our freedoms. Before Snowden's revelation, everybody knew of the NSA and of Eschelon. Remember Eschelon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschelon_Telecom. The NSA collection eclipses their efforts. It seems to me more a case of a lot of other people reporting and commenting on the revelations than it is a case where the NSA files are available in any coherent arrangment anywhere on the net for public viewing. Point me in the right direction if I am wrong.

    The government mines everything. Facebook, email, a website's comments, your responses to customer service inquiries, and a whole host of data, not to mention what the Patriot Act unleashed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act]. It just sounds to me that the discussion on this topic is astoundingly muffled. Every time I hear Greenwald or Snowden, I ask, what new revelations? Where? Where are they posted? And how or why does the exposure make the NSA liable? Gary North's review of the revelations nails it. Compared to the PATRIOT Act? Compared to Eschelon? Compared to the CIA, the FBI, local cops, your snooping neighbors, your envious co-workers, perhaps your evangelistic Christian church with its CIA sharing out of private hardships, tragedies, conflicts, where you expose the details of family and yourself all in the name of the Lord? Really? If you haven't seen "The Lives of Others" on the East German Stasi, check it out. It's a good commentary on the worst in America.

    Employers keep files on you. They don't tell you about it. And they will deny it if asked, but they do keep notes on you. Expect your name to be on a list somewhere. I don't say this to acclimate you to the idea, to just accept it and get on with it. No. I am stunned to learn that people are surprised that a police surveillance state exists.

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  5. If Greenwald says they're targeting milquetoast dissidents such as hippies, libertarians, militias members, etc., then it may be a setup like you said. If they're targeting people with real power like politicians, judges, military officers, then things could get interesting.

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    Replies
    1. This.
      And by interesting, you mean 'crazy frightening.'

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