Category Archives: Technology

Glenn Greenwald: Guarding Liberty @ The Guardian

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Technology, Terrorism, The State

More than “Smashing a CNN Government Apologist,” as EPJ’s Robert Wenzel put it, Glenn Greenwald “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee,” Cassius-Clay style, around the unincisive, silly Jeffrey Toobin. Here Greenwald demonstrates why “Major media,” as I wrote, “is like a big amorphous amoeba. This simple, single-celled organism will instinctively act in unison to preserve its integrity.” To maintain equilibrium, morons have to keep the brilliant out.

I’ve searched in vain for follow-up headlines on ABC headline News, UPI, Drudge, Fox News & Business, on and on. US media does not wish to discuss the new twist in an “NSA program [that] reportedly allows analysts to track emails, chats, web searches.”

Liberty’s guardian at The Guardian, the American Glenn Greenwald, is responsible for revealing the following new and horrifying details:

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’

• XKeyscore gives ‘widest-reaching’ collection of online data
• NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches
• Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history
• NSA’s XKeyscore program – read one of the presentations

“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.
US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden’s assertion: “He’s lying. It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”
But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.
XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Read on.

UPDATED: Snowden As A Litmus Test For Libertarians

Propaganda, Rights, Russia, Technology, Terrorism, The State

If you have not been rooting for Edward Snowden to evade his tormentors–you are not a libertarian.

If you have not been praying (it’s a figure of speech, not a statement of religious faith) for Vladimir Putin to stand firm against the biggest bully in the world—you are no libertarian.

Today, those proverbial prayers have been answered. The man who has been the laughing stock in US media (a laughable proposition in itself) for his displays of machismo has manned up.

“Although President Vladimir V. Putin and President Obama both sought to avoid a direct diplomatic clash over Mr. Snowden, Mr. Putin and other officials here made clear they would under no circumstance extradite him, despite direct appeals from Secretary of State John Kerry and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.”

And finally, on August 1, 2013, “Russia Granted Snowden 1-Year Asylum,” reports the New York Times.

Russia’s decision, which infuriated American officials, significantly alters the legal status of Mr. Snowden, the former intelligence analyst wanted by the United States for leaking details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. Even as those leaks continued, Mr. Snowden now has legal permission to live — and conceivably even work — anywhere in Russia for as long as a year, safely out of the reach of American prosecutors.
Mr. Snowden, 30, departed Sheremetyevo Airport unexpectedly at 3:30 in the afternoon after his lawyer, Anatoly G. Kucherena, delivered to him a passport-like document issued by the Federal Migration Service on Wednesday and valid until July 31, 2014.

Let us hope that this young man remains free, and that “the temporary refugee certificate” is renewed, or is a loadstar for other countries thinking of following Putin’s lead.

UPDATE: “Manning, Snowden and Assange were the ones who took risks to expose crime.” This is a bit of a dumb statement:

Manning’s supporters expressed relief that he was found not guilty of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, which would likely have carried a sentence of life in prison. He was convicted on 20 of 22 charges, and could face up to 136 years in prison. The sentencing hearing is underway.

Seattle Parasite-To-Resident Ratio

Business, Government, Taxation, Technology, The State

In SEATTLE, the parasite-to-resident ratio (public-sector workers per population) is one to 56. To give you an idea of how big a government workforce Seattle labors under consider the bankrupt Detroit, at one to 61. I find this a remarkable statistic for Seattle. What it tells me is that despite the drag that is “the Evergreen State’s Profligate Oink Sector”—an oink sector, in places, comparable to Detroit’s—there are other variables even more powerful, which, against all odds, overcome the economic drag imposed by the unproductive, “public” sector.

Washington State’s prosperity is a function of the quality of the state’s productive sector. The state attracts a highly productive cognitive elite that works in the high-tech industries of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon and other great companies.

Public sector workers, of course, are net wealth consumers; they do not produce wealth. They do vote themselves exorbitant salaries (averaging $81,488 in Seattle) on the backs of the productive (one of whom is my own).

A breakdown of parasite-to-resident ratios in other cities, many worse than Detroit, is courtesy of EPJ (read my weekly column, also on the Economic Policy Journal).

Turning The State Against Itself

Barack Obama, Ethics, Government, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Morality, Technology, Terrorism, The State

Morality as you and I think of it is already in short supply in government. Barack Obama has taken the initiative to weed out any vestiges of ethical impulses in government workers, the kind of urges that motivate whistleblowers, for instance.

The tyrant has launched the “Insider Threat Program,” “an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for ‘high-risk persons or behaviors’ among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.”

Correction: The creep-in-chief issued the edict way back, after he jailed Army Pfc. Bradley Manning for exposing US war crimes. (There is a hell of a lot we don’t know about the foolish filth that is in office, as media have been unwilling to track this man’s infractions.)

The state spying on itself could turn out well for its subjects. Let the oink sector turn on itself. Let these pampered state workers be permanently consumed with and distracted by suspicion and fear, lest they end up in jail.