Category Archives: The State

UPDATE II: #UsaFreedomAct: #NSA Not Complete Liars

Business, Homeland Security, Law, The State

“Senate voted to curb the collection of millions of Americans’ phone records, the first significant retrenchment of government spying powers since the 9/11 attacks,” blared the headline on the Wall Street Journal. Yes, the sluts in the Senate signed something, but it was a classic case of bait-and-switch. The maneuver—the passing of the USA Freedom Act intended to replace Section 215 of the Patriot Act—will not prohibit the illegal collection of American metadata, but will simply co-opt the telecommunications companies into the service of the Surveillance State, a very dangerous state-of-affairs, indeed.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell worried that blocking “the House bill … would hamstring the government’s ability to detect terrorist threats.”

Would blocking the Bill have made safety worse than the 95 percent fail rate in the Transportation Security Administration’s ability to detect and stop armed passengers?

UPDATE I: Co-Opting Corporations Into The Service Of The Surveillance State. “USA Freedom Act: Privatization of the Patriot Act.”

UPDATE II (6/3): Good News: NSA Are Not Complete Liars.

It is encouraging that the NSA itself or its front people admits that “NSA’s bulk collection has not prevented a single terrorist attack.” My tongue is firmly in my cheek here. This preposterous admission means that our overlords who art in DC are not complete liars; they don’t always lie about their lies.

MORE @ CNN.

As to efficacy, if a purely utilitarian position is adopted: “A numerate analysis shows that the cost of NSA spying is substantially higher than the expected benefits.”

MORE @ EconLib.

What #RandPaul Gives With One Hand, He Takes Away With The Other

Homeland Security, Intelligence, libertarianism, Regulation, Ron Paul, Terrorism, The State

Sen. Rand Paul went astray. His rousing remarks against the renewal of the PATRIOT Act were softened by a call for “the hiring of a 1,000 more FBI agents.” “We need more FBI analysts analyzing data,” said Paul.

Moreover, and as reported at Target Liberty, it is the legal opinion of Judge Andrew Napolitano “that the US government is lying to the American people with the claim that the mass surveillance would be suspended upon the expiration of the PATRIOT Act provision used to justify the mass surveillance program.”

Essentially, the Patriot Act will be revamped, only to reemerge as the USA FREEDOM Act.

Napolitano states:There are two other provisions in the law that the NSA relies on which will cause it to continue to spy on Americans even if section 215 of the PATRIOT Act does expire. One of those is a section of the FISA law called section 702, and one of them is a still-existing executive order signed by President George W. Bush in the fall or 2001, which has not been tinkered with, interfered with, or rescinded.

By Robert Wenzel’s telling, the “best analysis of the Patriot Act renewal and the USA Freedom Act” comes courtesy of “Glenn Greenwald in discussion with Jameel Jaffer, the Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU,” at The Intercept.

The question of whether “the sunset of Section 215 will be a meaningful step towards reform” is especially informative:

GREENWALD: That’s what I was going to ask next, actually.

JAFFER: That’s a good question. The problem –

GREENWALD: Let me just interject there: the argument that people make, and I’m sympathetic to it, which isn’t the same thing as saying I agree with it, is how significant would it really be?

The NSA has all of these other authorities. They can cite executive orders and other things, on top of which they’ve done a really good job of co-opting laws in the past. We had this FISA law that said you can’t eavesdrop on Americans’ communications without a warrant, and they did it anyway.

They invented this incredibly radical interpretation of the Patriot Act – of 215 – that says “This lets us collect everything we want,” and that was the interpretation the Second Circuit, ten years later, rejected, finally, just a couple of weeks ago.

So given how adept they are at kind of co-opting the process to do what they want – the other authorities – and their propensity to circumvent the law or even break it to do what they want, how significant would it really be?

… MORE.

#Langley Has The Last Word:#ForeignPolicy On The#CIA

Foreign Policy, Military, The State

A Foreign Policy essay makes the case that the CIA is, effectively, running American foreign policy. It concedes what seems obvious: Despite a budget of billions ($14.7 billion in 2013, “up from the $4.8 billion in 1994”), the agency “was notoriously wrong about Saddam Hussein’s alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, a cataclysmic mistake that eased the path to the Iraq War,” and it failed “to help detect or prevent the 9/11 plot.”

Some salient points:

* The agency has “a direct line to the White House for open-ended covert programs.”
* It has “explicit permission to use [drones] in larger areas of Pakistan than before.” “‘The CIA gets what it wants,’ Obama has told his aides.”
* “Through … machinations, the spy agency has managed to weaken or eliminate crucial counterweights to its own power.”
* “Since its creation in 1947, the CIA has steadily evolved from an agency devoted to its mission of spying on foreign governments to one whose current priority is tracking and killing individual militants in an increasing number of countries.”
* “… from drone strikes in the Middle East to the network of secret prisons around the world and the torture that occurred within their walls—[all] originated at Langley.”
* “… the agency had waded even more deeply into the dark world of assassinations by hiring outside contractors associated with Blackwater, a firm synonymous with abuses in Iraq, to kill individual militants on the ground.”
* “In Pakistan alone, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates, CIA drones killed as many as 960 civilians between June 2004 and April 2015, including up to 207 children.”
* The CIA’s has just about direct access to the White House. It “answers to no one except the president.”
* “… much of its workforce has been plugged into ‘the Ivy League, Eastern power structure of American politics.’ … its alumni are in key positions throughout the U.S. government.”
* Obama has embraced “the Bush-era CIA abuses,” this, presumably, includes torture, rendition, etc.

Since its creation in 1947, the CIA has steadily evolved from an agency devoted to its mission of spying on foreign governments to one whose current priority is tracking and killing individual militants in an increasing number of countries.

READ “Mission Unstoppable.”

UPDATED: #Snuff Film Shows Cops Letting Sgt. #JamesBrown Die (#IRF)

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Law, The State

EL PASO, TEXAS. The cruelty these cops demonstrate is unfathomable. A man is in the throes of death, in a jail cell, having self-reported for a minor offense. A passive Army Sgt. (James Brown) begs for his life, pleading that a stifling face mask be removed from his face, as he struggles to breathe. The killer SWAT cops ignore Mr. Brown’s pleas, tackling and manhandling a man already struggling to take in air, until he stops thrashing about, as his breathing slows down, until it stops.

My daughter suffered from asthma in childhood. Sever asthma. Her pediatrician taught me something these murderers were oblivious to. When someone tells you they can’t breathe, or are clearly having difficulties breathing—take it extremely seriously.

Charge these cops for depraved indifference. You have a snuff film to prove it.

UPDATE (5/19):

William N. Grigg: “They’re using a Gitmo-style “Initial Reaction Force.” They’re used in dealing with violent detainees and hunger strikers. IRFs are often used in SuperMax prisons here in the Soyuz. This fellow was probably considered a high-risk inmate because of his military background and psychological history.”

IM: “Watching this is heart-wrenching, William N. Grigg. You know Sgt. B. is going to die and you see no reason why. The time stretches; it’s not as if the murder happened fast. There were so many chances to STOP killing the victim. Senseless. Evil.”