As I keep saying, we are not governed, we are ruled.
Not only is privacy considered a threat to our rulers, but even curiosity about privacy is cause for being put under surveillance.
The NSA surveillance program called X-Keyscore, first revealed last summer in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, has been found to contain selection rules that potentially add to an NSA watch list anybody who has not only used, but visited online privacy-protection tools such as the Tor Network for anonymous Web browsing and the Linux-based Tails operating system. Snowden’s X-Keyscore files indicated that it allowed NSA employees to obtain a person’s phone number or email address, view the content of email, and observe full Internet activity including browsing history without a warrant.
An analysis of X-Keyscore’s source code (text only) indicates that the program has targeted a German student who runs a Tor node, and can add to the NSA’s surveillance lists anybody who uses popular Internet privacy tools such as Tor. The reports were prepared by reporters for the German public television broadcasters NDR and WDR, and people employed by and volunteering for Tor, who said that “former NSA employees and experts are convinced that the same code or similar code is still in use today.”
Bastards.
There are, of course, those few who might wonder what provision of the Constitution gives these people such massive, unlimited power to disregard it.
The answer is that there is no such provision. They simply have seized the power to put millions of America under surveillance according to their bureaucratic whim, and the fact that it is unconstitutional makes those who believe in the Constitution their mortal enemies.
Hence the surveillance.
As might be expected, Orwellian “national security” types — and their conservative supporters — are trying to equate privacy with terrorism.
Comments
5 responses to “PRIVACY IS TERRORISM”
I own a small business. that makes me a capitalist wage slave master even though I don’t have any capitalist wage slaves. I get calls wanting to know the owners name. what is the name of your owner/ I tell them I am not a capitalist wage slave I don’t have an owner! sometimes they ask me the names of the person who owns the business so they can make sales calls using his name. I tell them his name is kareem abdul mohammeed george washington abraham lincoln green. and tell them to use his full name when they call or he gets angry! when they call asking for mr. green I tell them he is in jail for selling cia-contra for the republican party and unlike ollie north he didn’t have a republican judge to get him and tell them to call brewster-jennings for more info. this goes out over the air on my cell phone for over 25 years and picked up by nsa! so far haven’t heard from them.
David Brin has been writing about this for years. His point seems to be that since constant surveillance is inevitable as the technology improves the only available response is to surveil them back. Privacy may yet prove to be yet another obsolete enlightenment idea, along with freedom, reason, logic and evidence.
@Captain – keep on keeping on. They may be listening but I doubt it.
The problem with surveillance is that in order to do it right, EVERYONE must spy on EVERYONE. There are not enough spies otherwise. We’re not there yet. Let’s hope we never get there.
The correct answer is to never have anything unencrypted on any computerized device. Do it on pencil and paper. That’s how actual spies do it.
“Never speak when a nod will do, never nod when a wink will do, never write anything down”.
-How to Succeed in Boston Politics