The rightful role of the loyal opposition...

It's a damned shame the right-wing keeps the noise/hate machine turned up to "11" all the time. Now that there is an actual scandal, the ones whose rightful place should be pointing out shortcomings of the current Administration, they cannot shine a light on where efforts to fix the problem need to go as they are used to keeping all the lights on all the time at their highest setting.

People who have spent the last five years jumping on bandwagons like "Birth Certificate! Grabbing our guns!! IRS!!! Ben Ghazi!!!!" have a routine about repeating or insinuating clearly false allegations in hopes of creating a general sense of villiany about their target... and they simply do NOT know what to do when actual wrongdoing has taken place. Already the elements of the noise machine (Fox, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Americans for Prosperity/Koch Bros), Crossroads GPS/Karl Rove) are already using the VA, and the current malfeasance some of the employees engaged in, as a general attack against everything from Obamacare, to the Obama Administration in general or simply the idea of Government providing functions to its citizens (and Veterans).

This isn't some fictional problem media folks invented that makes a handy attack on politicians one does not like. This is a systemic problem that eternal hearings and demands for resignations will not fix. This is an actual problem that needs a unified leadership and serious resources to overcome to fulfill the promise that our nation made to it's veterans.

The Right Wing noise machine is flawlessly engineered to generate noise. It seems to be wholly unsuited to carrying a signal. A damned shame, there are times when something like it is needed.

Vanished!

I haven't been posting these last few weeks. My son was recently born and, while I am the happiest man alive, time has been scarce. I should have something new up Monday.

Congratulations to those we've championed!

Congratulations Weev!
This has been a great week for those who believe in a more open world, freedom of speech (the kind that actually gets prosecuted) and our freedom to explore and learn about the tools we use.

A few days ago, Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, who I wrote about as an example of a hacker unjustly punished by a system he was an embarassment to, was released from Federal Prison after his conviction was overturned by the Third District Court of Appeals (on a technicality of jurisdiction, but whatever).

Congratulations to weev, congratulations to his legal team, congratulations to the E.F.F. and everyone that donated to the legal fund. Congratulations even to GoatSec. This is a big deal, even on a technicality, and ESPECIALLY if new charges are not brought. Andrew is out and reportedly enjoying himself, attending a party in NYC with Glenn Greenwald and associated freedom advocates. The young man is fully nerded back up, on twitter and such.

This is truly a good thing as there is no reason that man should be in prison.

Speaking of Greenwald, he has such been awarded The Pulitzer Prize, shortly after being officially given his Polk Award for his reporting (which he stated should rightly belong to Edward Snowden, still in Russia). This means the Edward Snowden revelations and how they have been released to the public have won the most prestigious awards in journalism. Making this known to the public has been validated by press experts as a tremendous accomplishment and something to be celebrated (and not a crime). Mr. Greenwald felt free to come home to the United States after months of hesitation regarding just how "free" journalists are.

And based on statements our heads of National Security have publicly made, he was understandable in being hesitant to come home. It is likely a little harder to imprison a Pulitzer Prize winner than just another journalist.

This has been a very educating week for a bunch of folks about rights, privacy, deep state, and freedom to speak. The Heartbleed exploit was make public... AND the fact that the NSA kept this exploit secret for years so it could use it. Those actions made EVERYONE'S systems less secure just to enable ease of access. Honoring the work the Guardian did with Snowden, the release of weev, the publicity of the exploits in the code that can be used on any of us... these are all pushing things in the right direction.

I am going to embed Andrew's interview with RT. He is very much in the spotlight now and is using that to raise awareness of others targeted by a malicious culture of prosecuting hackers and an unjust law that allows it to happen. He mentions Schwarz and Keys and what they went though and how he isn't pleading or backing down (even though he still may be prosecuted).

Feel free to watch weev's interview, I am just very happy:

Snooping Diminishes Our Lives.

Not as funny as Chase and Aykroyd
One of the most annoying statements made defense of privacy is this:

"What do you have to worry about if you don't have anything to hide?"

And sometimes that shuts down the discussion. It shouldn't. I have come across many good rebuttals, such as "Okay, may I go through your wallet, bank statements, and cell phone right now?" and "Diaries have locks for a reason." and "I want my house key back." But those are not the complete answer.

The deeper, though not most snappy, answer is as such:

People always being watched live diminished lives.

USA Today reported on a Harris Poll recently done that stated 47% of Americans changed their online habits because of revelations regarding the NSA and online spying. Any time you take what a secret agency may or may not think of your actions into account before making a joke or commentary or even having contact with an individual... you are living a diminished life.

In my work overseas, something I have struggled with is trying to relate to the mind set of people who have lived their life in a totalitarian state. There are societies were it is assumed (and certainly legal) for the state to intercept any and all communications you may have. There are societies where a letter the the editor of the local paper or a campaign sign in your yard can land you in secret detention facility or cause you to be disappeared. This impacts people's minds and culture and gradually goes from being perceived as a crime against human rights as just a thing that happens. Of COURSE the agents of our sovereign leader disappeared Uncle Dave, did you see those letters he wrote about the leader? What did he expect?. People normalize this state of affairs and self-censorship becomes the norm.

Totalitarians NEED that self-censorship in order to maintain and grow their power. The police state cannot detain, execute, or even attend to everyone who has a disagreement with those in power. Most of the potential dissidents and activists out there have to be defeated before they ever put a pen to paper or clear their throat.

Our current leaders are by no means dictators.... The two hundred misleading, derogatory and semi-racists JPEGS in your Facebook feed attacking our president without reprisals are a pretty good sign of that. (In addition to an entire news network doing the same, with a thriving bumper sticker industry and the occasional billboard)

A real dictator would not allow this shit
But despite the relative freedom of our dumbest citizens to make fools of themselves, there IS a chilling of free speech that is even more necessary to our republic than racist JPEG files.

Edward Snowden has no plans to return to his home nation. Neither does Julian Assange. Chelsea Manning will be imprisoned for decades. Jeremy Hammond, who let us know what a bunch of crooked bunch of right-wing loons Statfor was (while still soaking up tax dollars) and how they were spying on private citizens at home and abroad... He has been sentenced to ten years in Federal Prison. Barret Brown, who wrote about and shared revelations that security and intelligence firm HB Gary was also generally incompetent in their field and full of paranoid delusions and willing to act outside of the law to target Americans, that poor soul sits in prison awaiting a sentence of up to 100 years in Federal Prison. Aaron Schwarz, who had created the RSS system that we all love, committed suicide at the young age of 26 after being persecuted by the Feds over sharing Academic Journals.. Heck, even little fish like Andrew "Weev" Aurenheimer is serving nearly four years in the Federal pen for finding a security vulnerability in AT&T services for the iPad and then, instead of using or selling this, sharing it openly so AT&T could fix it. He left us with this:

"[The Feds] worry a lot more about civil disobedience than my grandma getting robbed. They worry about the social integrity of their people staying in power...”
-Interview with Forbes

(Disclaimer, Weev is a friend-of-a-friend, so I might have a soft spot for his case)

How can you not love someone who has a profile pic from SNES Shadowrun?
Since their revelations, The President has addressed the NSA's over-reach, Stratfor is taken a little less seriously in some circles, HB Gary's CEO resigned after being exposed as petty and incompetent and some of HB Gary's partners in illegal activities have been exposed. Heck, AT&T even responded to Weev's warnings and fixed their security holes (and then pressed charges.)

The world we live in is a better place for what they have exposed.
That's true.

Others are afraid to contribute because of how these men have suffered.
That's true too.

I have written before that you can tell what information actually threatens an institution by what kind of response it brings. It should tell us something that you can rant all day about FEMA Camps and Gun Confiscation and the New World Order without any fear of reprisal... but if you show that those getting rich off of the Security State are useless, petty, incompetent and violating our constitutional and personal rights, if you demonstrate that the emperor has no clothes... you will end up in Jail.

Most of us will never be prosecuted like these gentlemen have. But 47% of us will change SOMETHING we are doing because of how we are being watched. People behave differently when they know they are being observed. This is not a new idea by any means, as Jeremy Bentham wrote in the 1700s as he conceived the Panopticon Prison:

"It is obvious that, in all these instances, the more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the persons who should inspect them, the more perfectly will the purpose X of the establishment have been attained. Ideal perfection, if that were the object, would require that each person should actually be in that predicament, during every instant of time. This being impossible, the next thing to be wished for is, that, at every instant, seeing reason to believe as much, and not being able to satisfy himself to the contrary, he should conceive himself to be so"

The purpose of the Panopticon wasn't to observe everyone in it all the time, but to lead people to change their behavior as if they were. Does this same ability to see into our online lives make us change our behavior? For about half of us the answer is yes, and that number is likely to increase as more revelations come to light.

We are in a once-in-a-generation discussion about how far secretive government agencies and their attached secret corporations should be peering broadly into our lives despite the fact that they cannot prove doing so has ever stopped a terrorist attack.. If we do not limit this beast, it will continue to change our culture and diminish the choices we feel free to make further.

Our culture should not be a prison

Everyone is a socialist come April 15th

When April 15th rolls around, everybody become a socialist.

From January to April of each year have been working as a tax preparer at a little kiosk in the Midwest. In that time I have done taxes for people doing rather well, people barely scraping by, hourly employees, landlords, small business owners, tipped employees, salaried employees and people in other situations it takes longer to explain.

One thing is true about every single client I prepared taxes for: Not ONE of them has turned down a tax deduction or tax credit they have qualified for. Every single person - when it comes time to pay taxes - has preferred I choose every legal option on their return to owe the minimum amount possible or to get back as large of a refund as possible. Not ONE person has said "Can I pay in an extra 100 or so to help lower the national debt?" or such, or refused to take an energy/home loan interest/student loan interest/higher education/child care tax credit based on some principle of "I don't believe the government should be paying for X."

The rest of the year we all might be fiscal libertarians or such, but come April 15th, everybody's a socialist.

A sincere apology to my Conservative friends.

You wisened fellows deserve my respect>
I have been wrong about so very much, and you have been so very right... It's about time I offer a heartfelt apology to my conservative friends and praise their prescience on so many things. Looking back, if only we had listened to them in these past few years we would be so much wiser.

I offer my sincere apologies
Years ago you told me the Federal Budget Deficit would explode and grow each year under the stewardship of President Obama, and you guys were pretty much on the mark. You looked over the numbers and trusted your guts and sure called that one right.

You told America that allowing gays to openly serve in the United States Military was a horrible mistake, that it would destroy morale, dissolve unit cohesion, and hollow out our forces as our service people would leave in droves, and you were absolutely on point with that one. Clearly our military has never had a more devastating issue or difficult problem than allowing its gay members to openly serve.

You warned us that legalizing pot would have a devastating impact on the health, saftey, and livilihood of the residents of those states who had decriminalized it. You told me that the "Tough" approach on drugs was our only hope against this plague, and now that we can see the fallout we know that there has been an unambiguous explosion in violent crime in Colorado and Washington have taught us all not to ignore your warnings, and the hellish smoldering remains of Colorado after the "Last Bag of Cheetos" war of 2014 stands as a reminder of just how necessary the war on drugs is.

4/20, Never Forget
You predicted that the Affordable Care Act / Obamacare was going to result in everything from a doubling of unemployment to Government Death Panels. You told me that the kids wouldn't sign up and that the efforts to provide affordable health insurance to millions would fail. Boy, were you guys ever right on that one. We should have just given up on that goal since it took some effort and the goal of helping several million Americans get access to health care was just silly.

You gave dire warning about the slippery slope of Gay Marriage, and you pointed to your most prominent moral think tanks showing how it would lead to everything from bigamy to marrying horses. You claimed it would destroy traditional marriage. You guys were certainly right. In the states that have recognized gay marriage, straight marriage is no longer a thing. Polyamorous human-animal marriages are common, dogs and cats living together, the whole bit. If only we had listened to you.

You informed us that President Obama would conspire with his environmentalist cronies to destroy the United States' oil production, that it would be impossible to explore and drill for oil unless we had a leader who embraced the "Drill, baby, Drill" ethos - and looking at the state of the Oil Production in the US today, you sure were right.

Our economy was one place where you were perhaps the most right of all. The stock market since President Obama was re-elected has been devastated.

Perhaps your greatest concern, and perhaps the place were we liberals were the most wrong was in the area of Gun Control. You guys were quick to predict that President Obama was going to utilize the massacres in the past few years in Newton and Aurora to seize firearms in this nation and disarm us all. Some of you even speculated that these were "false flag attacks" to create a grab our guns pretense. If only we had listened to you, the "Total Firearms Seizure Act of 2013" wouldn't have happened, the Second Ammendment wouldn't have been repealed, and U.N. Troops wouldn't have gone house to house seizing every single legally owned American Firearm. It was tragic and unfolded exactly as you have been predicting for the last thirty years. Why, last year no guns at all were sold in the United States and Obama has left us unarmed as never before.

Mr. Heston's casket was opened, his fingers pried open, and his rifle seized
I apologize for ignoring your sage advice. From letting me know that Gold was the safest investment, to letting me know I should really have really gotten in on Bitcoin about six months ago. To even letting me know that I should invest in assault rifles, as they would continue to increase in value during the impending bans.

I should have learned my lesson ever since the Conservatives were so bravely right about the necessity of our military intervention to seize WMDs in Iraq and the ease of which that military operation would be carried out... these are some of the smartest, best informed, open minded and prescient people our nation has ever known and I apologize for ever doubting you guys. I am sure your NEXT prediction will be as right as your track record over the last few years.

They're right, they are just answering a different question.

“My personal opinion: these leaks have caused grave, significant and irreversible damage to our nation and to our allies. It will take us years to recover..."

"We’ve got to handle media leaks first."

-Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the N.S.A.
Remarks to Georgetown University, 2014

*****

In his opinion, the most dangerous is....the group which consists of people who are "20-something, sitting in pajamas and slippers, still living with their mother in the basement, who are mad at the world, who want to do what you and I can not understand and certainly can not perform."

Gen. Michael Hayden, former director C.I.A. and N.S.A., former Director of National Intelligence
Currently working for Motorola and the Chertoff Group
Speech at the National Bank in Bucharest, 2014

They are right. The "Greatest Danger" are hackers and journalists and they are right to fear them. What is different is what Joe and Jane Average consider a "Danger" and what the men who live in the world of Deep State truly fear.

Whistleblowers, hackers, journalists all have the power to expose what someone else was trying to conceal. If a set of lies fuels the gravy train that you and your associated have build careers on and which you plan to profit more from in the future, then any truth that challenges that lie is your "Greatest Danger". More than any carbomb or suicide vest some very specific truths threaten to destroy the "world" of certain men and their associates.

I will never stop stealing this panel from Tom Tomorrow
A long time ago, in what feels like a past life, I studied and practiced the art of propaganda for the United States Army which at the time was called Psychological Operations, or PSYOP. I took to it like a fish to water, they offered ample study materials but I wanted more, I studied more about persuasion, about belief and motivation and what really drives people to action. I read fundamentals, I read Bernays theories of Propaganda, I read little red books by Mao and Guevara, and little pamphlets by Franklin and Thomas Paine. I dove deeper into related fields neurology and graphic design. I learned about the power that words and symbols and narratives and ideas can have on the actions that we take, how people dedicate and even sacrifice their lives for them. I learned that the biggest bombs and biggest missiles were all built years before I was born and that the new arms race was being fought for human minds and souls.

Part of my job was to gather, analyze and estimate the impacts of propaganda (ours AND the enemy's). One lesson I took away from this is that the arguments or symbols or ideas that are believed to pose the greatest threat will draw the greatest and most rapid response. Most propaganda comes and goes with little response, but the things that make a target drop what they are doing and focus on answering from the highest levels right then and there - those are the things they believe will have an impact.

I have previously written about how the thing that we have lost with arguments regarding the recently leaked programs and "balancing" privacy and security is how the most broad and unconstitutional of them have never been shown to have caught a single terrorist. What bigger threat to their continued existence than to expose that particular fact?

The area surrounding the District of Colombia has the highest median income of any metropolitan area in the United States. While many groan about the salaries of Federal employees and lawmakers, these are tiny drops in a rather large bucket. The money that funds the wave of new wealth in the D.C. area is money from contractors, often National Security contractors with the clearances, backgrounds, and connections to make truly gigantic amounts of money filling "needs" we believe our government has.

Dear Disney: Please do not sue me.
Companies like Booz Allen Hamilton (who employed Edward Snowden on N.S.A. contracts), the Carlyle Group (which owns Booz Allen Hamilton), The Chertoff Group (founded by former Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff and currently employing former NSA/CIA director Michael Hayden)... these all make a handful of people behind the secret surveillance community known as Deep State VERY rich men.

These companies donate millions to the corrupt campaign finance and influence system that keeps lobbying firms and political consultants very, very, rich. These companies keep the pipeline open to welcome public servants and lawmakers onto their payrolls after they complete their service (and maybe throw a contract or favor their way while in office). I have written about this before.

Recently Senator Diane Feinstein has been a news item by going public with the fact that Senate computers were hacked to delete CIA files relevant to an ongoing investigation of the CIA by the Senate. What files and what report? The Senate report regarding the network of "Black Sites" and "Rendition" and "Enhanced Interrogation" (or Torture) that supposedly was a necessary program to keep us safe from Terrorism.

Remember the first half of Zero Dark Thirty was mostly this.
The Senate was closing in on pinpointing the exact number of crucial intelligence items discovered by this network, in relation to stopping terrorist attacks on the U.S. The number they were getting close towards? Zero, or close to it. Specifically they concluded "that the CIA program had yielded little or no significant intelligence."

My bad y'all...
Again, this is the kind of secret that shuts down sites and ends contracts. This required a response. (The head of the CIA during the relevant time of investigation was Michael Hayden.) This report - and the threat of it reaching the kinds of people who might reject the program that hurt our reputation around the world, threatened our core values, and likely violated our constitution and various treaties if it did not yield a damn thing. This is the report that inspired individuals to invade the computers of the Senate Intelligence Community and delete evidence. I assure you if the people doing this were wearing Guy Fawkes masks there would be a bipartisan call for them to be pursued to the ends of the Earth and penalized to the fullest extent of the law.

But they are not. Hopefully, somewhere in the mind of a senior Senator the idea is brewing "Since they were not reigned in from doing this to ordinary Americans, of course they would utilize these tools on us." A series of events have led us to a once in a generation national discussion regarding the powers, funding and secrecy we allow "Deep State" to have.

We will hear arguments about Privacy versus Security, we will hear nightmare scenarios about captured terrorists and hidden ticking time bombs (never happened), we will - and of this I am 100% certain - hear the Snowden leaks/revelations used as evidence that the companies making these tools need to be paid billions of additional dollars to "repair" the effectiveness of a program which has (in regards to mass collection) NEVER CAUGHT A SINGLE TERRORIST. In all of this we need to keep that one piece of signal among all the noise - These programs cannot display they produced ANYTHING, let alone the kind of vital and consistent operational advantage to justify their existence.

Hell, just the financial cost alone (let alone the moral, human, or constitutional cost) should kill these programs in an era where we are told we as a nation cannot afford our levels of such things as Food Stamps and Veteran's Pensions.

How much military pension funding would you cut to preserve an unconstitutional program that has never caught a terrorist? What about education funding? What about roads, or bridges or medical research or food for the hungry? How are the to build all those new mansions in and around the D.C. area unless you fund our multi-billion-dollar boondoggles that protect no one. For that matter, how long does a person need to be imprisoned for leaking details about programs that never caught a single terrorist?

Their most secret, horrible, and expensive activities protected no one. This is the secret that threatens them. Are hackers and leakers and journalists "The Greatest Danger"? If your asking about the danger to their unaccountable riches and power, then you are DAMNED right they are.