Government Lies About Spying Again and Again … Here’s What’s REALLY Going On

(Washington’s Blog)   US Government Fails Honesty Standards of 12 Year Olds

Government leaders have been caught in lie after lie about spying … but keep on spouting new lies:

• The heads of the intelligence services have repeatedly been caught lying about spying … again andagain and again and again.  Security expert Bruce Schneier writes: “This is getting silly … Now they’re just looking shiftier and shiftier.” It has gotten so bad that a leading groups concludes: “US Government Fails Honesty Standards of 12 Year Olds“.   And even liberal publications are forced to conclude that Obama is intentionally lying about spying

• Obama says he’ll rein in spying … but his words and deeds indicate that he won’t. Indeed, Obamaappointed the fox to guard the chicken coop

• While the Obama administration is spying on everyone in the country – it is at the same time themost secretive administration ever (background). That’s despite Obama saying he’s running the most transparent administration ever

The Government Is Spying On Everything

Despite dishonest proclamations to the contrary, the government is – in reality – spying on everything:

• The government is spying on essentially everything we do.  “Spies … can now, for the first time, monitor everything about us, and they can do so with a few clicks of a mouse and – to placate the lawyers – a drop-down menu of justifications“

• It is not just “metadata” … although that is enough to  destroy your privacy

• The government has adopted a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act which allows it to pretend that “everything” is relevant … so it spies on everyone. For example, the NSA “oversight” court believes the mere claim that terrorists use the phone system is enough to show that all phone records are relevant

• NSA whistleblowers say that the NSA collects all of our conversations word-for-word

• It’s not just your computer and your phone. It is well-documented that the government may be spying on us through cars and buses, streetlights, at airports and on the street, via mobile scanners and drones, through our smart meters, and in many other ways

No Adult Supervision

The NSA has gone rogue … with no oversight:

• There is no real oversight by Congress, the courts, or the executive branch of government. And seethis and this.

• Indeed, most Congress members had no idea what the NSA is doing. Even staunch defenders of the NSA – and congress members on the intelligence oversight committees – now say they’ve been kept in the dark. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee says that he’s learned more fromreading newspapers than from attending classified NSA briefings

• A Federal judge who was on the secret spying court for 3 years says that it’s a kangaroo court

• Even the current judges on the secret spying court now admit that they’re out of the loop and powerless to exercise real oversight.

• When these judges raised concerns about NSA spying, the Justice Department completely ignoredthem

Spy Information Being Shared with Numerous Federal, State and Local Agencies … and Private Contractors

Your private information isn’t staying inside the NSA … it’s being spread all over the place:

• The information gained through spying is shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges

• The Department of Health and Human Services will also have access to vast quantities of sensitive federal data on Americans as part of Obamacare (here’s the underlying Government Accountability Office report)

• The NSA not only shares our information with other American agencies, it also gives personal, sensitive unfiltered information on Americans to Israel and other foreign nations

• It’s not just the NSA … Many other agencies, like the FBI and IRS – concerned only with domesticissues – also spy on Americans. For example, the Drug Enforcement Administration has had direct access to AT&T phone records for 25 years

• And it’s not only governments. Private contractors can also view all of your data (and the government isn’t keeping track of which contractors see your data and which don’t). And becausebackground checks regarding some contractors are falsified, it is hard to know the types of people that might have your information. Indeed, private contractors are involved in spying on behalf of governments world-wide

Your Sensitive Financial Data Is Being Gathered

One of the types of personal information being spied on is your sensitive financial information:

• The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA spies on Americans’ credit card transactions

• Many other agencies are doing the same. In fact, virtually all U.S. intelligence agencies – including the CIA and NSA – are going to spy on Americans’ finances

• The IRS will also be spying on Americans’ shopping records, travel, social interactions, health records and files from other government investigators

Spying Is Killing the Economy

Spying is hurting the economy:

• Mass surveillance by the NSA directly harms internet companies, Silicon Valley, California … and theentire U.S. economy

• For example, Facebook lost 11 millions users as of April mainly due to privacy concerns (and that wasbefore the Snowden revelations). And see these reports from Boingboing and the Guardian

• It is not an exaggeration to say that the attack on privacy is hamstringing our economy

• In addition, IT and security professionals say spying could mess up the safety of our internet and computer systems

• Mass spying also creates an easy mark for hackers. Indeed, the Pentagon now sees the collection of “big data” as a “national security threat” … but the NSA is the biggest data collector on the planet, and thus provides a tempting mother lode of information for foreign hackers

Mass Surveillance Doesn’t Keep Us Safe

The main justification for spying – that it’s needed to protect us from terrorism – is false:

• Top counter-terror experts say that the government’s mass spying doesn’t keep us safe

• Indeed, they say that mass spying actually hurts U.S. counter-terror efforts (more here and here)

• You’re much more likely to be killed by brain-eating amoeba, lightning or a toddler than by terrorism. Even President Obama admits that you’re much less likely to be killed by terrorists than a car accident.  So the government has resorted to lamer and lamer excuses to try to justify mass surveillance

• Spying started before 9/11 … and various excuses have been used to spy on Americans over the years.  This shows that the argument that the “new post 9/11 world” created the need for mass surveillance is false

• In any event, counter-terror experts say we can keep everyone safe without violating the Constitution … more cheaply and efficiently than the current system

One of the Real Reasons the Government Conducts Mass Surveillance

If the spying doesn’t keep us safe, why are they doing it?  One of the main reasons is money:

• The NSA spying program is unambiguously being used for industrial espionage, by spying on large foreign corporations, and the biggest financial payments systems such as VISA and Swift. Indeed, in a slide leaked by Edward Snowden, “economic” was one of the main justifications for spying

• The top U.S. spy’s justifications for such financial spying is not very reassuring:

“We collect this information for many important reasons: for one, it could provide the United States and our allies early warning of international financial crises which could negatively impact the global economy. It also could provide insight into other countries’ economic policy or behavior which could affect global markets.”

• Top financial experts say that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are using the information toprofit from this inside information

• Some people make a lot of money off of mass spying. But the government isn’t using the spying program to stop the worst types of lawlessness

Bunker Mentality

The intelligence agencies have fallen into a bizarre bunker mentality:

• The chairs of the 9/11 Commission say that NSA spying has gone way too far

• As just one example of how far they’re going, the feds are considering prosecuting the owner of a private email company – who shut down his business rather than turning over records to the NSA – for refusing to fork over the information and keep quiet. This is a little like trying to throw someone in jail because he’s died and is no longer paying taxes

• A Harvard law school professor – and director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University – says:

“The NSA has mounted a systematic campaign against the foundations of American power: constitutional checks and balances, technological leadership, and market entrepreneurship. The NSA scandal is no longer about privacy, or a particular violation of constitutional or legislative obligations. “.

• A former U.S. president says that the spying program shows that we no longer have a functioning democracy

Unconstitutional and Illegal

Not only is mass surveillance unnecessary, counter-productive in fighting terrorism and out of control, it’s also illegal:

• Experts say that the spying program is illegal

• Even spying on our metadata violates our constitutional right to freedom of association

• We’re not talking about just a little bit illegal under American law. Top constitutional experts say that Obama and Bush are worse than Nixon … and the Stasi East Germans

• Indeed, they say that this type of spying is exactly the kind of thing which King George imposed on the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War

The Danger of Tyranny

Insiders say that the mass surveillance is creating a real danger of tyranny in America:

• The NSA treats the American people with contempt. For example, Spiegel notes:

“The authors of the [NSA slides] draw a comparison with “1984,” … revealing the agency’s current view of smartphones and their users. “Who knew in 1984 that this would be Big Brother …” the authors ask, in reference to a photo of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. And commenting on photos of enthusiastic Apple customers and iPhone users, the NSA writes: “… and the zombies would be paying customers?

• Worse, the intelligence agencies often view normal, true-blue Americans as potential terrorists (andsee this)

• Not only is the government trying to hassle its external critics into silence, but is targeting everyAmerican – even  high-ranking officials within the intelligence and security agencies themselves – who criticize draconian surveillance. For example, the chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security said that the government called the privacy office “terrorists”.  This is not an isolated or melodramatic statement; rather, it is how the homeland security and intelligence communities look at privacy

• Governments and giant corporations are doing everything they can to destroy anonymity

• The spy agencies aren’t just passively gathering information, but are actively using it in mischievous ways.  For example, the NSA and other intelligence agencies are central in assassination programs(and the former head of the NSA and the CIA recently joked about assassinating Edward Snowden … egged on the by chair of the House Intelligence Committee)

• A Congressman noted that – even if a mass surveillance program is started for good purposes – it will inevitably turn into a witch hunt

• There are so many non-sensical and obscure laws – see for yourself – that power-hungry folks canalways find evidence that everyone has broken some law or another. As Stalin’s notorious chief of secret police famously said: “Show me the man and I will find you the crime”

• Moreover, surveillance can be used to frame you if someone in government happens to take a dislike to you

• Government spying has always focused on crushing dissent … not on keeping us safe

• An NSA whistleblower says that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers (and see this)

• Indeed, the NSA was already spying on American Senators more than 40 years ago

• High-level US government officials have warned for 40 years that mass surveillance would lead to tyranny in America

Whistleblowers Are Heroes

• Members of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government have all praised the debate on spying which Snowden’s leaks started

• The top counter-terrorism Czar under Clinton and Bush says that revealing NSA spying programs does not harm national security

• While leaker Edward Snowden is treated as a traitor by the fatcats and elites, he is considered a heroby the American public

• Whistleblowers on illegal spying have no “legal” way to get the information out

The Good News …

Fortunately, polls shows that Americans understand the reality of mass surveillance:

• The public doesn’t believe the NSA

• And thinks that the government has gone way too far in the name of terrorism

• Only 11% of Americans trust Obama to actually do anything to rein in spying

• A top NSA whistleblower says that the only way to fix things is to fire all of the corrupt government officials who let it happen.  Others agree

• A huge majority of Americans wants the director of intelligence – Clapper – prosecuted for perjury(0ne of the chairs of the 9/11 Commission agrees)

Article first appeared on Washington’s Blog