Top Secret America

[Twyla LaSarc]

as individuals pass in and out of a security camera's frame, their headshot and a great deal of personal information appeared, in real time, on another pane just below the live feed from the camera. Name, age, sex, email and physical address, birthdate, phone number, etc.

Do you have any idea how this was done? RFID chips inside the student's ID cards? Facial recognition software? Would be interested to know this.

I'm guessing RFID. The state U ID here has a chip that is primarily for bus pass, but probably contains other info. They don't have a lot of cameras, but the buildings are being updated and I suppose that will be next. As for people from the outside, perhaps DLs now have this RFID info too? Lots of credit cards have the info as well. Just watched a clip on how easy they are to hack for theft, etc.

BRB, buying faraday pouch. I predict it will be the new fashion statement.

PS: Anyone here know if those plastic ones for computer parts will work as well?

[Nordic]

Our library has them in all the books. It's pretty amazing. To checkout books, you do it yourself, you walk up to a counter, scan your library card, then stack your books and CD's and DVD's on this pad on the table, and the RFID chip is read instantly, and the list of stuff appears on the screen. You hit a button and out slides your printed list of everything with the date they're due back.

Scary, though, that they're putting these things in driver's licenses, passports and everywhere else considering how ridiculously EASY they are to read.

[Luther Blissett]

I could still swear that the cop said it was facial-recognition technology. I wish I could go back and ask him without arousing suspicion. Perhaps it's a combination of that and RFID, or he was just trying to scare the kids straight.

[justdrew]

I could still swear that the cop said it was facial-recognition technology. I wish I could go back and ask him without arousing suspicion. Perhaps it's a combination of that and RFID, or he was just trying to scare the kids straight.

well, it's tech that let's HIM recognize faces.
Could be, but I'd suspect it's mote likely RFID in the student IDs.

[semper occultus]

LANDSCAPES OF SECRECY

THE CIA AND THE CONTESTED RECORD OF US FOREIGN POLICY 1947-2001

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/landscapes/

Since 1947, American espionage and covert operations have enjoyed a uniquely high profile. This is partly because of a taste for 'covert' interventions that were often impossible to keep hidden from public view; for example, the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Frequent revelations also reflected a written constitution that guaranteed investigative journalists relative immunity. Throughout this period, the history of the CIA has constituted something of a battleground with conflicting official and unofficial accounts.

CIA activity has often been redolent of wider issues in American foreign policy. These include a long-standing oscillation between interventionism and isolationism, between presidential leadership and democratic foreign policy, and also between exceptionalism and univeralist approaches to human rights. Public moves by both the President and Congress after 1975 to restrict - and then unleash - the CIA underline its symbolic importance.

The project, which is funded by the AHRC, is organised into three main 'strands'. The first strand focuses on the struggle over the appearance of the CIA in the State Department's respected series of published historical documents. A high profile battle between academics, the State Department and the CIA prompted legislative intervention by Congress in 1991.

The second strand constitutes an analysis of the production and role of CIA memoirs by retired CIA officers. More than ninety CIA memoirs have been published. Because of the uneven nature of primary historical documentation concerning the intelligence, memoirs have exercised a disproportionate influence upon the construction of CIA history. Controversially, some retirees published 'renegade' memoirs that were uncensored.

The third strand explores the realm of 'spy-faction', or lightly fictionalized accounts of real events. This popular form of CIA 'history' has achieved a wide reception as the result of transfer to the cinema screen. Retirees and even governments often work with film companies to enhance their 'reality' and recently assisted with the film 'The Good Shepherd'.

These three strands have been selected for their importance within the overall construction of American foreign policy. They have also been chosen because pilot projects have identified excellent, and hitherto unused, archival material at the US National Archives as well at other repositories at Texas and Stanford.

The project team represents a multi-disciplinary collaboration between the Universities of Warwick and Nottingham. It comprises academics experienced in the fields of the American studies, diplomatic history and the history of intelligence, together with Cold War literature and film. We hope that the project will interest not only scholars of American foreign policy, but also policy-makers and the general public.

RADIO 4 "DOCUMENT" 15 AUGUST 2011 AT 20.00 CO-OPERATES WITH

THE LANDSCAPES PROJECT TO FOCUS ON A KEY INTELLIGENCE EPISODE >

NIXON AND KISSINGER DISCUSS CUTTING OFF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE RELATIONSHIP

MAJOR CONFERENCE ON THE HISTORY OF THE CIA - 29/30 APRIL 2011

LANDSCAPES OF SECRECY: THE CIA IN HISTORY, FICTION, AND MEMORY: PROGRAMME

YOU CAN LISTEN TO THE WHOLE CONFERENCE FOR FREE HERE >>>

AUDIO RECORDING OF ALL THE PANELS AT THE CONFERENCE



DAY 1: FRIDAY 29 APRIL 2011

9.20 Conference Theatre, Opening Remarks, Professor Richard J. Aldrich, University of Warwick


9.35-11.15 Conference

Suite 1

Panel 1a: Origins: OSS and the rebirth of the CIA

Chair: Dr Kaeten Mistry, University of Warwick

Professor Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, University of Edinburgh

"The Origins of the CIA"

Professor Richard Immerman, Temple University

“From the OSS to the CIA: Whither Go Covert Operations?”

Professor Nick Cullather, Indiana University

“The CIA, the culture of intelligence failure, and the Bogotazo episode of 1948’





9.35-11.15 Conference

Suite 2

Panel 1b: The CIA, Television and Film

Chair/Discussant: Professor Tony Shaw, University of Hertfordshire

Simon Willmetts, University of Warwick

"Louis De Rochemont, Hollywood and the CIA: A Volatile Relationship”

Dr Trevor McCrisken, University of Warwick

"The CIA and American Television"



11.15-11.30 Banqueting Suite

Tea and coffee available



11.30-1.15 Conference

Suite 1

Panel 2a: The CIA in the early Cold War

Chair: Dr Helen Laville, University of Birmingham

Dr David Robarge, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence

“Origins and Development of the CIA Paramilitary function in the early Cold War”

Professor Hugh Wilford, California StateUniversity Long Beach

“America’s Great Game: The CIA and the Arab World in the Early Cold War”

Laura Moorhead, Independent Scholar

“ Norwood Allman, the CIA and Representations of Intelligence”







11.30-1.15 Conference

Suite 2

Panel 2b: The CIA and their friends

Chair: Dr Bevan Sewell, University of Nottingham

Professor Cees Wiebes, NcTB Netherlands

“Oh my God, the Dutch did it again” : The Dutch-CIA intelligence liaison ”

Peer Henrik Hansen, Cold War Museum , Denmark

“Cooperation, complications and covert operations: CIA and Danish Intelligence, 1946-63”

Stefania Paladini, Coventry University

“Viewed by the Allies: Italy and the CIA”



11.30-1.15 Conference

Suite 3

Panel 2c: The CIA and American Faction and Fiction and the Press

Chair/Discussant: Professor Wesley Wark, University of Toronto

Professor Fred Hitz, University of Virginia

"The Myths and Reality of Espionage”

Professor Jonathan Nashel, University of South Bend , Indiana

“Ian Fleming and Allen Dulles: Facts, Fictions, and Empires”

Professor Richard J. Aldrich, University of Warwick

"Renegades and Outriders: The CIA and Journalism"



1.15 – 2.30 Banqueting Suite

Lunch



2.30-3.30 Conference Theatre

Keynote Speech

Chair: Professor Shearer West, Director of Research, Arts and Humanities Research Council

Professor Robert Jervis, Columbia University

"Why the CIA Doesn't Do Better"



3.30-3.45: Banqueting Suite

Tea and coffee available



3.45 -5.30 Conference

Suite 1

Panel 3a: The CIA, declassification, and the Foreign Relations of the United States series

Chair: Professor Richard Immerman, Temple University

Ted Keefer, former general editor of the Foreign Relations of the United States series, Office of the Historian, State Department

“The Foreign Relations series and secrecy”

Professor Robert J. McMahon, Mershon Center , Ohio State University

“The CIA and the FRUS series: the Indonesian case”

Dr Paul McGarr, University of Nottingham

“’Playing Games with History’: The State Department, the CIA, and the FRUS series”



3.45 -5.30 Conference

Suite 2

Panel 3b: Lost landscapes

Chair/Discussant: Dr Steve Hewitt, University of Birmingham

Dr Zakia Shiraz, University of Warwick

"White Out: The CIA and the Drugs Debate"

Dr Helen Laville, University of Birmingham

"Women and the CIA"

Dr Dominik Smyrgala, Faculty of International Relations

Collegium Civitas, Poland



“The CIA and Polish Cold War Film and Literature”



3.45 –5.30 Conference

Suite 3

Panel 3c: The changing roles of the CIA and the globalisation of intelligence

Chair/Discussant: Professor Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham

Eugene S. Poteat, AFIO

“The Ever-Changing Role of the CIA: From OSS Covert Operations, to Analysis, to High-Tech and Back”

Dr Adam Svendsen, Research Consultant, International Relations and Strategic Studies

“The CIA and the Globalisation of Intelligence”



6.30 onwards Cash Bar opens in Atrium



7.30 Banqueting Suite

Conference Dinner (wine available throughout from bar and wine waiters on a cash basis)

After dinner speaker:

Professor Chris Andrew, Corpus Christi College , Cambridge

“'The CIA and US Intelligence: the view from Moscow and London ”

Main conference bar remains open until 1am

DAY 2: SATURDAY 30 APRIL 2011

8.30 onwards, Day 2 only delegates registration in Atrium

8.30 onwards Banqueting Suite

Tea and coffee available



9.00-10.30 Conference

Suite 1

Panel 4a: Cuba, the Bay of Pigs, and the CIA

Chair: Professor Randall B. Woods, University of Arkansas

Professor Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive

"Cuba, the Bay of Pigs and the CIA"

James Perry, Independent Scholar

‘The Necessary Failure: the Bay of Pigs in Global Context”



9.00-10.30 Conference

Suite 2

Panel 4b: The CIA, Memoirs and Secrecy

Chair/Discussant: Dr David Robarge, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence

Professor Mark Fenster



“Varieties of Deference to ‘Extraordinary Needs’: CIA and Secrecy in the Courts”

Dr Chris Moran, University of Warwick

"Memories and Memoirs"

John Hollister Hedley, former chairman of CIA Publications Review Board

“The CIA and the review of publications by CIA authors”



9.00-10.30 Conference

Suite 3

Panel 4c: The CIA and intelligence assessment in historical perspective

Chair: Ted Keefer, former general editor of the Foreign Relations of the United States series, Office of the Historian, State Department

Professor Len Scott, Aberystwyth University

“The CIA and the Cuban Missile Crisis”

Dr David Milne, University of East Anglia

“Excessive Optimism and the politicization of intelligence on Vietnam”

Dr Robert McNamara, University of Ulster

“US intelligence assessments and the ‘Unholy alliance’ of Southern Africa c. 1960-80”



10.30-10.45 Banqueting Suite

Tea and coffee available



10.45-12.15 Conference

Suite 1

Panel 5a: The CIA in the era of the Nixon administration

Chair: Professor Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive

Professor Randall B. Woods, University of Arkansas

“William E. Colby and the CIA”

Dr Kristian Gustafson, Brunel University

"Nixon, Kissinger, the CIA, and Chile"







10.45-12.15 Conference

Suite 2

Panel 5b: The CIA and the post-Cold War world

Chair/Discussant: Dr Steve Hewitt, University of Birmingham

Dr Stephen Marrin. Brunel University

"The CIA’s analysis in the post-Cold War World"

Dr Maria Ryan, University of Nottingham

"The IAEA and the Successful Denuclearization of Iraq: How could the CIA get it so wrong?”

Tony Field, University of Warwick

“The CIA and counter-terrorism intelligence”



10.45-12.15 Conference

Suite 3

Panel 5c: CIA Operations and the question of Covert Action

Chair/Discussant: Professor Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, University of Edinburgh

Dr David Robarge, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence

“CIA Covert Action and Democracy”

Dr David Ryan, University College , Cork

“Mining Nicaragua’s Harbours and Undermining CIA Recovery ”

John Prados, National Security Archive

“Whither Covert Operations?”



12.15-1.15 Banqueting Suite

Lunch





1.15-2.15 Conference Theatre

Plenary lecture

Chair: Professor Richard J. Aldrich, University of Warwick

Professor Wesley Wark, University of Toronto

“The Popular Culture of Espionage: From the Great White Spy Chief to the End of Faction"



2.15-3.45 Conference

Suite 1

Panel 6a: Counter-intelligence and the Soviet Bloc

Chair/Discussant: Nigel West

Hayden Peake

“On the Origins of Cold War Counterintelligence in the United States”

Professor Jonathan Haslam, University of Cambridge

“Soviet counter-intelligence against US operations in Moscow ”

Dr Paul Maddrell, Aberystwyth University

“The CIA and the GDR in the Cold War”



2.15-3.45 Conference

Suite 2

Panel 6b: Cultural encounters

Chair/Discussant: Professor Fred Hitz, University of Virginia

Dr Jason Harding, School of Advanced Study, University of London

“The CIA and Encounter magazine”

Professor Kathryn Olmsted, UC Davis

“The CIA and Conspiracy Theories”



2.15-3.45 Conference

Suite 3

Panel 6c: Technical Collection, and the National Estimating System

Chair/Discussant Cees Wiebes, NcTB Netherlands

Dr Matthew Aid, National Security Archive

“The CIA sigint programme and its relations with the NSA”

Chris Pocock, author and defense editor

“The Black Bats: Covert Air Operations over China from Taiwan, 1951-1969”

Dr Philip Davies, Brunel University

“The CIA versus the NIE”



3.45-4.15 Banqueting Suite

Tea and coffee available



4.15-5.45 Conference

Suite 1

Roundtable panel 7a: The CIA and declassification

Chair: Dr Matthew Aid, National Security Archive

Dr David Robarge, CIACenter for the Study of Intelligence

“Recent CIA initiatives in the field”

Professor Nick Cullather, Indiana University

Professor Mark Fenster, University of Florida

Professor Richard Immerman, Temple University

Dr Paul McGarr, University of Nottingham

Professor Robert J. McMahon, Mershon Center , Ohio State University



4.15-5.45 Conference

Suite 2

Roundtable panel 7b: The CIA and post-war American culture

Chair/Discussant: Professor Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham

Professor Fred Hitz, University of Virginia

Professor Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive

Professor Jonathan Nashel, University of South Bend , Indiana

Professor Wesley Wark, University of Toronto

Professor Hugh Wilford, California StateUniversity , Long Beach



DAY 3: SUNDAY 1 MAY

For those still with us, postgraduate sessions in US foreign relations, a buffet lunch, and a final lecture will be held in the Trent Building (the building with clock tower at the centre of the campus), rooms B40 and B46; the only access to the Trent Building on Sundays is via the Porter’s Lodge/Enquiry Office on Floor A (on the ground floor of the building on the east side of the quad).

9.30-10.00 Tea and coffee available, room B46

10.00-11.00 Postgraduate panel A on US foreign relations, sponsored by the Eccles Centre at the British Library, room B40

Chair: Professor Matthew Jones, University of Nottingham

“Same as the Old Boss? US Perceptions of the Soviet Leadership and the “New Course”, 1953”

Wes Ullrich, London School of Economics

“Rethinking America and Iran in the 1960s”

Ben Offiler, University of Nottingham

11.00-11.30 Tea and coffee available, room B46

11.30-12.30 Postgraduate panel B on US foreign relations, sponsored by the Eccles Centre at the British Library, room B40

Chair: Professor Matthew Jones, University of Nottingham

“’Bound to be stillborn”? American-Egyptian antebellum strategic dialogue and American policy during the fourth Arab-Israeli War, 1973”

Aidan Condron, Aberystwyth University

“Deeper and deeper in trouble on the intervention side”: Lyndon Johnson, Thomas Mann, and the Dominican Republic intervention of 1965”

Thomas Allcock, University of Cambridge

12.30 – 1.30pm Buffet lunch, room B46

1.30-2.30pm: Closing lecture, room B40

Professor Richard J. Aldrich, University of Warwick

“The History of GCHQ”

[thatsmystory]

Washington Spectator interview with Thomas Drake:

Barbara Koeppel: What did you tell the Saxby Chambliss Congressional subcommittee and the Congressional Joint Inquiry?

Thomas Drake: I can't say fully, because it's classified. But I showed that NSA knew a great deal about the 9/11 threats and Al Qaeda, electronically tracking various people and organizations for years -- since its role is to collect intelligence. The problem is, it wasn't sharing all of the data. If it had, other parts of government could have acted on it, and more than likely, NSA could have stopped, I say stopped 9/11. Later, it could have located Al Qaeda -- at the very time the U.S. was scouring Afghanistan.

It's true that there were systemic failures throughout the intelligence system, but NSA was a critical piece of it. I gave both committees prima facie evidence, with documents. One was an early 2001 NSA internal, detailed multi-year study of Al Qaeda and sympathetic groups' movements that revealed what NSA knew, could have done, and should have done. It was astonishingly well-analyzed current intelligence. Soon after 9/11, some NSA analysts called me about it. Why? Because they were pulling their hair out, knowing they had this information and they couldn't get NSA leadership to share the report with the rest of the intelligence community -- even though it's mandatory! It was actionable information. Remember the time period--we were in the early part of the war in Afghanistan. People needed to act on it, to unravel Al Qaeda networks.

But NSA leaders deliberately decided not to disseminate it. So the analysis -- about what it knew before and after 9/11 -- got buried very deeply, because it would really have made them look bad.

In fact, after the analysts called me to complain, I told my superior, Maureen Baginski, Director of Signals Intelligence (called SIGINT), who was the number-three person at NSA. But instead of acting on it, she got mad at me. She said, "Tom, I wish you'd never brought this to my attention."

BK: Why?

TD: Because she no longer had plausible deniability.

BK: And then?

TD: I said, Mo (that's what we called her), I'm bringing it to your attention because it's information we need to share. This is key to Al Qaeda's position. But she folded. She was going to protect the institution. Screw national security.

NSA Analyst: "We Could Have Prevented 9/11"

Hayden got promoted to DDNI then CIA Director. Baginski was promoted to head restructuring of the FBI's intelligence collection.

[JackRiddler]

Here's what I used as a resource set at my presentation last night (film screening of "Wikirebels")

www.Wikileaks.ch – Some Resources, July 17, 2012

SIPRNET, Secret Internet Protocol Router Network a.k.a. "Sippernet": Network used by U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State to transmit classified information up to and including information classified SECRET/NOFORN ("no foreign nationals"). Called "the DoD's classified version of the civilian Internet."
- Access to estimated 300,000 – 600,000 personnel at any given time.
- Cumulative access historically to 3 million persons.
- Also functions as a newswire, much of the material is background and color.
- Does not include classifications above SECRET.
- Allegedly accessed and copied by Bradley Manning and then leaked to Wikileaks. This is presumed to be the source of the following Wikileaks releases.

Iraq War Logs: 391,832 "significant event reports" from war and occupation in Iraq, Jan. 1, 2004-Dec. 31, 2009. http://wikileaks.org/irq/

Afghanistan War Logs: http://wikileaks.org/afg/

US Embassy Cables: 251,287 documents dating back to 1966 but mainly from the 2000s until February 2010 (a few weeks before Manning's arrest). "The largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain," http://wikileaks.ch/cablegate.html/

Files on all Guatanamo Prisoners: http://wikileaks.org/gitmo/

Full-text search of US Embassy Cables
http://www.cablegatesearch.net/

Articles and Books:

Jimmy Johnson: "Of Wikileaks and Literacy. The Secret Secret," Counterpunch, Dec. 9, 2010.
accessed at http://counterpunch.org/johnson12092010.html

Trevor Paglen: Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World, 2011, New York, www.paglen.com

Tim Shorrock, timshorrock.com, author of Spies for Hire, 2008, New York, investigation found that secret budget spending was up to $80 billion, 2/3 of which went to contractors. This growing world was then surveyed in great detail by:

Dana Priest and William M. Arkin: Top Secret America. Four-part Washington Post investigation and database of thousands of agencies and corporations, 2010-11.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11. Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, 2007.
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520258716

Ola Tunander, "Approaching the Dual State of the West," 2008 conference paper, later in Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty, 2009. http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Dem ... Deep_State

Take the CIA Professor's Ethics Test:
Olson, James M. (1941-), "Intelligence and the War on Terror: How Dirty Are We Willing to Get Our Hands?" SAIS Review, 28:1, Winter-Spring 2008, 37-45.
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=20974

[Wombaticus Rex]

FWIW, I've gotten a chance to play with both biometric security and facial recognition systems at work lately and I can confirm that there's no need for RFID anything for a basic FR system to do what Luther described, especially in a controlled environment like a school. Although ID photos get printed the size of a postage stamp, many of those cameras being used for ID photos today are exceptionally high definition and a school administration could roll out a total surveillance package without needing any additional setup (or permission) from their prisoners.

I mean....yeah, you know what I meant.

Anyways, at the end of the day it's fucking absurd how primitive "security" is as a field. All of this stuff is theater. Very few locations in the world are actually secure.

[JackRiddler]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/20/ ... hine/print

Weekend Edition April 20-22, 2012

The Help and the War Machine
Beltway Academics and the War Machine

by CHRISTIAN SORENSEN


The Pentagon rewards beltway academics in exchange for scholarly support. Dr. Michael O’Hanlon and Dr. Robert Kagan, of the Brookings Institution, exemplify this symbiotic aggrandizement of power.

O’Hanlon

On 26 March, Dr. Michael O’Hanlon discussed the United States’ war effort in Afghanistan with ISAF Commander General John Allen. Instead of analyzing the conflict critically, O’Hanlon deliberately framed the discussion within the confines of complacency and sycophancy.

Prior to hosting General Allen, O’Hanlon wrote “beneath the headlines, international forces are actually making substantial progress” in Afghanistan. Before commencing any discussion, O’Hanlon amended the sycophantic tone by physically applauding General Allen. Then O’Hanlon laid down the ground rules for the conversation, stating that he’s not “inclined to prognosticate about where debates may go in this town or in Kabul or Islamabad or such matters.” O’Hanlon also refused to “get into sensitive diplomatic issues.” Taken together, O’Hanlon parameters immunized General Allen from any earnest inquiry.

After laying out deferential ground rules, O’Hanlon lobbed soft questions to General Allen’s public relations wheelhouse. For instance, O’Hanlon asked about the relative security of Highway 1, a pertinent but delusive question given the greater elephants in the room. He then asked for General Allen to relate how US soldiers “feel” about the Afghan Security Forces, a backscratcher disguised as query. O’Hanlon also helped General Allen by asking if it’s fair to say that we “may have to wait a few more months of impressive combat by ISAF and the ANSF forces to show the enemy that there’s no other way to get a good outcome,” instead of grilling the man whose institution is ultimately responsible for massacre, the burning of holy books, the displacement of Afghan citizens, Karzai’s electoral fraud, indefinite imprisonment at Bagram’s Parwan Detention Facility, and mass civilian casualties throughout Afghanistan. Dr. O’Hanlon avoided in-depth discussion of these salient topics in favor of feeble catechism.

O’Hanlon adopted DOD-sanctioned nomenclature by inquiring if Kabul was assisting General Allen’s efforts to work with the “competent,” “not corrupt” Afghan commanders. Allen responded, “Where they are not corrupt… we can get some good battlefield performance out of them.” This phrasing provides tremendous insight into the mindset of General Allen and O’Hanlon. At the end of the day, Afghans are just tools. They’re no different than a Craftsman hex key, giving new meaning to the name Allen Wrench. That is the context within which Allen admitted to firing Afghan generals “in an expeditious manner,” one of whom “was fired I think by the time the sun went down that day.”

Ever true to sycophancy, O’Hanlon heaped praise upon General Allen, asserting that he “has proven through his running of Annapolis, other distinguished academic efforts, and his testimony on the Hill last week that he’s more than up to the challenge of discussing a very complex topic.” O’Hanlon pitched underhanded to Allen by stating that although some “are struck by the fact that these parts of the country are more dangerous than they were five, six years ago… I think I understand the answer, but I’d like to hear it from you.” O’Hanlon praised how Allen’s responses “really sketched [the answer] out beautifully.” In case more flattery was needed, O’Hanlon concluded: “again, congratulations, and I know you and your troopers [sic] have made huge headway in the south.” Unfortunately, sycophancy is only half of the story.

Dr. Michael O’Hanlon rolled out the complacent carpet when claiming that he had “reviewed the transcripts from last week and [General Allen’s] testimonies.” If O’Hanlon had indeed reviewed Allen’s March 20th testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, he’d have noticed some glaring issues. Firstly, when discussing Afghanistan’s tragic history, General Allen mentioned “Soviet occupation, civil war, [and] the darkness of the Taliban” without mentioning the United States’ equally tragic occupation of Afghanistan. Secondly, General Allen opened and closed his testimony by leaning on the troops and their memory. Finally, Allen employed sophisticated theatrics during his testimony, including weighty pauses, reading letters from dead soldiers, and quoting deferential Afghan military commanders. While the weakest of academics could have questioned General Allen about these discrepancies, O’Hanlon complacently avoided these topics.

When Allen mentioned securing “key lines of communication” in the north, O’Hanlon complacently let the General off the proverbial hook by not asking why such fundamentals are still unfinished ten years into the war. When General Allen justified progress through enumerating fewer “enemy-initiated attacks,” O’Hanlon didn’t inquire how the Pentagon quantifies or qualifies such a vague metric. When General Allen claimed that increased violence is “expected,” O’Hanlon didn’t press further, but rather accepted Allen’s excuse that areas of increased violence are due to a “different kind of insurgency in some respects.” When General Allen touted his “success” in the south and north, O’Hanlon didn’t ask why more than a third of Afghan civilians live below the international poverty line during ISAF’s nation-building watch.

In the spirit of complacency, O’Hanlon repeatedly allowed General Allen to get away with vague, corporate terminology: shaping the campaign, defeat mechanism, wild card scenario, operational profile, operational conditions, re-posturing, leveraging success, consolidating our hold, village stability operations platforms, bureaucratic traction, harmonizing the placement of forces, and multifaceted, robust counterinsurgency. Instead of academically questioning General Allen about anything of significance, O’Hanlon allowed Allen to weasel around touchy subjects through recourse to pre-packaged homeruns, like refusing to get “into too much specificity on operational detail.” Complacency was the word of the day.

Dr. Michael O’Hanlon’s discussion with General Allen exemplified how beltway academics and the Pentagon corroborate symbiotically. O’Hanlon didn’t academically dissect Allen’s contentions about the Pentagon’s strategic reasons behind occupying Afghanistan, global web of bases, intimacy with the corporate media, failure of generalship, war profiteering, the debilitating effect of night raids, or the hideous victims of United States’ wars. Instead of getting to the “heart of the matter,” the “important conversation” with General Allen was nothing more than a fantastic tribute to the Pentagon’s Potemkin village of “progress.”

Kagan

The Brookings Institution’s Dr. Robert Kagan also actively perpetuates the US war machine. Kagan argues that democracy, the free market, and peace among world powers are a direct result of the United States’ post-WWII leadership. Kagan’s vacuous arguments, which neglect the Pentagon’s support for dictatorships, the indigenous populations ravaged by the Pentagon’s protection of neoliberal economic policies, and the Pentagon’s tradition of interference in sovereign lands, illustrate how some DC academics and the Pentagon benefit symbiotically. In a fashion complementary to O’Hanlon, Kagan supports the Pentagon through complacent manipulation of financial data and sycophantic clouding of historical events.

Kagan argues complacently that cutting defense spending will not revive USA’s fiscal health. Deeming any cuts in military funding as “reckless,” Kagan inaccurately insists that withdrawing from Middle East locales and cutting “all the waste [the Defense Department] can find,” would still amount to less than a 10 percent decrease in overall defense spending. Ending Overseas Contingency Operations, which are projected at roughly $118 billion, would save roughly 16.7 percent of the total $707 billion Pentagon FY 2012 budget. Mathematics proves Kagan wrong.

Kagan demands that high levels of war funding continue, yet so many Pentagon contracts are extraneous or completely avoidable. For example, here are one day’s worth of Pentagon contracts from the month in which Kagan decried war spending cuts: Boeing received $94,985,863 for APACHE and CHINOOK weapon systems; Bristol Environmental & Engineering Services received $8,614,694 for hazardous waste cleanup in Alaska; Caterpillar received $6,771,854 for supplying equipment to Mubarak’s Egypt; Cazador Apparel received $11,626,483 for office furniture and equipment for BRAC 133; DRS C3 7 Aviation received $19,691,000 for surveillance hardware and services for Mubarak’s Egypt; EADS received $52,509,992 for UH-72A Helicopters, radio systems, and two engine filters; FLIR Systems received $15,892,846 for camera systems and operator classes; General Dynamics received $75,343,937 to reconfigure M1A2 tanks, for an M1A2S production facility in undemocratic Saudi Arabia, and for operations at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait; IAP Worldwide Services received $55,557,377 for transportation work in Kuwait and Iraq; Lockheed Martin received $18,708,099 for DDG 51 services; Marsh Creek received $10,363,735 for environmental cleanup in Alaska; Mission 1st Group received $3,000,000 for IT projects; N-Link received $6,751,326 for digital training facilities; PAE Government Services received $5,618,615 for equipment and support to the Afghan National Security Force; Science Applications International received $34,654,306 for operating a training center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, for airborne ISR, and for US Central Command ammunition stocks.

These contracts highlight many realities, all of which Kagan dodges. Should the Pentagon spend millions in one day on office furniture? Should the Pentagon have poisoned the environment in the first place, necessitating environmental remediation today? Should the Pentagon have supplied Mubarak’s Egypt and undemocratic nations like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia with materiel and weaponry? By writing well and invoking fear, Kagan stresses how frightful possibilities might occur if the Pentagon were to embrace fiscal responsibility. Clinging to dread, Kagan insists that the Pentagon’s military presence in “Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere make[s] it harder for [terrorists] to strike.” He again omits a sad reality: the Pentagon’s presence in each of these countries is the single greatest recruiting tool for those who resist the United States’ empire. By waging war around the world, the Pentagon feeds inflammatory rhetoric of its resisters.

In another act of clerical overindulgence, Kagan complacently praises the “financial benefits” of US military hegemony. Critical minds wonder, who has actually benefited? Certainly the military-industrial-congressional complex profits directly. While retired four-star generals play golf, consult for Lockheed-Martin part-time, and collect a hefty retirement pension, global citizens pay for the Pentagon’s transgressions with blood, sweat, and tears. Inequality doesn’t begin to describe the “financial benefits” that transpire.

Kagan flatters the Pentagon by never mentioning civilian casualties. Unfortunately for all, NATO forces accounted for 440 Afghan civilian deaths alone in the year 2010 and 410 in 2011. These figures exclude the 168 children who have died in CIA drone strikes across the border in Pakistan. US officials can apologize profusely for their errors, but they never consider the potency of revenge in Afghan culture. Even Kagan would fight back if a JDAM, AGM-114, or night raid wiped out his family. If Pentagon officials were actually serious about implementing their glorified counter-insurgency doctrine (FM 3-24), they would study Afghanistan’s history closely and demand that all commanders consider the prospect of revenge when pursuing any “intelligence” lead. “Promising” is how Pentagon officials describe the fact that the majority of civilian deaths are attributable to Taliban action. However, having occupied Afghanistan for over a decade, Pentagon commanders and policy-makers are responsible for all civilian deaths, which Kagan obsequiously avoids en route to perpetuating the Pentagon’s wars of aggression.

Offering “offshore balancing” as the only strategy that could accompany Pentagon budget cuts, Kagan demonstrates a sycophantic aspiration to remain within the confines of US imperialism. Operating under an all-or-nothing rubric, he never considers that a partial withdrawal would be appropriate in many circumstances. For instance, the Pentagon’s presence in Germany, comprising dozens of separate installations, can be pared down without compromising “national security,” a frequently invoked but highly vague term. War would not break out with a reduction in the number of US facilities across Europe. One can even argue that wars occur because of, not despite, the presence of the United States’ war machine.

Kagan’s concessions are noteworthy. He confesses that USA has been engaged in combat roughly 47 percent of the time during the last 112 years. He further admits that the US military has intervened abroad an astounding 70 percent of the time since the end of the Cold War. Kagan concedes that “many Americans are unhappy with the on-going warfare in Afghanistan… and that, if asked, a majority would say the United States should intervene less frequently in foreign nations.” Yet Congressional and military policy-makers, by Kagan’s own admission, do not listen to the voice of the US citizenry. Many thanks for Kagan’s honesty about our broken democracy. Kagan accurately asserts that addressing entitlement spending helps achieve fiscal responsibility, but confronting entitlements doesn’t mean that the Pentagon can continue to bathe in a $700 billion budget or that the policies behind imperial overreach can continue unbridled.

The complacency and sycophantic stances adopted by Dr. Michael O’Hanlon and Dr. Robert Kagan shed light on a major force in post-9/11 USA. Like children obsessed with toy soldiers or obese citizens unfit for service, beltway academics fail to see how their personal veneration of USA’s warfare distorts public perception of foreign policy. Democrats and Republicans, unable to think independently, worship military power, passively contort support our troops into support the Pentagon, and neglect to dissent against imperial wars. As a result, military generals are immune from public scrutiny, the Pentagon’s wars continue unabated, and war funding continues to monopolize the federal government’s discretionary budget. In sum, professional profit, bolstered by personal veneration of the troops, actively perpetuates the Pentagon’s imperial reach. Throughout it all, O’Hanlon and Kagan deliberately miss the point: Tough love is the best love, and a tight leash on the Pentagon is better than no leash.

In the End

The formula is simple. As exemplified by Dr. Michael O’Hanlon and Dr. Robert Kagan, many beltway academics receive complete support from the Pentagon’s fiscal and political weight in exchange for aiding its war narratives. O’Hanlon and Kagan exemplify the symbiotic power synergy between beltway academics and the Pentagon. Pentagon generals sustain O’Hanlon’s academic career with interviews and elite access to DOD officials (O’Hanlon has traveled to Afghanistan eight times). President Obama himself consecrates and promotes Kagan’s myths in exchange for unconditional advocacy of United States military supremacy and support of Obama’s Afghanistan War. In essence, Executive and military blessings reward lies. Since 11 September 2001, “O’Hanlon has appeared on television or spoken on the radio about 2,000 times” and Kagan cozied up to John McCain, wrote four books about US power, and was ranked one of the world’s Top 20 Public Intellectuals. By saddling up to the war machine and analyzing the Pentagon’s wars in a positive light, Kagan and O’Hanlon benefit professionally. In turn, the Pentagon gains through receiving unconditional support from academics at the world’s premier think-tank. And the narrative of “progress” in Afghanistan is never questioned.

Kagan touts the “benefits” of US power and O’Hanlon insists that persistence in Afghanistan is crucial, since “this part of the world offers a choice of generally mediocre options [for the United States].” True to form, Kagan and O’Hanlon attribute any defect to the flaws inherent in Afghanistan’s “part of the world,” not to US imperialism. Neither acknowledges that the United States’ economy, based so heavily on military spending, is geared towards, and concordantly pulled in favor of, military pursuits. Less than a month after O’Hanlon and Kagan touted the benefits of US power, General Allen’s forces faced a strong “spring offensive.” On the same day, the Pentagon doled out almost $7 billion in weapons contracts. Unfortunately, many US citizens are content treading this interminable warpath. We romanticize military service while beltway academics and Pentagon officials pursue invariably their own priorities, incongruent with the greater good. The result of our passivity is grim, as Thoreau articulates:

A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is that you may see a file of soldiers… marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences… Now, what are they? Men at all, or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?

Today, a variety of US citizens idle. They include the mid-level bureaucrat at Raytheon, the soccer dad who spouts bumper-sticker slogans, and the intelligence analyst who disagrees with the unconstitutionality of her work but keeps quiet because her job provides her with a comfortable lifestyle in the Baltimore suburbs. Similar to Thoreau’s days, many US citizens wait for others to remedy the evil. Reform can be achieved, but obstacles loom in the form of those who continually yield to the broken US political process, despite disagreeing with its imperial overreach. These citizens embody resounding disappointment and prioritize order instead of accountability; they prefer “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” As a result, they allow the Pentagon to abuse its power with full support of beltway academics. This must change.


Christian Sorensen is an Arabic-English translator and an American military veteran.

[JackRiddler]

Stealing from MayDay's Trapwire thread:

http://www.businessinsider.com/trapwire ... z23Hv98Ttr

The U.S. cable networks won't be covering this one tonight (not accurately, anyway), but Trapwire is making the rounds on social media today—it reportedly became a Trending hashtag on Twitter earlier in the day.

Trapwire is the name of a program revealed in the latest Wikileaks bonanza—it is the mother of all leaks, by the way. Trapwire would make something like disclosure of UFO contact or imminent failure of a major U.S. bank fairly boring news by comparison.

And someone out there seems to be quite disappointed that word is getting out so swiftly; the Wikileaks web site is reportedly sustaining 10GB worth of DDoS attacks each second, which is massive.

Anyway, here's what Trapwire is, according to Russian-state owned media network RT (apologies for citing "foreign media"... if we had a free press, I'd be citing something published here by an American media conglomerate): "Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology—and have installed it across the U.S. under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community.

The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented. The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing."

So: those spooky new "circular" dark globe cameras installed in your neighborhood park, town, or city—they aren't just passively monitoring. They're plugged into Trapwire and they are potentially monitoring every single person via facial recognition.

In related news, the Obama administration is fighting in federal court this week for the ability to imprison American citizens under NDAA's indefinite detention provisions—and anyone else—without charge or trial, on suspicion alone.

So we have a widespread network of surveillance cameras across America monitoring us and reporting suspicious activity back to a centralized analysis center, mixed in with the ability to imprison people via military force on the basis of suspicious activity alone. I don't see how that could possibly go wrong. Nope, not at all. We all know the government, and algorithmic computer programs, never make mistakes.

Here's what is also so disturbing about this whole NDAA business, according to Tangerine Bolen's piece in the Guardian: "This past week's hearing was even more terrifying. Government attorneys again, in this hearing, presented no evidence to support their position and brought forth no witnesses. Most incredibly, Obama's attorneys refused to assure the court, when questioned, that the NDAA's section 1021 – the provision that permits reporters and others who have not committed crimes to be detained without trial – has not been applied by the U.S. government anywhere in the worldafter Judge Forrest's injunction. In other words, they were telling a U.S. federal judge that they could not, or would not, state whether Obama's government had complied with the legal injunction that she had laid down before them. To this, Judge Forrest responded that if the provision had indeed been applied, the United States government would be in contempt of court."

If none of this bothers you, please don't follow me on Twitter, because nothing I report on will be of interest to you. Go back to watching the television news network of your choice, where you will hear about Romney's latest campaign ads, and whether Obamacare will increase the cost of delivery pizza by 14 to 16 cents.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/trapwire ... z23Mv4nmue


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/trapwire ... z23MuyIOke

Today I was joking "Think how dangerous Anonymous would be if they read books" -- I've been poring though Timothy Shorrock's "Spies for Hire" for a second round of note-taking and followup Googleage, and so much of what has been "outed" via email leaks was already reported on by journalists like Tim. These for-profit operations are pathologically compelled to spill classified details in the name of attracting investors. TrapWire was actually not a secret prior to these email leaks.

It is, however, a fascinating slice of what Total Information Awareness looks like when the private sector takes that project on. There are many other parallel structures in the works -- have been since the days of the Western Goals Foundation stealing LAPD records in rented trailers -- but I think that recent coverage of this TrapWire is overall a big win. As always, Lamestream Liberal Media has been mighty quiet, eh?

http://storify.com/bendoernberg/test-post

And also:

From
http://truthaction.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 9&start=45

There really needs to be a mass movement against the surveillance state.

Anything less will be inadequate, pathetic and suicidal.

There's several reasons why it's not happening. Among them are:

- Research has demonstrated people behave differently when they know they are being watched. Hence, Surveillance breeds docility.
- People concerned about privacy are concerned about losing their privacy fighting against privacy invasion
- Most people don't have the slightest clue about IT, this includes young people who use Facebook and Twitter and are addicted to their smartphones.
- Young people have been raised the last ten years without any sense of liberty, privacy or justice to conserve. In other words: the next generation has been successfully indoctrinated to embrace the surveillance state, and will at best be indifferent to it. Let's call it the generational murder of the concept of privacy.
- Creeping normalcy / shifting baseline; the "step-by-step" concept spreading out the adverse effects of moral outrage about erosion of privacy and civil liberties has been quite successful.
- Popularization of voluntary self-disclosure and surrender of privacy through Facebook, Twitter, et cetera; using egocentrism as a stimulus.
- Popularization, desensitization and alteration of perception of privacy invasion through mainstream media entertainment.

Dutch media tycoon John de Mol created and introduced the world to 'Big Brother'.. De Mol's recent project, exploiting the suffering of foster children for entertainment, was reluctantly canceled by him after public outcry. One of his pupils, former soap actor Reinout Oerlemans, was recently embroiled in a privacy scandal involving hidden cameras in an emergency room.

De Mol and his many imitators have succeeded in defeating Orwell by associating "Big Brother" with "fun".

For anti-surveillance activism to work, people need to overcome their fear, their ignorance and their indifference, and they need to believe that totalitarian policies which have been implemented really are reversible if we really want to. They also need to realize that the surveillance apparatus is realized in a step-by-step fashion and needs to be recognized as such. The easily recognizable 'sudden transition' is never going to come. I would use the boiling frogs analogy if it was biologically accurate, unfortunately it isn't.

The awareness that the surveillance state surveils thoughts and expressions against it inhibits such thoughts and expressions, and will deter some people from expressing their feelings in this thread, knowing they might be swept up by some automatic natural language processing web spider (similar to Googlebot) designed to scan forums and blogs for subversive "anti-government", and thus potentially "threatening" sentiments, even though they cannot grasp the technical intricacies of such a surveillance tool. In fact, not knowing or not fully understanding might cause people to attribute almost omniscient powers to the state. This is irrational: in some ways, while growing its surveillance apparatus, the state is struggling to maintain it like any other IT system.

A Dutch parliamentarian standing up for privacy, Sophie in 't Veld was targeted by the US, put on one of those murky "threat lists" and they still refuse to say why.

And, of course we know Jon Gold and Cindy Sheehan were under direct surveillance too for their anti-war activism.

I would say overcoming fear of the current, fully operational (and rapidly growing) surveillance system is the first and most important step. The power of example helps. Ignorance and indifference are much harder to overcome, let alone collaboration.

Most of all, people must be taught to resist the addiction to a risk-free society. Risk is part of life. If a large terrorist attack happens tomorrow which could have been prevented through surveillance, and it happens because we have no surveillance, you must be willing to morally accept this possibility. This is the essence of Benjamin Franklin's infamous quote about freedom and security: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

... And ironically, explained by one of Niven's laws:

F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niven%27s_Laws

When I say ironic, I mean ironic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Nive ... nvolvement

[JackRiddler]

Totally relevant from the ongoing "What is fascism?" thread. (Starts in response to the statement from c2w? that Ron Paul is an exponent of "neo-fascism," term meant to refer to overt ideological revivals of fascism - as opposed to "post-fascism," a term meant to refer to the selective use within the state and power elite of classically fascist techniques and lessons learned, regardless of overt ideology.)

A neo-confederate (like Paul) is certainly on friendly terms with neo-fascists, if we should even make a distinction between them; and yet at the same time Ron Paul also stands in formal opposition to the growth within the official institutions of what I've been terming post-fascism, which is an equal if not far greater concern. (No defender of Paul, yet I find it hard to see how the present-day Republican leadership differs from him in any substantive way, except for their fanatically enthusiastic support of imperialism, new foreign wars and the drug war with its attendant mass imprisonment.)

We talk as though the US is separable from its global empire, when even the domestic police forces now operate around the globe, and thousands of fusion centers and joint task forces have been created in a push to integrate the military and imperial agencies with federal, local and state police forces, private security contractors and the rest of the big corporations within a single "security" framework. You all know the ideal. Whether it ever works perfectly or not, they want one web of finely-tuned surveillance, pre-crime detection and enforcement, global and domestic, legal and extralegal, overt and covert, online and on the street.

The NYPD, for example, just announced the opening of a Microsoft-designed joint surveillance center to receive and make sense of the video feeds from thousands of cameras downtown, as well as countless other data feeds. Actually this had already been running for months and now it's growing. Representatives from the Wall Street banks, Pfizer and the Federal Reserve have desks within the same large, open office that you have to think includes or at least has hotlines to OEM, FEMA, the various DOJ agencies, FBI, Homeland-ICE and, surely, people from CIA, the military branches and national guard. The model is for sale to other cities, at a profit for New York - good news everyone, city revenues! That's how this innovation is being marketed by the mayor. (We can only hope this mechanized version of the biblical Beast runs on Windows - ha ha, let's have a bitter laugh.) The cutting edge technocratically has been developed within the government, driven by programs like the drug war, the crackdown on immigration (we've seen record-setting detention and deportation levels in the last couple of years) and the "war on terror," which we've seen is a war on anything that might be designated as such, at the discretion of the sovereign and his agents. If the president now admits to having a kill list, sooner or later that's going to turn into a phone book.

Capitalism and the national security cult have accomplished this, without need of neo-fascist ideology (though there's plenty that rhymes with it in the Great American discourse). If the feared ideological right-wing extremists who are supposed to be the Only Acknowledgeable Fascists take the government over, they'll have at their disposal a bigger, more rationalized and better-oiled machinery of repression than ever, honed through decades of development and plenty of practice within enclaves as varied as Baghdad, South Central, and New Zealand (where the FBI had free rein to arrest Kim Dotcom), and seething with resentment at freeloaders and America haters. The incoming "squadristi" are likely to encounter plenty of friends and fellow travelers on the inside! Fascism germinates within the state and military long before the declared fascists take command of it - as was the case in late Weimar Germany, which I mentioned above.

You know what? We're not "there" yet - that's why it so important to avoid denial about where we're heading, get the word out, and prepare for mass protest on a general strike level - not just to grow rutabagas on the balcony, essential as that will also prove.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3000272/nypd ... ate-monito



NYPD, Microsoft Launch All-Seeing "Domain Awareness System" With Real-Time CCTV, License Plate Monitoring [Updated]

By Neal Ungerleider

August 8, 2012

The New York Police Department has a new terrorism detection system that will also generate profit for the city.

The New York Police Department is embracing online surveillance in a wide-eyed way. Representatives from Microsoft and the NYPD announced the launch of their new Domain Awareness System (DAS) at a Lower Manhattan press conference today. Using DAS, police are able to monitor thousands of CCTV cameras around the five boroughs, scan license plates, find out the kind of radiation cars are emitting, and extrapolate info on criminal and terrorism suspects from dozens of criminal databases ... all in near-real time.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly first announced that Microsoft had the NYPD's Domain Awareness System under development at the Aspen Security Forum in July. Microsoft has quietly become one of the world's largest providers of integrated intelligence solutions for police departments and security agencies. Although DAS is officially being touted as an anti-terrorism solution, it will also give the NYPD access to technologies that—depending on the individual's perspectives—veer on science fiction or Big Brother to combat street crime. The City of New York and Microsoft will be licensing DAS out to other cities; according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City's government will take a 30% cut of any profits. "Citizens do not like higher taxes, so we will (find other revenue outlets)," said Bloomberg. Bloomberg continued that "I hope Microsoft sells a lot of copies of this system, because 30% of the profits will go to us."

According to publicly available documents, the system will collect and archive data from thousands of NYPD- and private-operated CCTV cameras in New York City, integrate license plate readers, and instantly compare data from multiple non-NYPD intelligence databases. Facial recognition technology is not utilized and only public areas will be monitored, officials say. Monitoring will take place 24 hours a day, seven days a week at a specialized location in Lower Manhattan. Video will be held for 30 days and then deleted unless the NYPD chooses to archive it. Metadata and license plate info collected by DAS will be retained for five years, and unspecified “environmental data” will be stored indefinitely.

Cameras are primarily deployed in the Financial District, Midtown Manhattan, and at strategic transportation points like bridges and tunnels. In addition, radiation detectors capable of identifying radiation contamination from chemotherapy, x-rays, medication, industrial uses, and terrorism will also be deployed.

Although NYPD documents indicate that the system is specifically designed for anti-terrorism operations, any incidental data it collects “for a legitimate law enforcement or public safety purpose” by DAS can be utilized by the police department. The NYPD will also share data and video with third parties not limited to law enforcement if either a subpoena or memorandum of understanding exists. The DAS system is headquartered in a lower Manhattan office tower in a command-and-control center staffed around the clock by both New York police and "private stakeholders." When this reporter visited, seats were clearly designated with signs for organizations such as the Federal Reserve, the Bank of New York, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, and CitiGroup.

The system also allows deep, granular analysis of crime patterns in real time. Information about suspects can also be quickly called up. At a press conference, Microsoft's Jennifer Tisch showed how integrated geographic information systems could display layers of real-time crime analysis for both misdemeanors and felonies. In addition, real-time access to multiple databases belonging to the NYC and other organizations can bring up a massive personal history--including both criminal and public domain information--from any suspect in a matter of seconds. [Please Note: "Suspect" meaning - anyone. - NL]

At the Aspen Conference, Kelly praised DAS as a next-generation law enforcement tool. Civil libertarians, however, are concerned. The NYPD has been at the center of recent controversies involving civil rights and surveillance; in July, a 911 call revealing an NYPD anti-terrorism safe house in New Jersey was released. The safe house in the college town of New Brunswick was monitoring Muslim-American college students; the safe house/apartment's landlord feared the NYPD apartment might have been harboring terrorists.

In response to a question about civil liberties at the press conference, Bloomberg and Kelly noted that similar systems have been used in the private sector for years--and that mobile phone companies track the intimate, granular details of users' locations. [Note: Well there you go! Done. Justified! - NL]

Similar systems have already been deployed in Baltimore and the United Kingdom. However, the NYPD DAS system is one of the largest in scale that has been publicly announced.


For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twitter. Find Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article, on Twitter and Google+.

[Image: JordiDelgado via Shutterstock]

The nearest analogue to this prior to 9/11, presumably far more primitive, was probably at WTC 7, which was home to OEM, CIA, DoD, IRS and SEC, as well as some big banks (Standard Chartered and Salomon Brothers and I've wondered if the biggest CIA station in the US outside Washington, according to NYT, was in floors that officially belonged to either of them. I also wonder if that's where this thing is now?)

[JackRiddler]

wow

http://mathbabe.org/2012/08/25/nsa-mathematicians/

NSA mathematicians

August 25, 2012 Cathy O'Neil, mathbabe 16 comments


When I was a promising young mathematician in college, I met someone from the NSA who tried to recruit me to work for the spooks in the summer. Actually, “met someone” is misleading- he located me after I had won a prize.

I didn’t know what to think, so I accepted his invitation to visit the institute, which was in La Jolla, in Southern California (I went to UC Berkeley so it wasn’t a big trip).

When I got to the building, since I didn’t have clearance, everybody had to stop working the whole time I was there. It wasn’t enough to clean their whiteboards, one of them explained, they had to wash them down with that whiteboard spray stuff, because if you look at a just-erased whiteboard in a certain way you can decipher what had been written on it.

I met a bunch of people, maybe 6 or 7. They all told me how nice it was to work there, how the weather was beautiful, how the math problems were interesting. It was strangely consistent, but who knows, perhaps also true.

One thing I’d already learned before coming is that there are many layers of work that happen before the math people in La Jolla are given problems to do. First, the actual problem is chosen, then the “math” of the problem is extracted from the problem, and third it’s cleansed so that nobody can tell what the original application is.

Knowing this (and I was never contradicted when I explained that process), I asked each of them the same question: how do you feel about the fact that you don’t know what problem you’re actually solving?

Out of the 6 or 7 people I met, everyone but one person responded along the lines, “I believe everything the United States Government does is good.” The last guy said, “yeah, that bothers me. I am honestly seriously considering leaving.”

Needless to say, I didn’t take the job. I wasn’t yet a major league skeptic, but I was skeptical enough to realize I could not survive in such an environment, with colleagues that oblivious. They also mentioned that I’d have to stop dating my Czech boyfriend and that I’d need to submit information about all my roommates for the past 10 years, which was uber creepy.

Nowadays I hear estimates that 600 mathematicians work at the NSA, and of course many more stream through during the summer when school’s not in session, both at La Jolla and Princeton. Somehow they don’t mind not knowing how their work actually gets used. I’m not sure how that’s possible but it clearly is.

This mindset came back to me, and not in a good way, when I read this opinion piece and watched this video in the New York Times a couple of days ago.

William Binney, a mathematician, was working on Soviet Union spying software that got converted to domestic spying after 9/11. In other words, they used his foreign spying algorithm on a new data source, namely American citizen’s raw data. He objected to that, so strongly that he’s come out against it publicly.

The big surprise is how come they let him know what they were actually up to. My guess is he was high enough up the chain that they thought he’d be okay with it – he’d been there 32 years, and I guess he was considered an insider.

In any case, watch the video: this is a courageous man. The FBI came into his house with guns drawn to intimidate him against his whistleblowing activities and yet he hasn’t been cowed. Indeed, after getting dressed (he was coming out of the shower when they exploded into his house), he explained to them the crimes of George Bush and Dick Cheney on his back porch.

As he explains, ”the purpose is to monitor what people are doing”. He explains how people’s social media data and other kinds of data are linked over domains and over time to build profiles of Americans over time: “you have 10 years of their life that you can lay out in a timeline, that involves anybody in the country”.

Describing the dangers of this program, Binney was extremely articulate:

“The danger here is that we could fall into a totalitarian state like East Germany”

“We can’t have secret interpretations of laws and run them in secret and not tell anybody. We can’t make up kill lists and not tell anybody what the criterion is for being on the kill list”

“Just because we call ourselves a democracy doesn’t mean we will stay that way.”

There you have it. The good news is that that guy is no longer helping the NSA do their thing.

But the bad news is, plenty of mathematicians still are. And if you want to find a community more trusting and loyal than mathematicians, I think you’d have to go to a kindergarten somewhere. Not to mention the fact that, as I described above, the problems are intentionally cleaned to look innocuous.

Another example, possibly the most important one of all, of mathematics being manipulated to potentially evil ends. We will have trouble proving actual evil consequences, of course, since there’s no transparency. The only update we will get is via the next whistleblower who can handle guns pointed at him as he leaves his shower.

[DrEvil]

FWIW, I've gotten a chance to play with both biometric security and facial recognition systems at work lately and I can confirm that there's no need for RFID anything for a basic FR system to do what Luther described, especially in a controlled environment like a school. Although ID photos get printed the size of a postage stamp, many of those cameras being used for ID photos today are exceptionally high definition and a school administration could roll out a total surveillance package without needing any additional setup (or permission) from their prisoners.

Amen to that. Facial recognition software is a lot more widespread than I think most people realize. Both Facebook and Google use it, and have for years (Facebook - to tag people in photos, Google - image search), and it must be getting close to 10 years since they set up facial recognition cameras at all the entrances to the Super Bowl.
And for anyone getting a passport the last few years, I'm sure you got the list of "approved" looks for your photo. White shirt, bland background, no hair in face etc. All of that serves one single purpose - facial recognition. Every time someone crosses the border they have their picture taken and compared to the biometric data stored in the passport (not sure if they compare pictures directly or if the biometric measurements are stored in the RFID chip).

Btw: RFID chips don't like microwaves. About 10 seconds should do it.

[JackRiddler]

This needs a religious exception? WTF?!

Texas, but inevitably everywhere?

See link for photos.

http://www.spychips.com/school/Northsid ... eport.html

Showdown in San Antonio

Protesters Rally Around Student Who Refuses to Wear Tracking Beacon

Andrea Hernandez found an outpouring of support when she and her father Steve showed up for the Northside Independent School District (NISD) Board meeting August 28th. The San Antonio area High School honor student has refused to wear a school mandated RFID tracking beacon around her neck because doing so conflicts with her religious beliefs.


Andrea Hernandez shares why she and other students at Jay High School refuse to wear RFID tracking beacons around their necks.

Her father and mother support her decision, but have been on edge ever since Andrea took her stand, worrying the school will try to expel her or punish her.

Click here to learn more about Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and why leading privacy and civil liberties organizations have joined with us to oppose the use of the technology in schools.

Members of CASPIAN, We Are Change San Antonio, We Are Change Texas Hill Country, and other concerned citizens rallied around Andrea in a pre-meeting protest outside the NISD school administration building in San Antonio, Texas. After the protest over two dozen supporters packed the board meeting room, and several addressed the school board.

Protest

The NISD Board heard nearly an hour of testimony from Andrea, Andrea's father, and other citizens who shared the downsides of RFID tracking technology. Speakers expressed heightened concern about student safety since the microchip devices chosen by the district actively beam a unique identification number up to 70 feet, which could put students at risk from stalkers and pedophiles. The devices are always "on," even when students leave campus.

Steve talks to the board
Andrea's father, Steven Hernandez, addresses the school board

Andrea and her father are hoping and praying the NISD board took their concerns seriously and will respect her right to attend school "spychip free." While this is a very difficult time for the teen and her family, the good news is that the ACLU of Texas has stepped in to help them assert their rights.

Northside ISD's Jay High School and Jones Middle School began requiring students to wear Student ID badges equipped with RFID tracking chips when school started August 27. The district said it decided to trial the technology to boost revenues lost due to absences.

Reaction to the school mandate was swift and drew protesters from as far away as Austin and Dallas on the first day of school.

The Hernandez family is standing firm, and so are we. Many thanks to everyone who has worked both near and far to decry RFID tracking schemes that threaten the privacy and civil liberties of all of us, including our nation's kids.

Special thanks to We Are Change San Antonio, We Are Change Texas Hill Country, and CASPIAN's new Membership & Protest Coordinator Katie Deolloz for coordinating these events and helping send a strong message to NISD and any other school districts contemplating an RFID tracking agenda.

[JackRiddler]

Crosspost thanks to Spiro, here: posting.php?mode=quote&f=8&p=487603

In the following article, Glenn Greenwald makes mention of the lack of media coverage of the last two Senate votes closing this deal. I'll admit to being jaded enough to do little more than sigh, it is, after all, but an extension of more of the same. I was not surprised by the vote tally or the outcome. But I was surprised that nobody had posted anything about it here. It's not the character of the RI collective to wait, assuming someone else will get to it first. So apologies if this is covered elsewhere.

Does it matter? They're spying either way, right? Is this just one great big mindfuck?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/fisa-feinstein-obama-democrats-eavesdropping
GOP and Feinstein join to fulfill Obama's demand for renewed warrantless eavesdropping
The California Democrat's disgusting rhetoric recalls the worst of Dick Cheney while advancing Obama's agenda
Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 December 2012 12.50 GMT

To this day, many people identify mid-2008 as the time they realized what type of politician Barack Obama actually is. Six months before, when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster "any bill" that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.

But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that - the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 - and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself. That blatant, unblinking violation of his own clear promise - actively supporting a bill he had sworn months earlier he would block from a vote - caused a serious rift even in the middle of an election year between Obama and his own supporters.

Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.

In doing so, the new 2008 law gutted the 30-year-old FISA statute that had been enacted to prevent the decades of severe spying abuses discovered by the mid-1970s Church Committee: by simply barring the government from eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without first obtaining a warrant from a court. Worst of all, the 2008 law legalized most of what Democrats had spent years pretending was such a scandal: the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program secretly implemented by George Bush after the 9/11 attack. In other words, the warrantless eavesdropping "scandal" that led to a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times reporters who revealed it ended not with investigations or prosecutions for those who illegally spied on Americans, but with the Congressional GOP joining with key Democrats (including Obama) to legalize most of what Bush and Cheney had done. Ever since, the Obama DOJ has invoked secrecy and standing doctrines to prevent any courts from ruling on whether the warrantless eavesdropping powers granted by the 2008 law violate the Constitution.

The 2008 FISA law provided that it would expire in four years unless renewed. Yesterday, the Senate debated its renewal. Several Senators - Democrats Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon along with Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul - each attempted to attach amendments to the law simply to provide some modest amounts of transparency and oversight to ensure that the government's warrantless eavesdropping powers were constrained and checked from abuse.

Just consider how modest these amendments were. Along with Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, Sen. Wyden has spent two years warning Americans that the government's eavesdropping powers are being interpreted (by secret court decisions and the Executive Branch) far more broadly than they would ever suspect, and that, as a result, these eavesdropping powers are being applied far more invasively and extensively than is commonly understood.

As a result, Wyden yesterday had two amendments: one that would simply require the NSA to give a general estimate of how many Americans are having their communications intercepted under this law (information the NSA has steadfastly refused to provide), and another which would state that the NSA is barred from eavesdropping on Americans on US soil without a warrant. Merkley's amendment would compel the public release of secret judicial rulings from the FISA court which purport to interpret the scope of the eavesdropping law on the ground that "secret law is inconsistent with democratic governance"; the Obama administration has refused to release a single such opinion even though the court, "on at least one occasion", found that the government was violating the Fourth Amendment in how it was using the law to eavesdrop on Americans.

But the Obama White House opposed all amendments, demanding a "clean" renewal of the law without any oversight or transparency reforms. Earlier this month, the GOP-led House complied by passing a reform-free version of the law's renewal, and sent the bill Obama wanted to the Senate, where it was debated yesterday afternoon.

The Democratic Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, took the lead in attacking Wyden, Merkley, Udall and Paul with the most foul Cheneyite accusations, and demanded renewal of the FISA law without any reforms. And then predictably, in virtually identical 37-54 votes, Feinstein and her conservative-Democratic comrades joined with virtually the entire GOP caucus (except for three Senators: Paul, Mike Lee and Dean Heller) to reject each one of the proposed amendments and thus give Obama exactly what he demanded: reform-free renewal of the law (while a few Democratic Senators have displayed genuine, sustained commitment to these issues, most Democrats who voted against FISA renewal yesterday did so symbolically and half-heartedly, knowing and not caring that they would lose as evidenced by the lack of an attempted filibuster).

In other words, Obama successfully relied on Senate Republicans (the ones his supporters depict as the Root of All Evil) along with a dozen of the most militaristic Democrats to ensure that he can continue to eavesdrop on Americans without any warrants, transparency or real oversight. That's the standard coalition that has spent the last four years extending Bush/Cheney theories, eroding core liberties and entrenching endless militarism: Obama + the GOP caucus + Feinstein-type Democrats. As Michelle Richardson, the ACLU's legislative counsel, put it to the Huffington Post: "I bet [Bush] is laughing his ass off."

But what's most remarkable here is not so much what happened but how it happened. When Obama voted in 2008 to massively increase the government's warrantless eavesdropping powers, I so vividly recall his supporters insisting that he was only doing this because he wanted to win the election, and then would get into power and fix these abuses by reversing them. Yes, there were actually large numbers of people who believed this. And they were encouraged to believe this by Obama himself, who, in explaining his 2008 vote, said things like this:

"I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. . . .

I do so [vote for the FISA bill] with the firm intention - once I'm sworn in as president - to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future."

Needless to say, none of that ever happened. Now, the warrantless eavesdropping bill that Obama insisted was plagued by numerous imperfections is one that he is demanding be renewed without a single change. Last week, Marcy Wheeler documented the huge gap between (a) what Obama vowed he would do when he voted for this law in 2008 versus (b) what he has actually done in power (they're opposites).

Indeed, when it came time last year to vote on renewal of the Patriot Act - remember how Democrats used to pretend during the Bush years to find the Patriot Act so alarming? - the Obama administration also demanded its renewal without a single reform. When a handful of Senators led by Rand Paul nonetheless proposed modest amendments to eliminate some of the documented abuses of the Patriot Act, Democratic majority leader Harry Reid did his best Dick Cheney impression by accusing these disobedient lawmakers of risking a Terrorist attack by delaying renewal:


"When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we will be giving terrorists the opportunity to plot against our country undetected. The senator from Kentucky is threatening to take away the best tools we have for stopping them.

"We all remember the tragic Fort Hood shootings less than two years ago. Radicalized American terrorists bought guns and used them to kill 13 civilians [by "civilians", Reid means: members of the US military]. It is hard to imagine why the senator would want to hold up the Patriot Act for a misguided amendment that would make American less safe."

In other words: if you even try to debate the Patriot Act or add any amendments to it, then you are helping the Terrorists: classic Dick Cheney. (Democratic Sen. Udall defended Paul from Reid's disgusting attack: "This is not a Patriot Act. Patriots stand up for the Constitution. Patriots stand up for freedom and liberty that's embodied in the Constitution. And I think true patriots, when they're public servants, public servants stand up and do what's right, even if it's unpopular").

Yesterday, I watched as Dianne Feinstein went well beyond Harry Reid's disgusting Cheneyite display. Feinstein is one of the Senate's richest plutocrats, whose husband, Richard Blum, has coincidentally been quite enriched by military and other government contracts during her Senate career. During this time, Feinstein has acted as the most faithful servant in the Senate of the National Security State's unchecked, authoritarian power.

Yesterday, Feinstein stood up on the Senate floor and began by heaping praise on her GOP comrade, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, for leading his caucus to join her in renewing the FISA act without any reforms. She then unleashed a vile attack on her Democratic colleagues - Wyden, Merkley, and Udall, along with Paul - in which she repeatedly accused them of trying to make the nation vulnerable to a Terrorist attack.

Feinstein insisted that one could support their amendments only if "you believe that no one is going to attack us". She warned that their amendments would cause "another 9/11". She rambled about Najibullah Zazi and his attempt to detonate a bomb on the New York City subway: as though a warrant requirement, let alone disclosure requirements for the eavesdropping program, would have prevented his detection. Having learned so well from Rudy Giuliani (and Harry Reid), she basically just screamed "Terrorist!" and "9/11" over and over until her time ran out, and then proudly sat down as though she had mounted rational arguments against the transparency and oversight amendments advocated by Wyden, Merkley, Udall and Paul.

Even more notably, Feinstein repeatedly argued that requiring even basic disclosure about the eavesdropping program - such as telling Americans how many of them are targeted by it - would, as she put it, "destroy the program". But if "the program" is being conducted properly and lawfully, why would that kind of transparency kill the program? As the ACLU's Richardson noted: "That Sen. Feinstein says public oversight will lead to the end of the program says a lot about the info that's being hidden." In response to her warnings that basic oversight and transparency would destroy the program, Mother Jones' Adam Serwer similarly asked: "Why, if it's all on the up and up?"

All of this was accomplished with the core Bush/Cheney tactic used over and over: they purposely waited until days before the law is set to expire to vote on its renewal, then told anyone who wants reforms that there is no time to consider them, and that anyone who attempted debate would cause the law to expire and risk a Terrorist attack. Over and over yesterday, Feinstein stressed that only "four days remained" before the law expires and that any attempts even to debate the law, let alone amend it, would leave the nation vulnerable.

It's hard to put into words just how extreme was Feinstein's day-long fear-mongering tirade. "I've never seen a Congressional member argue so strongly against Executive Branch oversight as Sen. Feinstein did today re the FISA law," said Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations. Referring to Feinstein's alternating denials and justifications for warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer observed: "This FISA debate reminds of the torture debate circa 2004: We don't torture! And anyway, we have to torture, we don't have any choice."

Jaffer added that Feinstein's strident denials that secret warrantless eavesdropping poses any dangers "almost makes you nostalgic for Ashcroft's 'phantoms of lost liberty' speech" - referring to the infamous 2001 decree from Bush's Attorney General:

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends."

That is exactly the foul message which Dianne Feinstein, doing the bidding of the Obama White House, spewed at her liberal Senate colleagues (and a tiny handful of Republicans) for the crime of wanting to bring some marginal transparency and oversight to the warrantless eavesdropping powers with which Obama vested himself when voting in 2008 for that FISA law. As it turns out, Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin had it exactly right in mid-2008 when explaining - in the face of lots of progressive confusion and even anger - why Obama decided to support a FISA bill that vested the executive with massive unchecked eavesdroppoing power: namely, Obama "plans to be the executive", so "from Obama's perspective, what's not to like?"

Just four or five years ago, objections to warrantless eavesdropping were a prime grievance of Democrats against Bush. The controversies that arose from it were protracted, intense, and often ugly. Progressives loved to depict themselves as stalwartly opposing right-wing radicalism in defense of Our Values and the Constitution.

Fast forward to 2012 and all of that, literally, has changed. Now it's a Democratic President demanding reform-free renewal of his warrantless eavesdropping powers. He joins with the Republican Party to codify them. A beloved Democratic Senator from a solidly blue state leads the fear-mongering campaign and Terrorist-enabling slurs against anyone who opposes it. And it now all happens with virtually no media attention or controversy because the two parties collaborate so harmoniously to make it happen. And thus does a core guarantee of the founding - the search warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment - blissfully disappear into nothingness.

Here we find yet again a defining attribute of the Obama legacy: the transformation of what was until recently a symbol of right-wing radicalism - warrantless eavesdropping - into meekly accepted bipartisan consensus. But it's not just the policies that are so transformed but the mentality and rhetoric that accompanies them: anyone who stands in the way of the US Government's demands for unaccountable, secret power is helping the Terrorists. "The administration has decided the program should be classified", decreed Feinstein, and that is that.

In 2005, the Bush White House invoked the "very bad guy" defense to assure us that we need not worry about the administration's secret warrantless eavesdropping program; as a Bush White House spokesman put it:

"This is a limited program. This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches."


In 1968, Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell similarly told the public in the face of rising concerns over government eavesdropping powers that "any citizen of this United States who is not involved in some illegal activity has nothing to fear whatsoever." That is the noble tradition which the Obama White House, Dianne Feinstein and their GOP partners are continuing now.