That Whistle Got Blown A Long Time Ago

By now, everyone out on these fringes of teh Interwebz has heard about NSA agent Edward Snowden, who fled Hawaii to Hong Kong and then blew the whistle:

"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."

This is news? A shocking revelation?

Not to those of us who are "conspiracy theory kooks."


May 4, 2010 - We Know Who You Are

Welcome to the 21st Century Panopticon.

This plenary will discuss an inter-networked communication infrastructure that could facilitate the creation of a modern surveillance society. The name given to the criminal justice/national security project is “information fusion centers.” Fusion centers are an amalgamation of commercial and public sector data for the purpose of optimizing the collection, analysis, and sharing of personal information. The Department of Homeland Security’s $380 million in funding has created over 40 information fusion centers in the United States.

Friday, November 5, 2010 - The True Purpose for Obamacare: The American Dang'an

If you read the Obamacare bill, and you pay close attention, you'll see that the new bill calls for a consolidation of personal information and documentation into a single, accessible record.

May 6, 2011 - Americans, Everything You Do Is Monitored

Whatever the case, it's clear that almost everything we do, whether it's in the privacy of our own homes or on public streets, can be tracked, monitored, and logged.

As technology improves and the internet interconnects even more nodes, the information collected by the public, private and personal sectors will be further aggregrated, cross referenced and analyzed. Your personal profile will become more detailed, including your shopping habits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, political affiliation, reading preferences, friends, and potentially your psychological and emotional status. All of this information will eventually be fused into one large database. In fact, the government has already setup well over fifty fusion centers around the nation. What goes on in these centers is kept strictly confidential, and there doesn't seem to be any agency in charge of them, but we know they exist, and we know that their purpose is to acquire, aggregate and act on whatever information they have available to them. 

March 25, 2012 - Total Information Awareness

With the advent of the internet and the exponential increase of global communications, our Brave New World Order Overlords need new facilities to handle the sheer volume of encrypted data!

Have no fear, Big Brother is working on it as we speak:

That blog post was based on the following article I had read, that had been posted 10 days before:


March 15, 2012 - The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

Monday, December 10, 2012 - The Planned Obsolescence of Privacy

All the pieces are in place. The Age of Big Brother is nigh.

Think I exaggerate?

Have a look-see, right here.

In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who’s been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans.

After I made that post, LewRockwell.com blogger took note in Extremely Serious Privacy Problem in America.

"Here is a libertarian who recognizes the end of privacy and sees it as a foregone conclusion. His pessimism is total. He offers no defense of privacy at all." - Micheal S. Rozeff, The LRC Blog

To which I responded:

Is it pessimism to point out the truth?

The loss of our privacy from the Surveillance State's intrusions IS a forgone conclusion.

Has been since October 26, 2001, when the PATRIOT act was signed into law.

If you have healthcare insurance, you already have no privacy here in the Land of the Fee and Home of the Tax and Credit-Debt Slaves.

What defense can I, an anonymous blogger on teh interwebz, offer for this now obsolete concept of privacy?

I merely belabor to point out the truth, because from where I'm sitting, it seems to me that 90% of the people in this Country are oblivious to this ongoing destruction of what used to be a Constitutionally recognized right to privacy.

Almost one year later, we now have an NSA whistleblower who fled my home state, the 50th outpost in the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave," to seek refuge in a COMMUNIST CHINESE STATE, to confirm what I had already been reading and blogging about for years.

Mr. Snowden, thanks for confirming what many of us already knew.

Vox is right, you are a hero of human liberty.

There is only one thing left to do for those of us who still care about obsolete concepts like freedom, privacy, and a non-intrusive Government.

Refuse and Resist, wherever we can, whenever we can..


How?

In small ways. Engage in subterfuge. A personal mis-info and dis-info guerilla campaign.

Examples?

* When your at a check out at one of the box store Corporate retail outlets in your area, and they ask you for your name and phone number, give the checkout person deliberately false info. That's not against the law. Yet.

* Never say anything into a cell phone, nor text anything, nor blog, vlog, post, email, write, tweet, instagram or comment anything that you wouldn't be comfortable with having total strangers read, see or hear....because all forms of electronic communications ARE stored and can and will be used against you should the need for authorities to do so, arise.

* If at all possible, use cash for your purchases. Try and stick to stores and farmer's markets where a "club" card is not required, for as many purchases as you possibly can. If you must, try and use other people's club cards and pay with cash. I have the club cards from several deceased friends and family that I use whenever I shop at such stores.

* If you find it necessary to have a smart phone or some other mobile data device, figure out how to disable GPS applications. And if for whatever reason you ever find yourself being pursued by the authorities for any reason whatsoever, don't forget to shut off your "smart" phone. Hell, just to be certain, remove the battery. If your situation is really serious, than leave it on and ditch it hidden on a bus or another vehicle heading somewhere far away.

* Don't buy any new vehicles with the OnStar or other perpetual tracking devices built into it.

* If you MUST have a social media profile, fill it full of false or ambiguous information...especially use a fake name. If you insist on posting pictures to your social media pages, don't use pictures taken with your smart phones, as they are now designed to automatically include hidden data embedded in the pics and vids themselves, revealing the time, location and other personal details of where and when that photo was taken.

* If you really want to get off grid, only blog or update your social media pages or check your web based email on public computers and internet cafe's and other such places.

* Another strategy would be to have a wireless laptop or other device that does not have your personal info stored in it at all, and use it only at free Wi-Fi hotspots.

* Whenever you're doing an online search, use only the search engines and proxy server sites that provide anonymity. Search engines like DuckDuckGo and StartPage.com.

* Don't buy appliances that have internet connection features built in.

* Minimize your use of Debt Enslavement Cartel member establishments...aka Banks. Don't use debit cards or credit cards as much as possible.

These are all ideas I myself practice as much as possible. Does this make me paranoid?