Category Archives: Surveillance state

Quelle Surprise! National Surveillance State Companies Were Huge Obama Donors in 2012 Election

By Thomas Ferguson, professor of political science at University of Massachusetts, Boston, Paul Jorgensen, assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas, Pan American, and Jie Chen, university statistician at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Long before President Obama kicked off his 2008 campaign, many Americans took it for granted that George W. Bush’s vast, sprawling national security apparatus needed to be reined in. But that’s not how this movie turned out, and it’s obvious why once you look at the 2012 election money trail.

Wolf Richter: NSA Revelations Kill IBM Hardware Sales In China

Yves here. When Edward Snowden began revealing the true scope of the surveillance state and the degree to which major American tech and communications companies were partners, Ed Harrison almost immediately recognized how damaging the news was to the cloud computing model. Yours truly, among others, wondered how quickly some countries would try to regain control of their Internet architecture, at least to keep the NSA from snooping on strictly domestic communications. That trend would also favor non-US service and equipment providers. For instance, a book I’m reading now, Spies for Hire by Tim Shorrock, mentions in passing that the NSA wanted to restrict US companies developing stronger forms of encryption because if they got too good, the NSA would not be able to crack it either. The Americans were very unhappy, and argued that that restriction would enable Europeans and the Japanese to take the lead in that field. The solution? The NSA let our domestic players go ahead as long as they got secret decryption keys. Mind you, this tidbit was public knowledge before the Snowden exposes, but remember also that aside from websites that needed encryption to allow for Internet commerce, most people didn’t give encryption a passing thought. These sort of security/privacy issues have gone mainstream, to the detriment of some US players.

Glenn Greenwald on the NSA, GCHQ, and Spying

Yves here. This BBC NewsInsight interview is a remarkable little piece. Greenwald confronts a clearly hostile set of questions from the BBC interviewer. He is not amused and comes pretty close to giving her a dressing down. Go Glenn!

Wolf Richter: Why IBM Throws Another Billion At Linux (With NSA-Designed Backdoor)

By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Cross posted from Testosterone Pit.

IBM announced today that it would throw another billion at Linux, the open-source operating system, to run its Power System servers. The big reason? To capitalize on customers’ mistaken perception that Linux is safe from NSA snooping.

NYPD Undercover Spying Unit Revealed As Extensive, Far-Reaching

Yves here. At first I thought I’d relegate this Real News Network piece to Links, but on further reflection, I decided it was too important for that. The segment recaps the main findings of a new book, Enemies Within, about a heretofore secret operation in the NYPD. This might appear to be a local story, but think twice.

Obama on the Verge of Being Handed a Major Defeat on Syria

The Obama Administration is presenting the upcoming Congressional votes on its ~~blank check~~ Authorization to Use Military Force in Syria as justified, irrelevant (since Kerry has asserted that the Administration doesn’t need Congress’ approval can attack even in the face of a no vote), but a done deal nevertheless. None of those claims stand up to scrutiny.

Gaius Publius: Deep State — Is the Upper Echelon of the Intelligence Community Running America?

Gaius focuses on the question of the degree to which the military-surveillance complex is already calling the shots in the US. While he uses the current sanitized formulation, “deep state,” I wish he and others in the opposition would use a more accurate, if perhaps less tidy, turn of phrase, like “slow motion military coup.”

Why Progressives Are Lame

Yesterday, we ran a post by Bill McKibben on leadership in social change movements. McKibben argued for a “small l” leader model versus a “big L” leader, which readers debated. Some argued that the Leader model was really code for “Great Man” that was a less viable approach than it once was due to assassinations. Others were struck by the emphasis on distributed leadership, which is an obvious analogy to modern computer and communications networks, and how political commentators to frame their ideas of social order in terms of the technology of the day. Some pointed out that the idea of minimal oversight and control of communities was a long-stading Utopian line of thought, often espoused by people who wound up implementing the exact opposite.

However, I was particularly struck by Dan Kervick’s remark, which came late in the thread:

Gaius Publius: IRS is Using NSA Data Too. Who in Town Isn’t?

Your Google-collected, Verizon-collected data seems to very broadly available. How broadly? Way more than you thought. Read on for the grizzly details.

A Killer App for Google Glass?

Before readers start throwing brickbats at me, understand that I am no fan of the Google Glass project. But the killer app for Google Glass could be protecting citizens from authoritarian policing.

Wolf Richter: NSA Pricked The “Cloud” Bubble For US Tech Companies

Yves here. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch. As soon as Glenn Greenwald started to reveal the extent of NSA snooping, Ed Harrison remarked via e-mail that one of the casualties would be cloud-based computing models. Wolf Richter catalogues the damage so far. And who would trust any of the proprietors, given how obliging virtually all Silicon Valley players have been when it comes to indulging the pet needs of the surveillance state?

More American Stasi: US Drug Agency Fabricates Cover Stories for Data Collection, Including from “Intelligence Intercepts”

In a weird but more disturbing analogue to chain of title abuses, where banks would forge signatures and fabricate documents to remedy the failure to transfer assets properly to securitization trusts, Reuters reported today that the Drug Enforcement Agency would doctor up where it got evidence from so it could use it in court. Now why would the DEA bother to go to all that trouble? Chorus: Because if a decent defense lawyer found out where it came from, it would in most cases be inadmissible.