I have been so busy scrambling to delete and disconnect myself from my phone, my email, my mailbox, etc., plus buying lots of aluminum foil to cover my house and head, that I haven't had much time to write, so I've reposted something that I wrote over eight years ago that fits what is happening today (or the day before yesterday) and tomorrow.
P.S.
Actually, I did start to write something before I became swathed in tinfoil and paranoia:
NOBODY
IS LISTENING TO YOUR TELEPHONE CALLS
That’s
right.
Nobody
is listening to your telephone calls, but they
are checking your emails and your Facebook, and checking them twice to see if
you’ve been naughty or nice.
Nobody
is listening, but sophisticated satellites orbiting above you can see you and
hear you, if they need to.
Homer
called Ulysses Nobody in The Odyssey, but when the U.S.
Government says nobody, it means everybody.
*
“He [Edward Snowden] only told the world a large truth to prevent war. The U.S. capitalist elite are trying to control the world and are spying on friends, foes and the entire planet.”
Nicolás Maduro Moros
President of Venezuela
*
Why is Prism So Bad, Really?
*
Security Agency in these terms:
"I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny
total in America, and we must see to it that this
agency and all agencies that possess this technology
operate within the law and under proper supervision,
so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the
abyss from which there is no return."
The dangerous prospect of which he warned was that
America's intelligence gathering capability – which is today
beyond any comparison with what existed in his pre-digital
era – "at any time could be turned around on the American
people and no American would have any privacy left."
That has now happened. That is what Snowden has
exposed, with official, secret documents.
The NSA, FBI and CIA have, with the new digital
the Stasi – the secret police in the former "democratic
republic" of East Germany – could scarcely have dreamed of.
Snowden reveals that the so-called intelligence community
has become the United Stasi of America.
Daniel Ellsberg
From:
Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America
Snowden's whistleblowing gives us a chance to roll back what is tantamount to an 'executive coup' against the US constitution
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/10/edward-snowden-united-stasi-America
*
Mad Plato has just learned that Homeland Security's TIA (or
Terrorist Information Awareness) has been monitoring some recent phone
calls made by Mad Plato.
Words that are inside of TIA's computer database, which indicate
some type of potential terrorist activity, will trigger the computers to
cherry-pick such words out of the air from telephone conversations, and
then store them inside of TIA computers for review and analysis.
Here are some pieces of conversations that have been intercepted by TIA:
"Hi Mad Plato. Boy, the party at Sharon's last week was a real bomb!"
"By the way, Bill, were you planning to fire any rockets this
Fourth
of July?"
"Yes, Bill, I'll be heading with Aziz, Mark, and Robin to the retreat
next week."
"Wow! I bet you had a blast in Spain last weekend."
So, citizens, be careful what you say on the telephone. Homeland
Security is listening to you. What you say may reward you with a visit
by an agent of Homeland Security. Wait, I hear a knock at my door right
now...and the phone is ringing. I must go. Goodbye.
And here is this from “Is it time to do away with Homeland Security?"
By Thom Hartman
June 8, 2013
Because here’s the scariest thing of
all: PRISM, just like the NSA’s phone records collection program, is
perfectly legal. Arguably unconstitutional and totalitarian, yes, but, at the
moment, legal. PRISM is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, and the NSA’s metadata sweeps are allowed under the broad guidelines of
Section 215 of the Patriot Act – both acts of Congress.
The
frightened little men of the Bush Administration took us into some dark places
after 9/11 – but Congress and President Obama have tragically continued these
exact same policies. Just this past December, Congress reauthorized an amended
version of the FISA act and the President signed it without complaint.
Concentration of responsibility becomes
concentration of power – and because most of our intelligence and police power
has been concentrated in one agency – the DHS - that agency has become way too
powerful, with no checks and balances. In effect, it's created an entire
surveillance industry around itself, and it's time to shut it down.
How did this happen? In a way, it was
predictable, a replay of Eisenhower’s warning.
As Deepthroat famously told Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein – “Follow the money.”
Who benefits from our nation's addiction to
out-of-control “security”? The military-industrial-security complex.
Providing support and equipment and consultants to DHS has now become a
trillion-dollar for-profit industry.
This is not good for the United States.
When
the worst abuses of the old East German STASI become the standard policies of
what Thomas Jefferson once called “the world’s last best hope” – it is
time for a change.
Because
as Jefferson’s fellow founder, Benjamin Franklin said, “those who sacrifice
liberty for security deserve neither.”
Repeal the PATRIOT Act,
dissolve the DHS, and let's return to sanity.
"But because genuinely dangerous people will often be pre-empted or more swiftly caught, the privacy-for-security swap will seem like a reasonable trade-off to many Americans — especially when there is no obvious alternative short of disconnecting from the Internet entirely.
Welcome to the future. Just make sure you don’t have anything to hide."
From "Your Smartphone Is Watching You" by Ross Douthat/The New York Times/June 8, 2013
IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!
