Security... or Surveillance?

SUBHEAD: Ron Paul interviews Edward Snowden on government threats to essential freedoms.

By James Holbrooks on 20 June 2017 for The AntiMedia -
(http://theantimedia.org/ron-paul-interviewing-edward-snowden/S)


Image above: Still frame of Ron Paul and Edward Snowden from video of interview below.

Saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”

That comment was made by famed whistleblower Edward Snowden during a recent interview on the Ron Paul Liberty Report. In his conversation with Dr. Paul and Daniel McAdams, published Tuesday, an articulate Snowden discusses the true meaning of freedom, the nature of the deep state, and even his upbringing as a child of a government family.

“I’d like to know a little bit, what do you do all day long?” a genuinely curious Dr. Paul asks as his opening question. After talking about the insanity that erupted — both in the political spectrum and his personal life — following the revelations he made back in 2013, Snowden says he’s now become a hot commodity for groups championing causes.

“They want me to sort of front for these issues of privacy and civil liberties and protection of people’s rights,” Snowden replies. “And I want to do what I can, but I’m not a politician. I’m an engineer.”

The whistleblower goes on to talk about how he’s now, at long last, finally able to devote time to more practical applications. For him, this means focusing on the area that holds the key to finding a balance between rights and laws in the digital age — technology.

“How technically is this even happening?” Snowden poses, digging straight to the heart of the issue of mass surveillance. “How is it that so many governments are spying on so many people? Because even if we pass the best legal reforms in the world in the United States, that doesn’t do anything against China, or Russia, or Germany, or France or Brazil or any other country in the world.”

Continuing, Snowden says that future generations’ rights and protections will be dependent on the current generation’s ability to adapt to a constantly shifting environment:

“We need to find new means, new mechanisms, for enforcing these rights in the new times. And I think that’s going to be primarily through science and technology.”

When Dr. Paul asks the former NSA contractor about his political affiliation, Snowden responds that he doesn’t associate himself with any faction and that as individuals, we’re more than tribes and labels. Proceeding, Snowden points to how technology has given humanity a means to have a global conversation on issues:

“I think the Internet produces a lot of people who look at these issues differently, in a less tribal way, because you hear more viewpoints. You hear from many more people. And the more people in a conversation, I think the more informed it often is.”

When co-host Daniel McAdams asks Snowden to comment on the idea of security vs. surveillance, the whistleblower again cuts straight to the core of the debate and speaks on the perception of freedom itself.

“What is liberty?” asks Snowden, and then points out that ten questions on the street would result in ten different answers. After stating his view that liberty is the “freedom of self” and the “freedom from permission,” Snowden goes on to say that true liberty is rooted in personal privacy:

“Privacy isn’t about something to hide, privacy is about something to protect. It’s about the ability to be you, to have a thought for yourself, to have a thing for yourself, to have some difference, to have some idea that’s new and untested and untried that you can sort of sharpen amongst those that you trust, and then introduce into the world, into that contest of ideas.”

Next, Dr. Paul asks his guest to comment on the topic of the deep state, which Snowden proceeds to describe as a “mass of government that survives beyond administration” that is “not responding to the politics of the people.” Snowden says this organism lives “across parties” and “across administrations.”

Continuing, Snowden equates the running of state policy to a game, one that favors those who get “better and better” at understanding the evolving rules:

“And eventually, the people who are the greatest experts at understanding and using these rules, the best bureaucrats, are not sitting in the White House, they’re not sitting in the Congress. Because those guys come and go as the years pass, and they win elections, and they lose elections, and it’s the people that sit there for 30 years or more, in these agencies, with their hand on the lever the whole time. And that’s what the deep state is.”

Snowden further states that party affiliation matters little with regard to this behind-the-scenes force and that any political faction in power will eventually “get to the point of saying yes when enough pressure is brought to bear.”

When Daniel McAdams next asks him about whether or not he thinks an agency such as the NSA should even exist, Snowden remarks on the irony of asking him that question — given that he’s a “product of the system” with familial ties to the United States government going back decades.

But the whistleblower presses forward following a question from Dr. Paul on whether or not he thinks any gains have been made from his 2013 revelations, stating that solutions come not from individuals alone, but from many of them who “lay down a single brick upon which others can build.”

Continuing in this vein, Snowden says progress in battling government violations of personal liberty is made in inches and should be accomplished organically:

“Step by step, working together, sharing our views, connecting our values, we can create spaces, more bricks, that when laid together create a defense of rights that can be relied upon, in even historic moments when law cannot be.”

In his final question to Snowden, Dr. Paul asks whether the former government contractor’s decision to sound the alarm was arrived at suddenly or through a gradual process. In response, Snowden links his own decision to the average human being, noting that everyone has a point at which nothing more can be tolerated:

“We all have a level, right, of this kind of cognitive dissonance that we can accept. A level of injustice, of inhumanity, of incivility that we can accept in the daily world, that we can sort of internalize and suppress. And then we have one step more.”

Video above: "Security or Surveillance? The Edward Snowden Interview" From (https://youtu.be/9XLLo0025Jc).

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Saudi Terror Funding

SUBHEAD: 'Sensitive' United Kingdom terror funding inquiry report may never be published.

By Jessica Elgot on 31 May 2017 for the Guardian -
(https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/31/sensitive-uk-terror-funding-inquiry-findings-may-never-be-published-saudi-arabia)


Image above: Theresa May with crown prince Muhammad bin Nayef during her visit to Saudi Arabia in April. From original article.

An investigation into the foreign funding and support of jihadi groups that was authorized by David Cameron may never be published, the Home Office has admitted. That investigation into foreign funding and support of jihadi groups operating in UK is understood to focus on Saudi Arabia.

The inquiry into revenue streams for extremist groups operating in the UK was commissioned by the former prime minister and is thought to focus on Saudi Arabia, which has repeatedly been highlighted by European leaders as a funding source for Islamist jihadis.

The investigation was launched as part of a deal with the Liberal Democrats in exchange for the party supporting the extension of British airstrikes against Islamic State into Syria in December 2015.

Tom Brake, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, has written to the prime minister asking her to confirm that the investigation will not be shelved.

The Observer reported in January last year that the Home Office’s extremism analysis unit had been directed by Downing Street to investigate overseas funding of extremist groups in the UK, with findings to be shown to Theresa May, then home secretary, and Cameron.

However, 18 months later, the Home Office confirmed the report had not yet been completed and said it would not necessarily be published, calling the contents “very sensitive”.

A decision would be taken “after the election by the next government” about the future of the investigation, a Home Office spokesman said.

In his letter to May, Brake wrote: “As home secretary at the time, your department was one of those leading on the report. Eighteen months later, and following two horrific terrorist attacks by British-born citizens, that report still remains incomplete and unpublished.

“It is no secret that Saudi Arabia in particular provides funding to hundreds of mosques in the UK, espousing a very hardline Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. It is often in these institutions that British extremism takes root.
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The contents of the report may prove politically as well as legally sensitive. Saudi Arabia, which has been a funding source for fundamentalist Islamist preachers and mosques, was visited by May earlier this year.

Last December, a leaked report from Germany’s federal intelligence service accused several Gulf groups of funding religious schools and radical Salafist preachers in mosques, calling it “a long-term strategy of influence”.

The Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, said he felt the government had not held up its side of the bargain made ahead of the vote on airstrikes. The report must be published when it was completed, he insisted, despite the Home Office caution that information in the document would be sensitive.

“That short-sighted approach needs to change. It is critical that these extreme, hardline views are confronted head on, and that those who fund them are called out publicly,” he said.

“If the Conservatives are serious about stopping terrorism on our shores, they must stop stalling and reopen investigation into foreign funding of violent extremism in the UK.”

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National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

SUBHEAD: This is the American organization you don't hear about that tracks down, spies on and kills people  

By Alice Salles on 29 March 2017 for The Anti-Media -
(http://theantimedia.org/agency-dangerous-nsa/)


Image above: Defense Secretary Robert Gates shakes hands with Navy Vice Adm. Robert  Murrett, outgoing director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as incoming director Letitia Long stands at left, in Springfield, Virginia on 9 August 2010. Long is the first female to head a U.S. intelligence agency. Photo by Cherie Cullen. Click to enlarge. From (http://archive.defense.gov/photoessays/PhotoEssaySS.aspx?ID=1813)

 If you’re one of the countless Americans who was distraught to learn of the revelations made by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, the mere idea that there might be yet another agency out there — perhaps just as powerful and much more intrusive —  should give you goosebumps.

Foreign Policy reports that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA, is an obscure spy agency former President Barack Obama had a hard time wrapping his mind around back in 2009.

But as the president grew fond of drone warfare, finding a way to launch wars without having to go through Congress for the proper authorization, the NGA also became more relevant. Now, President Donald Trump is expected to further explore the multibillion-dollar surveillance network.

Like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), the NGA is an intelligence agency, but it also serves as a combat support institution that functions under the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

With headquarters bigger than the CIA’s, the building cost $1.4 billion to be completed in 2011. In 2016, the NGA bought an extra 99 acres in St. Louis, building additional structures that cost taxpayers an extra $1.75 billion.

Enjoying the extra budget Obama threw at them, the NGA became one of the most obscure intelligence agencies precisely because it relies on the work of drones.

As a body of government that has only one task — to analyze images and videos captured by drones in the Middle East — the NGA is mighty powerful. So why haven’t we heard of it before?

The Shadow Agency That Sees It All

Prior to Trump’s inauguration, the NGA only targeted the Middle East or whatever spy satellites orbiting the globe captured. As far as most of us knew, the agency refrained from pointing its ultra-high-resolution cameras toward the United States. That alone may be why the NGA has been able to stay out of scandals for the most part.

But under Trump, things may look much worse — as if spying on countless people abroad weren’t enough.

Recently, for instance, he gave the CIA the power to wage covert drone warfare, shielding important information on such operations simply by allowing the agency to carry out missions without first seeking authorization from the Pentagon.

Now, Trump might as well move on to NGA, hoping to boost “national security” by turning the agency’s all seeing eyes toward American soil.

As the president hopes to get more money for defense, many have speculated whether he will start to use drones at home, especially since he has already suggested he supports agencies like the NSA based on his desire to target “terrorists.” There’s nothing that implies he wants to slow down the surveillance state.

The White House has expressed its desire to renew Obama-era spying powers — even as the president battles critics who deny his claims that his conversations were intercepted at the same time foreign nationals were under surveillance in 2016.

A partially redacted March 2016 report released by the Pentagon revealed that drones had already been used domestically on about 20 or fewer occasions between 2006 and 2015.

Though some of these operations mostly involved natural disasters, National Guard training, and search and rescue missions, quotes from an Air Force law review article found their way into the report. In it, Dawn M. K. Zoldi wrote that technology designed to spy on targets abroad could soon be used against American citizens.

“As the nation winds down these wars,” the report explains, and ”assets become available to support other combatant command (COCOM) or U.S. agencies, the appetite to use them in the domestic environment to collect airborne imagery continues to grow.”

Up until 2015, oversight was so loose that the capabilities provided by the DOD’s unmanned aircraft system weren’t under scrutiny by any other agency. Without statutes that specify the rules such federal government agencies should follow, watchdogs find it hard to keep track. But would it be any better if there were an agency or a branch of the same government overseeing what the government itself is doing?

The short answer is no.

NGA Has A Precedent, And Trump May Want To Explore It

As fears grow that Trump will revamp the NGA, domestic stories of police departments using drones to spy on locals are also resurfacing.

Some of the most highly publicized instances involved Baltimore and Compton, where police departments deployed aerial surveillance technology without issuing a warrant or seeking authorization from local or state lawmakers.

With a precedent already set, the president might as well ignite a new fight in his continued efforts to fight a war against an imaginary, impossible-to-target enemy. After all, he’s not a stranger to scandals and likely wouldn’t feel overwhelmed one bit if he decided to turn the country’s ultra-high definition cameras toward its citizens.

What could help to put an end to his plans might be exactly what helped halt President George W. Bush’s attempts at setting up spy satellites domestically. In 2007, Bush’s Department of Homeland Security set up an agency known as the National Applications Office with the goal of establishing direct spy satellite stakeouts in America. Thankfully, Congress stepped in and cut off the agency’s funding.

But with Americans seldom showing any interest for important violations of privacy or even basic human rights here and abroad, it’s easy to see how this massive spying agency could end up getting a carte blanche to do whatever it wants once Trump realizes he has the power to order it done. After all, who will pressure Congress to stop him?


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