Here are 5 surprising facts about spying in America.
We understand if some of this sounds far-fetched. But take a look for yourself, and see if you can disprove these claims.
1: Cheney and Rumsfeld Pushed for Warrantless Wiretaps in the 70s
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumseld and other government officials who held high positions in the George W. Bush administration pushed for wiretaps without approval by a judge in the 1970s.
2: Massive Spying on Americans Began Before 9/11
You know about the governments massive program of spying on Americans which has been justified as a necessary response to 9/11?
Whistleblowers from major telecommunications companies have testified that the program began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here).
3: U.S. and Allied Intelligence Heard the 9/11 Hijackers Plans from Their Own Mouths
The 9/11 hijackers were largely unknown prior to that horrible event, right?
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Actually, U.S. and allied intelligence services heard a lot from the hijackers own mouths prior to 9/11:
Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence . . ..
The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigations refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.
4: The Spying Program Has Not Been Narrowly Tailored to Keeping Americans Safe
We would all hope that the spying program has been tightly focused on protecting Americans from terrorists.
However, as I noted in 2008:
- The NSA spied on U.N. diplomats in their deliberations on the Iraq war (so that the U.S. could figure out which countries were against the war and their reasons, to gain an advantage in twisting arms and selling the war)
- The government has been spying on journalists from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other publications for years
As one writer puts it:
If we know of illegal administration spying on journalists and other non-suspects, and we know of pre-9/11 surveillance, then we for all intents and purposes know that these are not programs designed to fight some foreign terrorists threat.
Indeed, the government and its contractors seem to have spent most of their time spying on antiwar protesters, environmentalists and other non-dangerous people. See this and this.
(Of course, the fact that the spying program began before 9/11, and that 9/11 wasnt stopped even though intelligence heard from the hijackers themselves, is also instructive. And see below).
5: The Spying Program Isnt Just Used for Listening It Also Is Used to Track Americans and Predict Behavior
As I noted in 2008, its not just spying, but also tracking and predicting what American citizens will do:
As a new article by investigative reporter Christopher Ketcham reveals, a governmental unit operating in secret and with no oversight whatsoever is gathering massive amounts of data on every American and running artificial intelligence software to predict each Americans behavior, including what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help.
The same governmental unit is responsible for suspending the Constitution and implementing martial law in the event that anything is deemed by the White House in its sole discretion to constitute a threat to the United States. (this is formally known as implementing Continuity of Government plans).
As Ketchams article makes clear, these same folks and their predecessors have been been busy dreaming up plans to imprison countless trouble-making Americans without trial in case of any real or imagined emergency. What kind of Americans? Ketcham describes it this way:
dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protestors, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people.
Do we want the same small group of folks who have the power to suspend the Constitution, implement martial law, and imprison normal citizens to also be gathering information on all Americans and running AI programs to be able to predict where American citizens will go for help and what they will do in case of an emergency? Dont we want the government to um, I dont know help us in case of an emergency?
Bear in mind that the Pentagon is also running an AI program to see how people will react to propaganda and to government-inflicted terror. The program is called Sentient World Simulation:
U.S defense, intel and homeland security officials are constructing a parallel world, on a computer, which the agencies will use to test propaganda messages and military strategies.
Called the Sentient World Simulation, the program uses AI routines based upon the psychological theories of Marty Seligman, among others. (Seligman introduced the theory of learned helplessness in the 1960s, after shocking beagles until they cowered, urinating, on the bottom of their cages.)
Yank a countrys water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.
The sim will feature an AR avatar for each person in the real world, based upon data collected about us from government records and the internet.
The continuity of government folks AI program and the Pentagons AI program may or may not be linked, but they both indicate massive spying and artificial intelligence in order to manipulate the American public, to concentrate power, to take away the liberties and freedoms of average Americans, and worst of all to induce chaos in order to achieve these ends.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said that web-based artificial intelligence can predict where people will go. See this and this.
ABC News Fast Company, Gizmodo and many other sources report that computer programs are being used to predict who will commit a crime.
Indeed, as noted by Boston Universitys Journal of Science and Technology Law, Fox News, the Daily Telegraph and other sources, the Department of Homeland Security is developing an airport scanner to be able to read peoples minds and predict terrorist behavior.
Neuroscientists at UCLA say they can predict using brain scanning peoples behavior better than the people themselves can. And Northwestern University announced in July that scientists can read peoples brain waves to detect terrorism. See also this and this.
I am all for stopping real terrorists. But given that protest is now considered low-level terrorism (see this, this, this and this), this could be used for very repressive purposes.
In other words, spying may gradually be morphing into the Orwellian concept of pre-crime. (Washingtons Blog, 9.22.2010) http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/09/5-facts-you-dont-know-about-spying-in.html
"To Achieve World
Government it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism,
their loyalty to family traditions and national identification" Brock Chisholm - Director of the World Health Organization
"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to
believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a
reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police
State Dictatorship it's going to
get." Ian Williams Goddard
The fact is that "political correctness" is all about creating uniformity. Individualism is one of the biggest obstacles in the way of the New World Order. They want a public that is predictable and conditioned to do as it's told without asking questions.
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." Thomas Jefferson
Knowledge is the key to good health!