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All Hail the Surveillance State

By Danny Schechter, AlterNet. Posted May 16, 2006.


The attempt by Big Telco to control the internet makes the spy scandal a mere misdemeanor.

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Attention, chickens: You may soon be coming home to roost.

The word has gone out in the windowless buildings that house the switching equipment and state-of-the-art technology -- in what used to be called phone companies before they morphed into communication giants -- that a day of reckoning may be on the horizon for Verizon and its mates.

These chickens have been clucking at each other and gobbling each other up for years, silently reestablishing the old monopoly Bell System under the guise of new competitive guidelines. Private industries are once again putting together what the federal courts tore asunder. Oligopoly seems to be the highest expression of "free" market logic and its logical consequence.

At issue now are historically unprecedented and massive violations of privacy that we learned about from a rare occurrence: a newspaper actually doing its job. USA Today of all papers, blew the whistle on a massive government surveillance program run by the National Insecurity Agency tapping millions of phones, cell phones and every manner of communications devices.

It's called "data mining," and it's now the scandal du jour as National Security journalist William Arkin explains, "This NSA-dominated program of ingestion, digestion and distribution of intelligence raises profound questions about the privacy and civil liberties of all Americans."

He warns, "An all-seeing domestic surveillance is slowly being established, one that in just a few years time will be able track the activities and 'transactions' of any targeted individual in near real time."

Knee-jerk supporters of the Bush agenda were backhanded in their support. Here's Neil Cavuto on Fox News implying that all of this spying is needed to protect us: "Yes, it is not great to necessarily hear they're collecting our phone records, but it's a heck of a lot better than collecting our remains."

Since this news broke, the Telco companies went into full PR spin mode as theNew York Times reported Saturday: "Those companies insisted that they were vigilant about their customers' privacy, but did not directly address their cooperation with the government effort, which was reported on Thursday by USA Today. Verizon said that it provided customer information to a government agency 'only where authorized by law for appropriately defined and focused purposes,' but that it could not comment on any relationship with a national security program that was 'highly classified.'

"Legal experts said the companies faced the prospect of lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages over cooperation in the program, citing communications privacy legislation stretching back to the 1930s. A federal lawsuit was filed in Manhattan yesterday seeking as much as $50 billion in civil damages against Verizon on behalf of its subscribers."

Unfortunately, buried in all the reporting on the latest juicy scandal at a time of cascading horror stories is something even worse: These same companies, rip-off artists that they are, have their wallets set and lobbyists targeted in taking over the internet. This felonious attempt by the telcos to control the most powerful communications medium in the world makes the spy scandal a mere misdemeanor.

Note which story is getting most of the attention!

TV pundit Paul Begala made this point on CNN: "Big government is getting into bed with big business. We're talking about AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. AT&T, by the way, wants to take over the internet and start charging for access to the internet, which internet pioneers desperately oppose.

"So, now, if you are running AT&T, and the president of the United States comes to you and says, ‘Hey, why don't I spy, why don't I snoop through your files there,’ and you want him to give you permission to control the internet — that's a really lousy alliance politically for the Republicans, to be seen as big government in bed with big business."

This collusion between the corporate world and the Busheviks mirrors the pre-war complicity at the FCC between the news networks and the government. The covert quid pro quo then had the TV nets telling the regulators essentially, "You waive the rules, and we will wave the flag."


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Danny Schechter writes a blog for MediaChannel.org. He is the author of "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq" (Prometheus).

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All Together Now...!
Posted by: talkville on May 16, 2006 3:48 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Connect the dots of the "Technology Sector" and, sure enough, a bit of light starts shining on the shadows! All this fun, zippy, sexy technology so demanded by the in-crowd and sophisticated consumer! Could it possibly be that uses of this very same technology and all it's fantastic and very raw power could be used as a platform for perfect, relatively labor free control, surveillance and policing the populations of our own country as well as the world as a whole??? Naw, no possible way anyone has considered such purposes - it must be a conspiracy theory i guess. Trust them! They know what's good for us, they only have our interests at heart and benevolently do it all just for poor lil' us...

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YOU Can Help Stop This Madness...
Posted by: Nez46 on May 16, 2006 4:31 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
By stopping in at Save The Internet (http://www.savetheinternet.com/)

Don't let them have their way without a fight.

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crazy corporations
Posted by: rsaxto on May 16, 2006 4:58 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Crazy corporations have brainwashed us to eat bad foods, take bad prescription drugs and other drugs and tool around in gas guzzling cars that are ruining our environment and our health. This deregulation mania is also making us commit mass murder in wars overseas. And now they want to destroy the democracy of the internet! We need to regulate every corporation and make sure they are helping us instead of hurting us. Those who are hurting us need to be shut down or converted to doing something useful and healthful. And CEOs huge salaries need to be reduced so that they are worth what they are paid and ordinary workers can get paid living wages.

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» RE: crazy corporations Posted by: peacefulaim
Back in 2001, even with all the evidence collected about the 19 hijackers
Posted by: maxpayne on May 16, 2006 5:24 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
nothing was ever done to hold them accountable otherwise 9/11 would have been averted. We're continuing to lose our genuine freedom and genuine security in exchange for faux "security" at this rate.

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» And I forgot to mention Posted by: maxpayne
The threat of Low-Gloss iinformation
Posted by: mvbungalo on May 16, 2006 6:55 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What we're learning via the two-pronged assault on the internet is that too much democracy is bad for America. Americans are supposed to take in the shiny corporate information—not think about it, not debate it, not question it—and certainly not reject it for the grungy truth to be found on the web. It's no surprise big media is bristling. The net is a juicy raspberry to mainstream media and its beautifully packaged deceptions. Example: When Newt Gingrich appeared recently on Meet the Press, he defended the wiretap program by saying it was legal, giving Tim Russert a clear opening to challenge this assertion and debate the fourth amendment. Instead, Russert allows Gingrich to go unchalleneged for about half an hour, which turns these lies into truth, thanks to network production value and name recognition. (The Young Turks did a great piece about this on their video blog.) This internet takeover attempt underscores the "Us Against Them" nature of the media battle. It's all about keeping the "mythical little guy" blissfully entertained, outraged, and frightened into high-gloss ignorance. At a premium price. And if he strays into dissenting waters, someone will be watching.

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Brycello
Posted by: Diego on May 16, 2006 7:57 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
In my opinion the mid-term elections in November just might be the most important in our history. The Republicans are not going to relinquish power without pulling every devious nasty trick they can out of their pointed little hats. What better way to control the elections than to control the internet, our only reliable source of truthful information. Fascism is just around the corner.

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» RE: Brycello Posted by: hellkat
The quality of pictures NGA receives is not a very well-kept secret!
Posted by: fool-on-the-hill on May 16, 2006 8:07 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Once the spymeisters know where to aim them, US military satellites can take clearly recognizable photographs of a human face where the only "light" is a lit cigarette! This is known to every person who has ever worked (even as a consultant) for the DoD.

The first challenge (obviously) is knowing where to aim the "spies in the skies"---a problem that could be solved by having a competent, functioning "intelligence" program on the ground (which we haven't had, except in the movies, for quite some time). The greater challenge is finding leadership with the integrity/moral courage to know WHEN it is appropriate to aim the damn things, and when it is NOT!

The latter point is the crux of the problem---and technology cannot help us with it!

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I am al ot more scared by our lack of progressive taxation and national healthcare
Posted by: cry0fan on May 16, 2006 9:56 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
but then again, I am not much of a sheeple

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Whistle blowers BEWARE!
Posted by: kevintaute on May 16, 2006 11:05 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
With all the records from the East Coast (Verizon) - any contact with the media means instant and total exposure - and plugging the leak before the media can report!

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Enemy of the State
Posted by: NoPCZone on May 16, 2006 1:36 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Remember the film starring Gene Hackman and Will Smith?

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I'm trying to be a cockeyed optimist
Posted by: sgtmartin1 on May 16, 2006 3:05 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
…here, but I continue to believe that once the public gets its mind around this, they’ll come around. The most massive public reaction I’ve ever seen, in terms of someone taking an action, was when the FCC announced the telemarketing no call list.

Literally millions of people took the initiative to place themselves on this list in an incredibly short time. Granted, stopping those annoying calls was the motivator, but it was privacy related. And with proper messaging, the NSA scandal can touch the same nerve.

This is far more intrusive than telemarketers using your public phone number…at least they aren’t keeping track of who you call.

There are pockets of resistance to this on the far left and far right. Maybe Dubya is a uniter after all. Like I say, I’m a cockeyed optimist.

More on this topic if you’re interested: Your Own Government-owned Cyberganger

If you are among those that think Bush’s interest is limited to our “calling patterns,” you should drop by. We can discuss some investment opportunities. But if you’ve been using your brain for processing input, you will have gathered enough of your own intelligence to know that the ultimate consequence of their intentions will be the creation of your own government owned cyberganger. An electronic, instantly retrievable, you that contains everything from your pizza preferences to your PSA count. And, if government database development experience is any teacher, it’ll be chock-full of errors. See you at sunny Guantanamo.

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NSA spying around the world
Posted by: mia66 on May 16, 2006 8:42 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There are other ways the NSA et al keep an eye on the world:
NSA's International Spy Stations

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Remember Total Information Awareness?
Posted by: greenman on May 23, 2006 1:46 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It's deja vu all over again. Surely we remember how Total Information Awareness was shot down when it was revealed? It is pretty obvious that the program simply went underground, and now we are seeing it starting to surface. This is standard operating procedure for the Bush gang.

Greenman

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Techno Feudalism: The Child of An Unholy Alliance
Posted by: EileenMac on Jun 6, 2006 6:54 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
BigBiz and BigNanny made an unholy alliance long before the internet was even invented. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us in his farewell speech to the American People on January 17, 1961:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial congressional complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

The President continued:

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

However, although oft-quoted, what most Americans do NOT know is that the original phrase of the speech was "military industrial CONGRESSIONAL complex"! Ike was advised to remove the word "congressional" at the last minute.

However, it is clear that President Eisenhower knew this unholy alliance had already been made between government and the corporate monarchy. He knew that it could ONLY continue to exist and grow if Congress abandoned its responsibilities to We the People, and betrayed their oath of office to "protect and defend the Constitution".

Is it too late to reverse the course of this unholy alliance and return to the protection of our liberties and democratic processes intended by the framers of the Constitution in 1787? Or is this latest chapter of the unholy alliance just the final fulfillment of the birth of a new and dark age of techno-feudalism.

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