Is That All There Is?

There's a long well-written piece over at the now nearly moribund Intercept that informs us that five prominent and well-connected Muslims (or four and and atheist, accounts vary, even within the piece) had their emails intercepted and spied upon by the NSA -- or maybe it was the FBI using technology provided by the NSA, accounts are unclear -- from about 2003 to about 2008, though it's neither clear nor certain when the interception started and whether it has stopped.

What is apparently clear is that the email interception and surveillance happened, and that these five men agreed to be interviewed for the Intercept, and their stories are interesting.

As I say, the article is quite long, some 8,000 words, and there are embedded videos that continue their sagas in some detail. All of these men were and are well connected in the American Muslim community, and most were very well connected with Power. Some were fairly frequent visitors to the White House and one ran for office. The idea that these men were subjected to surveillance -- by having their emails intercepted and read -- is apparently supposed to shock our consciences, as it is patently obvious that these men were not deserving of such scrutiny, even if it was legal, which is not entirely clear. It may well have been legal, but even if it was, these men of all men did not deserve the dishonor and humiliation of being surveilled by the state.

They were and are prominent, important people, you see. Men of substance, gravitas. Leaders among men. High ranking staff of important elected officials. Lawyers. These men, of all men, did not deserve to be treated like the common herd.

Should these men have been exempt from surveillance by reason of their status? That seems to be the upshot of the long anticipated story "naming names."

That only five names are named -- out of a list of several thousand email addresses that was provided by Edward Snowden -- and all of those named are Muslims (or four Muslims and an atheist) has caused something of a stir among the rabble who were so eagerly awaiting the post that would "name names" and be a "fireworks finale" and so on and so forth. Greenwald hyped this thing to the heavens in numerous teevee and print interviews over the past few months, waxing rhapsodic (well, as rhapsodic as he can wax) over the spectacle he was preparing to unleash around the end of June/Fourth of July.

Some of his thunder was stolen by Bart Gellman at the WaPo who wrote -- before the release by the Intercept -- that the NSA actually sweeps up many hundreds of thousands of emails in their surveillance dragnet, and most of them -- more than 90% -- are in no way related to investigations into terrorism or various prioritized criminality. They are "innocents."

Just as Greenwald's named names are.

Of course, in the minds of many Americans, Muslims, per se, are not innocents at all, and the more scrutiny and surveillance they are subjected to, the better. This is pure bigotry in most cases, and the article describes a somewhat astonishing level of crude bigotry that informed the actions of the FBI at the time these men were being surveilled. Good heavens! How unprofessional! Indeed. It was the Cheney era. What does one expect?

Which leads to a consideration of the letdown this supposed "fireworks show" and finale represents for many who have seen it and read it.

If that's truly all there is, it's pretty much a nothing-burger.

Airy but not very nutritious.

Everyone knew, did they not, that American Muslims were being spied upon,  sometimes very intrusively, and in great numbers, said to be justified by the threat they supposedly posed to the good order, peace and security of Regular Americans, thanks in large measure to the attacks on 9/11/2001 which killed several thousand innocents.

Their actual innocence can be disputed, but that's another issue.

The Muslim threat was and is considered real by the malefactors of the State. The threat is not to "innocents"-- the threat is to the State and to the Power of the State.

When Cheney was running things, paranoia was rampant within the government to the point where he ordered a bunker built under his mansion at the Naval Observatory. Thousands were rounded up, protesters were encaged, innocents were rendered and tortured, wars of aggression were ordered and undertaken against peoples who had nothing to do with the attacks, millions have died or been displaced.

That's the legacy of what happened one day in September so many years ago. That's the Cheney legacy, too, for Cheney let it happen -- whether deliberately or not is beside the point. He had and has another priority than the protection and security of the American people: his priority was his own protection and financial well-being and after the attacks, he concerned himself with the protection and security of the State and particularly its executive apparatus.

Anything and everything was fair so long as his priorities were met.

The loyalty he inspired and still inspires within the confines of the Government and its contractors is something of a wonder, especially given the nearly universal contempt with which his ostensible Boss, George Bush, is held.

The five men named and profiled in the long-awaited Intercept report were close to the Bush-Cheney White House, and given the paranoia of the times and the paranoid natures of the men and women in charge in those days, it's no wonder at all that these five men were placed under surveillance. They and many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of others were and are subject to the gentle kindness of State surveillance, on the basis of the lingering paranoia that seems to have wormed its way into the foundations of government today.

By no means were or are Muslims the only targets, any more than the NSA is the only or the primary surveillance outfit.

The problem with Greenwald's reporting on the topic all along has been its narrow focus and its obsession with the NSA. Well, that and the endless hype that leads... essentially nowhere.

The stories, when they are well-written as this one is, are interesting but apart from The Debate, they have led to no substantive positive changes in the surveillance state at all. In fact, the argument can be and has been made that the changes that have taken place and those to come have strengthened and expanded the surveillance state, not weakened it at all. The revelations have mostly been of "things we already knew" at least in broad outline. They've filled in details, but the details simply let us know how very pervasive corporate and government surveillance is. It hasn't provided us with tools to do anything about it; in fact, the revelations have essentially let it be known that "you can't do anything about it." And so, knowing they are under surveillance, Americans are more careful about what they say and what they do, aren't they? And isn't that the point of telling people they are -- or at least could be -- under surveillance?

These revelations serve the State, whether they are intended to or not. And this latest article does the same -- in this case by making clear to American Muslims that there is no exemption for even their highest ranking comrades. They are all considered suspect.

But we knew that, didn't we?

So really, is that all there is?

Then let's keep dancing...

While John Cook Vacations...

Once again, things are getting weird at the "Intercept" where, from its launch in February, the hype is not matched by the content and the comments generally provide more actual news -- even if only aggregates from other outlets -- than the rare published items.

John Cook, who claims to be "editor-in-chief", whatever that means, has been on vacation according to reports and cannot be bothered. He's had nothing to say for months about his editorial obligations, assuming there are any.

One doesn't know.

Greenwald made an apparently ill-advised announcement that the long-awaited story he was (he said) "working on" would be published at midnight one day. It wasn't. Instead, there was a breathless announcement that the story would be held until a new government objection was investigated.

OK. So the WaPo publishes an extensive story that doesn't name names but does reveal the kinds of "inadvertent" collections of information the NSA deals with all the time, pretty much stealing Greenwald's thunder in any case. If he ever does publish his grand finale fireworks show -- looking less and less likely by the day -- will anyone care?

Greenwald continues to defend himself and hurl insults and invective via Twitter -- so at least we know he's alive. And according to reports, he's still on book tour and doing teevee appearances, so there is that.

As for the other staff at the "Intercept," with the exception of Ryan Gallagher, they have been mighty quiet since they nestled under the Omidyar wing. They have been remarkably quiet given their prolific output prior to becoming "Intercept" staff. It's almost as if shutting them up was part of the deal. The only one who hasn't been shut up is Marcy Wheeler, who just keeps cranking stories out like sausages, though she's been mighty quiet about why she left the cozy confines of OmidyarLand back in May.

Turns out Omidyar's people have been busy bees at the White House, however.

No surprise there, I suppose, given the Omidyar penchant for global power plays.

It's been my pet theory that someone at the WH called Pierre, just as the missing Jeremy Scahill teasingly suggested might happen, and asked politely that Greenwald's story -- naming names -- be held for the time being. Pierre, being the power player he is, said "Sure, why not?" and had one of his lieutenants convey the message that there might be a "problem" with one or more of the names so... would Glenn kindly look into it? 'Kthnxbai.

Greenwald's defense has largely been one of "protecting the innocent." So he can't name names without revealing the names of innocents, and that would be wrong. Unless they want their names to be named. And then it would be right. So in order to name the names all 10,000 or 100,000 names he has have to be contacted one by one, and that's ever-so-hard, and it takes a long time, and many of them may be indisposed or otherwise unable or unwilling to respond, so what are you going to do? It's such a terrific responsibility, after all. So maybe the best thing is not to name the names, just remark on the categories of those swept up in NSA collections, but we're already pretty certain of what those categories are, so is there even a story here? One that could qualify as fireworks? Maybe so, maybe not. Well, the WaPo thought there was a story, and they managed to get one out, but Greenwald's story is so much better....

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It is Summer Shark and Missing White Woman season once again, and the Missing Greenwald Story fits right in with the season. The Absent Story is a Summer Story its own self, with dozens of mentions over the last week or so. Google it. And then there's Cryptome's cryptic non-announcement that the whole Snowden trove will be revealed by the end of the month. Or not.

It's Summertime...

About Those Exemptions...

As I think the whole wide world knows by now, Glenn Greenwald's Fireworks Extravaganza, "Naming Names" of those surveilled by the All-Knowing All-Powerful Government through the NSA... fizzled out.

Reminds me of the time we were in Anchorage and stood out on the balcony of our apartment to witness the grand fireworks show that was to culminate the 25th Anniversary of Statehood. Just as the show was to get underway, a fog bank moved in from the bay. The show went on as scheduled. We could hear the booms and from time to time, the fog lit up a little bit, but for the most part... nothing. To say it was somewhat anti-climactic was to be generous.

And so, from Greenwald, et al, there's nothing but fog, not even a glimmer of fireworks, to cap the anniversary of the Snowden NSA revelations.

After more than a year of revelations, there is no legislation worthy of the name that will rein in the surveillance agencies, most people have no idea how extensive the surveillance they're under is and those who do know largely don't care, and people like Greenwald and his sponsors and collaborators are content with demanding exemptions from surveillance for themselves -- the rest of us can pound sand for all they care. Their vaunted "principles" of privacy are only valid among their own kind, a kind to which the vast majority of people do not belong.

Even as anticipation grew regarding the naming of names of those under NSA surveillance, Greenwald was backing off, substituting the kinds of people under NSA surveillance for the names of individuals.

Well, I think most people already know the kinds of people who are subject to scrutiny by governments: they are mostly leftish-wing dissenters from the established order, no? Anyone who might pose an immanent or eventual threat to the powers that be is automatically included. The usual suspects, in other words. For the most part, that does not include right-wing critics at all. It generally doesn't include those who profess libertarian leanings. It usually doesn't include religious wack-jobs either, not after the Waco disaster.

It does include anarchists, liberationists, communitarians, communists, socialists, peace advocates, and practically anyone opposed to fossil or nuclear fuel use/expansion, anyone in favor of animal rights, lgbt rights, or civil or human rights beyond those already provided by Our All-Knowing and All-Powerful Government. Any of the groups that these people may belong to or support are of course subject to routine, intrusive surveillance including infiltration and provocation to violence. Mustn't forget the Muslim hordes, either.

We know this. It's been true for all our lives. The left -- so called -- has always been subjected to intense scrutiny and infiltration by government in this country, for the simple fact that leftist ideology has long been considered a threat to the established order and must therefore be surveilled and when necessary it be suppressed.

The same is true of black folk and brown folk in general, especially when not enfolded into the dominant culture. Black folk and brown folk who get uppity about their place are a problem to be confronted and controlled as are economically deprived white folk. Color matters, but so does wealth and status.

Those who are of sufficient wealth and sufficient status generally -- though not always -- are immune from routine surveillance, arrest, prosecution and conviction, depending on their position within the hierarchy.

Elected representatives of the people, for example, face continual scrutiny by the security apparat, and they can be subjected to criminal arrest and prosecution for even the slightest legal transgression -- though it remains somewhat rare. The more "left" they are, the more likely they are to be rounded up and detained. They know this.

The issue with Greenwald and his sponsors has always been about those exemptions, though. Certain categories of people are typically exempt from surveillance and the potential consequences of surveillance. Exemptions depend largely on wealth and status of individuals and tie-ins with the establishment for groups.

This has been a truism since the founding of the republic.

Greenwald goes on and on about the sacredness of privacy, but it has only ever applied to a few and only to the extent that those few choose. It is not an innately sacred principle, certainly not of the United States of America.

"Privacy" for the masses is a relatively new idea which wouldn't have occurred to the Founders. It would have seemed bizarre and anti-social.

What Greenwald et al demand are exemptions from surveillance to be extended and confirmed for themselves, their friends, family, colleagues and peers. This idea of exemption is based more on theories of lawyer-client privilege, it seems to me, than it is on anything else, and it doesn't really apply to most people, nor would it ever.

In other words, People Like Greenwald -- and those he chooses -- should be exempt; others must fight their own battles, good luck, suckers.

Even if Greenwald does produce a list of NSA targets eventually, the moment has passed for his fireworks display. By the time he gets around to it, maybe at the end of this season of sharks and missing white women, the news cycle will have moved on.

Cryptome is cryptically claiming a complete Snowden Document Dump -- one assumes including the Names -- is coming before the end of July, with or without Greenwald's involvement. It could happen.

Breath holding, however, is not advised.

Double Helping of Ick

Last night I had more on my mind than listening to a double helping of Ick on the television. Maya Angelou was dead, and I was more moved by her passing than I thought I would be. In trying to compose something of a memorial, many memories were triggered, both of her and of times gone by. She represented something that had the power of good, I think. A curative, even a cleansing power.

But then the teevee was dominated last night not by thoughts or memories of Maya Angelou, not by any mention of her come to think of it -- though there must have been and I missed it -- but by two rather bizarre appearances or apparitions, one on Charlie Rose of the execrable Victoria Nuland-Kagan, in which she went on and on about all the "opportunities" Russia has "missed" to join "the community of nations," the other, of Edward Snowden canoodling with Brian Williams in Moscow (cameo by Glenn Greenwald) that seemed like yet another scripted sales pitch -- or training lecture -- from this man.

I found I was not able to listen to either of them closely. Their words and their bearing struck me as false from the get-go, in Nuland's case partly because of her artificially courtly "diplo-speak" and her distracting hand movements and her constant pushing/catapulting the propaganda; in Snowden's case because of his apparent forthrightness that I've seen too often among government types, a forthrightness that masks layers of lies, deceptions and sub-rosa threats. I said at one point to Ms Ché, "I find I don't believe a word this man is saying."

Both had foils. Nuland's was not Charlie Rose, who was on vacation or something, but the New Yorker's David Remnik who actually comes at the topic of Ukraine and Russia from a position of (some) knowledge, having been the Washington Post's Moscow Bureau Chief during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, understanding and speaking Russian, and personally knowing some of the players on the current Russian/Ukrainian stage including Vladimir Vladimirovich. Remnick wasn't necessarily gentle with Nuland-Kagan. He challenged a few of her daft notions about Ukraine and Poroshenko and Russia's "invasion." She was able to parry by fluttering her hands and arching her brow at his temerity, but as I say, he knows something about what's going on and who the players are. She can't bullshit him the way she can bamboozle Congressmembers, for example. But when he had the advantage over her, he didn't pursue it, no doubt in order to preserve Charlie Rose's access to her and her ilk in the future. Challenging her lies last night was not worth upsetting that applecart.

Brian Williams and NBC had been shamelessly teasing and promoting last night's apparition of Young Snowden for a week, the final tease before the reveal being the statement by Snowden that he was "trained as a spy" by the CIA. Something that has been disputed by former CIA operatives, one of whom is featured in the video clip I posted yesterday. "Everybody" is supposed to have been talking about Snowden last night, at least according to Williams and NBC, as if somehow this hasn't (quite) become a stale story, its sell-by date having long passed.

I was rude last year by calling it a "Summer Shark and Missing White Boy" Story, not really "news" at all, more an entertainment for those so inclined to fill the summer news hole. It was marketed exactly like every other Summer Shark story had been for years, and its content was almost as slight. We knew about the presence of sharks in the water -- and most of us knew it was fairly rare for anyone to be bitten. We knew that people, mostly white and mostly women, went missing sometimes, and finding them or finding out what happened to them was constant summer news fare (remember Chandra Levy?)

We knew too, or at least we should have, that there was a vast and growing corporate-government surveillance state that could and did track our lives online, in intimate detail. Many of us knew that "assurances of privacy" were bullshit on stilts. Not that necessarily anyone in a position to do anything about it cared a whit about what you were doing or saying online.

We knew, or we should have, that cell-phones were essentially radio transmitters and communications via cell-phone are easy for government and corporate droogs to intercept and analyze if they should care to.

We knew, or we should have, that elements of the corporate sector and the government keep voluminous dossiers on every single one of us they can find.

The Snowden Trove offered up some of the details of how the NSA, seemingly in a vacuum, accomplishes some of this domestic and overseas surveillance, and as I pointed out over and over again, the NSA is hardly the most important or pervasive factor in domestic surveillance, that we are being watched by layers and layers of corporate and government surveillance entities (there is often no difference), and the obsessive focus on the NSA alone is and was counterproductive -- assuming anyone actually wanted to do anything about domestic surveillance overreach. Initially, but for a few voices on the margins, there was no mention at all of the intricate interweb of surveillance we are subject to. It was all NSA, all the time.

Later, as the summer faded and the story seemed to languish, mention now and then was made of the way Google and Facebook and other corporate players collect and analyze mountains of data on users and non-users alike -- and how they share this information with the government. When Omidyar entered the picture, there came some stories about how he and his companies, especially eBay and PayPal, are intimately interconnected with government and law enforcement, how he is personally no stranger to the White House, and how his companies' surveillance of users and their data is interlinked with government surveillance activities.

It took quite a while, but eventually, it was pointed out in the mass media that the surveillance state is pervasive, and surveillance data is widely shared between all kinds of public and private agencies and interests, not solely by law enforcement, either.

So here's Young Snowden in a sit-down at an Unnamed Moscow Hotel with Brian Williams, flogging the NSA story once again, and supplementing it with his personal saga of a man on a mission, still working for the US Government, and a patriot to the core.

Of course, Greenwald has a book out, and that seems to be the impetus to a whole lot of these stories, but Greenwald -- though his book was flogged briefly during a segment -- was definitely the bit player in this drama. He was barely there at all.

I found myself not listening to Snowden much of the time, in part because his delivery is so artificial and scripted. I recognized the style of his presentation right off, back in the Summer Shark period, as that of a government trainer, which Snowden says he had been for the DIA (a fact that wasn't widely known until recently). As a trainer, you learn -- or you read -- a training script and you deliver it the same way every time. Pausing for questions, you answer carefully, conscious that what you say needs to reinforce rather than refute the script, and if the script is factually in error, you make note of it and pass that on to your superiors, you do not make an issue of it with the trainees, and certainly not with the public.

That was his initial style, that is his current style. I call it a sales pitch because in essence, that's what it is. As a government trainer you are selling a product: the correct way to do things according to the standards and procedures of your agency.

The fact that Snowden adheres to this style of presentation rigorously despite the fact that he is supposedly this great and amazing whistleblower has always disconcerted me. It's as if there is no "real" person there at all, almost as if he's a robot of some sort -- which in fact he has been during some of his presentations. What he has to say is almost identical in every apparition, there is no deviation from the script, and his personal narrative has been cobbled together and is maintained with great rigor. That as they say is that. Who knows whether any of that narrative Snowden presents is true or not? Much of it is disputed by those who ought to know, but they're in a strange position vis a vis Snowden in that they may "know" but they can't truthfully "say." There is little dispute over the veracity of the material from the NSA trove that's been released so far, though interpretations may vary somewhat. But the tale Snowden tells of himself -- which is a big part of the narrative -- is murky at best.

For his part, Brian Williams was soft-balling the entire time, following a script of his own. It was almost as if the whole encounter had been carefully rehearsed beforehand. Maybe it was, I don't know. But Williams broke no new ground, and he did not challenge Snowden's narrative.  In fact, he constantly reinforced it.

Perhaps the worst thing about both the Nuland-Kagan and Snowden appearances last night is the "normalization" factor. They were conditioning exercises -- among so many we're subjected to these days. They weren't illuminating, they were normalizing a kind of monstrousness. Monstrousness in terms of American international relations with Russia, Europe, and the Ukraine. Monstrousness in terms of the Surveillance State which we're immersed in and which Snowden says he wants to "improve."

The media served the role of courtier in both interviews, more so in the case of Snowden. At least Remnik challenged some of Nuland's bullshit. Williams never challenged Snowden's -- or Greenwald's for that matter.

We the Rabble are just supposed to believe, I guess, and henceforward never question unless given leave to do so by our betters.

Sickening. And more than a little bit frightening...

The Snowden Thing As Farce -- or Is It All An Elaborate Hoax?

Mark your calendars and put stars by it! Young Snowden gives his First American Interview (whut?) Exclusively to NBC and Brian Williams tonight!!!!! at 10pm Eastern Time, 9pm Central, wherein he reveals that he's a fricking CIA Spy!!!!  Bet you never imagined that!!!!

Let chaos and confusion reign!

From the outset of the Snowden Thing, I've suspected that it could be a hit on the NSA by the CIA, done in order to establish Security State pre-eminence. Throughout, it seemed that the NSA was being held up to ridicule and contempt within the Spy-State and Government, while the CIA -- which actually performs a lot of the surveillance and wet-work going on in the world -- got an entirely free pass.

This was made clear as crystal when both the #1 (Keith Alexander, Starfleet Commander) and the #2 (John "BigBooté" Inglis) were forced out of the Agency through early retirements. Meanwhile John Brennan at CIA and James Clapper, DNI, went on and on, despite their appalling lies and dissimulations. It didn't matter -- for them -- what they did or said in public. Only Alexander and Inglis were made to pay for the Snowden revelations, which were of course focused on NSA information gathering, mostly signals intelligence... which was done for the military, for the CIA, for the DEA, for the FBI, for the DHS and for god-knows-who-all.

Anybody with enough clout, it seems, could become a "customer" or "client" of the NSA.

Good to know.

"Out of control..." is the appropriate way to look at it. Indeed, the term was repeated over and over again. The NSA was out of control, and there was no effective oversight from any quarter, and Oh, didja know that this Alexander mook is kinda whack? Didja see his Starfleet Center? Never mind that it was ordered up by Hayden, Alexander's predecessor, who was then assigned to CIA.


Jeebus.

Let's be clear. NBC is a CIA conduit, as is the New York Times and WaPo, indeed as is most all of the mainstream -- and a good deal of the alternative -- media.

We've known this, haven't we, for a long-long-long time, but since we don't have an abundance of non-compromised news sources -- much as Soviet citizens didn't have much in the way of non-government news sources back in the day -- we let the knowledge of the propaganda we're constantly exposed to percolate in the backs of our minds, and we pay attention to those parts of the mainstream and mass media that 1) confirm our biases; or 2) entertain and amuse us.

"Truth" is not really an element of the process, because "truth" is subjective -- at least so it seems in the post-modern world.

So the fact is, we have no way of knowing what's "true" and what's not with regard to Snowden's story or Greenwald's story or really anyone's story when it comes to this matter. It's clear that a narrative has been constructed which the very makers of that narrative then jiggle and even shatter from time to time to induce cognitive dissonance. Lies? Some of it, sure. Deceptions? Certainly, why not? Story-telling, marketing, and above all drama? You got it.

Most people have not been able to use the knowledge they've gained from the Snowden Affair for any practical purpose. There is no sign whatsoever that the revelations have caused any part of the Surveillance/Security State to back off the people. All they've done is make some adjustments regarding precedence and priorities with regard to their corporate partners.

Apart from that?

Not much. Really not anything.

We are just as surveilled as ever, if not more so. The systems performing the surveillance get ever more sophisticated. And the transparency of those systems is ever more occluded.

But we've had quite a debate, haven't we? Who's the Top Dog is now settled. Right?

Pfft.

Trusting Greenwald??!

I understand Glenn Greenwald has a new book out which can be seen as the capstone of the long-term project he's been undertaking to have his voice heard at the highest levels of government and corporate board rooms.

It would appear they're listening now.

To what object may still be something of a mystery, but an overall goal, beyond being "heard" has never been entirely clear with Greenwald. "Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person!" Yes, well...

It would appear he got his wish. The toast of the town, he is, at least for now, wined and dined among the highest of the mighty, with abundant accolades, prizes and gravitas besides. He is someone now, and that seems to be what he's wanted more than anything all along. To be known, to be recognized, to be honored, and more than anything, to be reckoned with.

His personal toxicity aside, Greenwald has actually accomplished quite a feat. He's managed to rise to the top of the profession of journalism primarily by means of the NSA scoop, not through any particular writing talent, understanding of the issues, or ability to tell a cohesive and compelling story. His writing throughout has been one of his weaker aspects, as much of what he writes unedited reads like a legal brief rather than news, and it became clear to me (if to no one else) that the NSA articles he was bylined for the Guardian were heavily edited by someone or someones into something more "journalistic" before publication. In fact, in the end, they didn't read like they had been written by him at all, whether or not he shared a byline with someone else.

Those many others who helped make Greenwald's meteoric rise as a journalist possible have been essentially "disappeared." This is most telling in the case of Ewen MacCaskill of the Guardian who, along with quite a few others at that institution, have essentially vanished in the marketing and tale-telling surrounding the NSA scoop. MacCaskill was awarded a Polk for his work on the NSA stories, but you'd never know it to listen to the current hagiography surrounding the "biggest story of the first half of the 21st Century" -- or however it's being marketed these days. This was made painfully obvious in Amy Goodman's coverage of the Polk Awards and Greenwald's prodigal return to the USofA from his exile in Brazil. Amy, in a nearly Stalinist propaganda move, literally erased MacCaskill from the record of the Polk Award, and ever since has barely mentioned him at all. Yet he was apparently the old-hand journalist who was sent by the Guardian to accompany Greenwald and Poitras to Hong Kong to vet Young Snowden's validity, and so far as I can tell, MacCaskill was the one who edited and co-wrote the original stories that appeared in the Guardian.

Also, there is a widespread claim that Greenwald "won a Pulitzer" -- when he specifically did not. The papers that initially published the NSA stories (the Guardian and the Washington Post) won the Pulitzer Public Service Award -- which only goes to institutions, not to individuals. But in the telling of the story of the Pulitzer Prize for the NSA stories, the nearly universal convention among Greenwald's acolytes is to claim he (sometimes he and Laura Poitras) won the Pulitzer themselves as individuals, when they clearly did not.

There's another actor in this drama, Bart Gellman for the Washington Post, who has written some of the most incisive investigative reports on the NSA documents. Gellman is also part of the team -- that's not really a team at all, it would appear -- who was given access to the Snowden Trove at the outset of the undertaking. He's a long-time serious journalist whose work is well-respected within the profession. Thus, apparently, he has to be essentially disappeared as well from the received narrative of Greenwald's intrepidness and daring.

Ah yes, and about that daring... One of the primary themes in Greenwald's narrative of himself has been his trembling fear and anger at the perfidy of the National Security State's potential to arrest him and throw him "in a cage" for being a journalist, because high-ranking individuals in Congress have suggested as much and the lawyers at DoJ wouldn't assure his lawyers that he wouldn't be arrested if he returned to the USofA. Same with Laura Poitras who lives in Berlin.

So, quaking with fear of being arrested and rendered for torture to some demonic foreign land, Greenwald and Poitras sat in exile in Rio and Berlin respectively (though apparently they traveled fairly extensively during the interim, just not to the United States or Britain) until such time as they were awarded the Polk and determined to return like prodigals to the US and to dare the authorities to do anything about it.

Of course, the authorities paid no attention to them, any more than they would to anyone else, and their breathlessly awaited return went off without a hitch. No one in a position to do anything about their arrival in the USofA let alone render them seemed to care.

And so it has been ever since, as Greenwald has embarked on a nationwide book tour, unmolested, and Poitras, well, who knows what's happened to her? She is like a wraith, appearing and disappearing at will, offering stern and sturdy perspectives now and again, but more often she is referred to but neither seen nor heard from.

And Snowden? So far as we know, Snowden is still comfortably ensconced as a resident guest of the Kremlin, in what appear to be very nice digs, somewhere in Moscow or its environs. He has "given up so much" -- and yet seems to be well provided for and happy enough in his Russian exile, able to "appear" pretty much whenever he wants to and wherever he wants to via electronic means, including (notoriously) during Vladimir Putin's annual call in show on Russian television.

It was a notorious appearance not so much because of what Snowden had to say, which was relatively innocuous, but because of the relentlessness of the anti-Russian/anti-Putin propaganda campaign that's been waged by all the capitals of the West for many months now. For Snowden to appear "with" Putin (even if only electronically and recorded at that) was yet another emblem of his supposed "treason."

Snowden doesn't get as many awards as Greenwald, doesn't have a book, isn't -- so far as we know -- profiting from any of this hoo-hah, though he seems to enjoy at least some modest luxury and apparently some freedom of movement while he is a guest of the Kremlin. There have been many stories about his life in the US and as an international spy or perhaps not a spy but a genius at IT matters, or perhaps... the stories are legion. What's true and what's not is open to speculation. There are significant portions of the received narrative that don't fit, but that's another issue for another day. The only question I would ask right now is what Snowden is actually doing in Moscow, as there have been a number of reports that he has been hired by one or another private Russian enterprise as an IT consultant. If it's true, it might be interesting to find out more, but when it comes to Snowden, fact and fiction are so intermingled, the real story is pretty much unknowable -- at least not until the book comes out and the movie is released. Even then, mystery will no doubt continue to abound.

But speaking of Snowden... one thing that was very intriguing to me (though it may not mean anything) is that Snowden was living in Hawaii -- allegedly with his high-class artistic stripper girlfriend -- while he was acquiring the data trove from the NSA through his private contractor employment with Booz Allen Hamilton. Now of course this is the story; we don't know that it is true, and we will probably never be able to know for sure given the nature of spycraft and all...

At any rate, assuming it's true, Snowden was living comfortably in Hawaii, acquiring his NSA data clandestinely while a few miles away, Pierre Omidyar was also living in Honolulu, taking care of his many far-flung projects. Projects, in the Islands, on the Mainland, and well, let's face it... all over the world, including the soon-to-erupt in revolt and civil war Ukraine. Oh yes, Pierre has his fingers in many ((MANY)) pies simultaneously. And he's not shy about it, either. He's one of the richest men in the world and he uses his wealth for whatever objective he has in mind, whether it is educating the masses in Ukraine about the wonders of European Democratic Capitalism (or is it Fascism?), or building luxury condos on unspoiled Hawaiian beaches, or getting into the lucrative micro loan business on the ground floor and making out like a bandit.

Oh but there's more. As far as I know, Pierre lives primarily in Hawaii, though he has a number of homes in United States and apparently in Europe as well.

I'm given to understand he is financially involved with Booz Allen through interlocking boards, and his PayPal subsidiary of eBay is apparently closely tied in with NSA and law enforcement at all levels all over the world. One assumes that eBay is just as closely linked with these contractor, surveillance and law enforcement outfits as PayPal is. Then of course, there's the whole PayPal14 imbroglio which dogs both Pierre and Greenwald.

Pierre owns a news outlet in Hawaii which focuses on aspects of corruption as seen through a particular lens. (There's a similar outfit in New Mexico, though it has a much lower profile and is not, so far as I know, an Omidyar project.) That lens is essentially libertarian.

At some point around the time that Young Snowden went to work for Booz Allen in Hawaii, Pierre was taking the initial steps to form First Look Media, the umbrella under which he has placed a rather impressive stable of journalists -- including, of course, Greenwald and Poitras, whose Snowden docs are their principal claim to fame ...and fortune.

It's been pointed out by some observers that once Pierre's stable was essentially filled with formerly prolific journalists, their output declined, and for some it came to a screeching halt. In other words, going to work for Omidyar meant... silence, or nearly so.

"Transformative media" indeed. When you think about it, saying and publishing nothing on a regular basis can be just as "transformative" as anything else. It's all in the way you look at it, no?

Or in the case of The Intercept, Greenwald's personal fief under the First Look umbrella, "nothing" has been accompanied by fluff, nonsense, and occasional bursts of interesting stories of Surveillance State operations both here and abroad, but without any indication of how or whether they can be controlled, curbed or thwarted.

Of course the lack of any idea of what could or should be done about the All-Pervading and All-Knowing Surveillance State has been a consistent theme in the revelations to date. The world is to know in substantial detail about the surveillance they are under, but they are not, ever, to imagine anything can be done about it. Knowing about it without the ability to thwart it is an Orwellian means of control.

When this was pointed out by Naomi Wolf so long ago now, back in June of last year, she was viciously attacked by some of those who saw her questions about the purpose of what were then called the Snowden leaks as some kind of uncalled-for assault on Snowden and/or Greenwald, no doubt set up by the NSA. Or something. No, she had it right. Knowing that there was mass surveillance going on, without the ability to do anything about it, was and is a means of controlling the behavior of the population; it works quite well, as those who have lived under such conditions can tell you.

One of the keys to understanding the NSA Surveillance is the fact that nothing has been done about it -- and the implication is that nothing can be done about it. Greenwald has shown an interest in gaining exemptions from blanket surveillance for certain categories of people, such as journalists like him, but y no means has he shown an interest in undermining the Surveillance State itself, any more than Snowden has.

Well, it's not entirely accurate to say that "nothing has been done about it." Because something most definitely has been done: The #1 and #2 at NSA were... "retired" under pressure. In other words, they were forced out, though it was with great good will, of course. Policies have been (they say) revised to better attend to the privacy interests of the public, and there has been a good deal more "transparency" about the surveillance programs under way. Further, there are a number of efforts at beginning "reform" of the NSA to enable more oversight of its surveillance activities.

Cool.

So there is that.

Meanwhile, Greenwald seems quite delighted with himself and has even taken to being somewhat less abrasive and contemptuous of others in his public appearances (which are legion). He's explained that his antagonistic and sometimes over the top assholitry/performances in public were meant to propel him into the limelight sufficiently to be heard -- apparently in the mainstream, where he seemingly wanted to be.

Well, he's heard nowadays, but what does he really have to say?

There are those who say that Greenwald is one of the few journalists -- or the only journalist -- they trust.  As far as I can tell, Greenwald is as trustworthy as most others in the field -- which is to say, somewhat, though never absolutely. Critical thinking is necessary no matter who the messenger is. Greenwald has established a place in the firmament, but neither he nor anyone else in that field should be granted blanket trust. His narrative on the Snowden matter is filled with gaps and contradictions, and his stories about it are just that, stories. Take them for what they are worth, but don't take them on faith.

It seems so obvious, and yet the desire for a heroic figure is strong. As conditions get worse for so many, the need for a heroic figure grows stronger.

Many have placed their faith and trust in Greenwald.

Some have felt betrayed by him for various reasons, others feel rewarded to bask in his reflected glory.

But in the end, we're still pretty much in the same place we were vis a vis the Surveillance State. We know a bit more about it now, but we don't have the ability to control it or to thwart it, nor does Greenwald have any intention to provide that kind of control.

Even if we were able to have some measure of control over the government's surveillance activities, there is still the little matter of corporate surveillance which is even more pervasive and intrusive than that of the state. In other words, even if we we were able to tie a rope around the All-Knowing, All-Pervading Surveillance State, it would still go on, unimpeded, through its many corporate partners.

So what ultimately has been accomplished?

And what do we want to accomplish?

A Good Explanation of Why the Focus on Snowden and the NSA Doesn't Tell Us Much About the National Surveillance/Security State

Tom Englehardt at The Nation.

First Look Launches "The Intercept"

Kinda low-key launch, it seems to me, for the Big Reveal of the Greenwald/Poitras/Scahill venture under "Pierre's" wing at First Look Media.

There are two stories and a "welcome" post in this initial effort.

One story consists of nightime pictures of some of the NatSec facilities in the DC area, apparently taken from a rented helicopter by Trevor Paglen. They're kind of pretty, though they primarily show parking lots. Well, yes. That would be right. Even the daytime pictures of NatSec facilities primarily show parking lots. And (believe it or not) you have to have a permit/pass to get into them. The parking lots themselves, which tend to surround the facilities, serve as barriers to access (by those who are unauthorized, dontchaknow). But Paglen doesn't get in to any of that, he just wants to show the pretty pictures, and the pictures are nice, make no mistake. It's good to be able to visualize these places. One place he doesn't show, however, is the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. Apparently, CIA refused him permission to photograph the facility from his rented helicopter. Luckily, there is no lack of imagery available on the Google.

The other story is about the NSA's provision of targeting information to JSOC and drone operators in various "war" theaters used for liquidating terrorist suspects. Though bylined Greenwald and Scahill, it's obviously mostly Scahill's writing. A bit of it may be Greenwald's, but I doubt very much of it is.

The story is interesting on its merits, but it's got some problems, a major one in my view being its failure to question JSOC's mission -- and the policies of assassination and murder, only the tactics and the reliance on sometimes erroneous intelligence from the NSA. In addition to failing to question JSOC's mission, the story uses terminology which declares targets "terrorists" without questioning that designation. There are some uses of scare quotes from time to time in this very long and detailed article (something like Jeremy might have written for the Nation when time was and which is certainly reminiscent of "Dirty Wars"), which may present the appearance of questioning the standard, official terminology, but in fact, there is never a question about the terminology, only the expression of regret that "mistakes are sometimes made." OK, then.

Finally, I was initially struck by the near absence of any mention of the CIA in this story. They are referred to, but only in passing, early on in the story, as if the CIA is a branch of the military, when in fact, of course, the NSA is the branch of the military which is charged with supplying military intelligence. 

It's long been my understanding that many of the targeted killing/Death From Above program(s) involve the CIA, and more than a few are run independently by the Company itself, but what I got from the initial paragraphs othat CIA involvement in these things is peripheral, and that's just not right.

I have little doubt Jeremy is aware of that fact. But in "Dirty Wars," he claimed that even after being in Iraq for three years, he'd never heard of JSOC, and didn't learn of it until he got to Afghanistan, even though JSOC was carrying out a vicious campaign of terror and murder in Iraq right in front of his disbelieving eyes while he was there. It seemed to me that he was being deliberately disingenuous or deceptive about what he knew and didn't know, as there was no lack of reportage regarding the Death Squads in Iraq (I think some of that reporting came from Jeremy himself) nor was there any lack of reporting naming JSOC as the Valiant American Lead in establishing and carrying out the campaigns of terror and murder that wracked Iraq for years during the American Occupation.

As I got further into the article, however, suddenly the CIA appears (deus ex machina-like) out of nowhere taking over the hunt for al-Awlaki in the Yemen when JSOC fails to find and liquidate him. OK. Prior to that, it seems that the CIA is merely along for the ride provided by the NSA and JSOC. Interestingly, one of the sources for the story, Brandon Bryant, a former drone operator, criticizes the CIA for its "indiscriminate" targeting for liquidation, and he frets that CIA practices are afflicting the NSA and JSOC operations. Good doG in heaven...

There are also a number of stand-alone graphics in the piece which are for the most part not identified as to source or provenance. They appear to be selected quotes from Snowden-trove documents, but who knows...

In the "welcome" article -- rather obviously written by Greenwald, though bylined Greenwald, Poitras and Scahill -- we are treated to a recapitulation of most of the tropes about "accountability and transparency" we've been hearing from Greenwald for years. The initial focus on the NSA is excused as the "short-term" focus; eventually, "The Intercept" will be getting into other matters. Patience, grasshopper.

The article strongly suggests that "The Intercept" is an independent project of Greenwald, Poitras (the Invisible One) and Scahill that is merely being published by First Look Media. The implication is that "The Intercept" pre-dates First Look/Omidyar involvement, and if so, that's interesting, since apparently First Look Media's incorporation pre-dates Snowden's Booz Allen sojourn. (Which led me to speculate that -- perhaps -- Snowden and Omidyar had some connection in Hawaii -- where Omidyar lives and Snowden used to live before the Big HooHah -- prior to Snowden's contact with Poitras and Greenwald. Oh, what tangled webs, wheels within wheels, etc...)

Interesting too is Greenwald's nearly obsessive focus on the "threats" made against him and "journalism" by so many officials.

 Over the past seven months the journalists who have reported on these documents from the National Security Agency have been repeatedly threatened by a wide range of government officials. Sometimes, the intimidation campaign has gone beyond mere threats. These attempted intimidation tactics have intensified in recent weeks and have become clearly more concerted and coordinated.

This is one of his tropes, and it has always struck me as... well, crap. Though "Show Business" is probably more like it. These constantly hyped "threats" have never had any substance behind them. So Mike Rogers is running his mouth. Big. Fucking. Deal. Unlike HUAC and other governmental operations -- both current and historical -- Rogers and Feinstein and so on have no direct power to harm him or "journalism" as a trade and craft. They run their mouths -- it's part of their job.

Just as Greenwald sees it as his crusade to be the modern embodiment of Old Testament Prophets and thunder against them. It's Show Business.

Greenwald also asserts that the principals of "The Intercept" will engage with readers in the comment section, but among the more than 150 comments to the "welcome" post, Greenwald is the only one who does so, and it is only to acknowledge two "long-time" commenters and readers who have arrived to hail the new venture.

Many of the other commenters are clearly writing English as a second language, which is also interesting.

All in all, "The Intercept" strikes me as a surprisingly modest undertaking which may turn into something substantial over time -- or may fizzle out once the thrill of the NSA revelations is gone.

We shall see.
--------------------------------------------
UPDATE: 02/12/14
Froomkin now has a post up at "The Intercept" basically rehashing Jeremy's post and pretty much everything else that's been reported about the Snowden Trove to date. In it, Froomkin, like Scahill, does not question the policies only the tactics involved. Clearly the failure to question the policies of the drone wars and so much else in these initial posts at the "Intercept" is a conscious editorial decision, not a temporary lapse -- as some have tried to claim. On the other hand, given that everything "The Intercept" has so far published is "old news" (or in the case of the nighttime pictures of NatSec facilities, somewhat of a distraction) and there are no documents yet posted at all -- though unlabeled excerpts (from somewhere) are included in Jeremy's post -- it's little wonder some people suspect "The Intercept" is a bad joke. I wouldn't go that far, simply because the startup is as slow as it is, and there is much still to sort out (including clashing egos, I have no doubt.) There's still the question, too, of what kind of influence, if any, "Pierre" has on the venture. To say he has none would be, I think, criminally naive. But how much he may have is an open question. Meanwhile, I had my doubts this thing would launch at all, in part due to those inevitable ego-clashes. So I was wrong about that. Nevertheless, the launch is so low-key as to be practically mute. The "news" is old, the documents are not there, and the feel overall is pretty amateur and clunky.

Given all that, it may be strange to see me say, "It would be nice if it worked." But that's how I feel. I'd rather it didn't fail, but unless something happens to goose it up, I suspect it's not going to amount to very much. A digital hang-out, perhaps, and a blog-home for some writers...
 ------------------------------------------
UPDATE: 02/11/14
Now having looked over the story again -- it is awfully long and in places quite dense -- and after having seen Jeremy's performance on Democracy Now! yesterday, I may be seeing a rationale for Jeremy's reluctance to question (in the "Intercept" story) the policies or the terminologies involved. In fact, as he has many times before, in his Democracy Now! appearance, he did question the policies -- and terminology -- and did so quite forcefully, as has previously been his way. It was rather striking to me that he didn't do so in his inaugural effort for "The Intercept,"  though. Why didn't he? Perhaps because of the function of the site? Is it to attack policies? Or is it to attack players on behalf of opposing factions?

Quite a few people are convinced that the Snowden Leak is a two fold matter: 1) a limited hangout to demonstrate to the public that they are "being watched" by some nefarious agency/agents of government, and they better not get out of line or "the man come and take them away"; 2) a hit by the CIA on the NSA for fucking up and fucking them over.  There is nothing at all in Jeremy's story to refute either notion; in fact, it reinforces both. The message is that your cell phone is a tracking and locating device which the surveillance services can use to locate you and -- if  so ordered -- liquidate you by any means necessary, and that the security services (ie: police, CIA, military, death squads, who knows who else?) will cheerfully carry out your liquidation, even if they are wrong.

Have a nice day.




------------------------------------------

Also too: the comment count on Jeremy's drone story went from 37 or something this morning to well over 200 in the space of a couple of hours, after Greenwald's commentariat (and their numerous sock-puppets) arrived en masse. In fact, it was pretty easy to spot the bot-comments and the socks because they all said approximately the same thing (essentially nothing except "Congrats!"). Adding: Later, they got into brawls and arguments with one another, as they tended to do at the Guardian and Salon.

Over at the Guardian they could get the comment count up into the thousands in a day's time.

We'll see whether they are able to do that here.

-------------------------------------------

Further on the comments: the numbers are quickly rising, but the caliber of  commentary has declined precipitously, mostly into the weeds of conspiracy, insults, and complete bullshit. Inevitable, I suppose...

Strange...

Greenwald has said (December, 2013, via his very active Twitter account) that the purpose for the knowledge of the panopticon which he and Young Snowden and the others have been at some pains to reveal to the shocked and disbelieving world is to ensure and enforce conformity.... as was pointed out by George Orwell in "1984" and which was what Naomi Wolf said back in June of last year was her instinct about why the these revelations were being made in the way they were. She was pilloried for daring to raise questions about the motives and methods of those who were so prominent in this story and for pointing out the obviousness of some of it. To quote Wolf in June, 2013:

d) It is actually in the Police State’s interest to let everyone know that everything you write or say everywhere is being surveilled, and that awful things happen to people who challenge this. Which is why I am not surprised that now he is on UK no-fly lists – I assume the end of this story is that we will all have a lesson in terrible things that happen to whistleblowers. That could be because he is a real guy who gets in trouble; but it would be as useful to the police state if he is a fake guy who gets in ‘trouble.’

 Further, there have been recent headlines regarding the urge some outspoken members of the "intelligence" community (sometimes an oxymoron) have to "put a bullet" in Snowden's head. This recent headline grabbing exactly parallels the ArsTechnica examination of Snowden's online persona prior to his revelatory reconception.

Now that the President Has Spoken regarding "reform" of the NSA, and it is obvious to all sentient beings that there will and can be no substantive reforms of such an agency, it appears that the "debate" Snowden, Greenwald, et al, wished to instigate has concluded.

Those who questioned were correct. But it doesn't matter. Nothing (much) has changed, but now we know with perfect certainty that we can be watched at any time by those Machines of Loving Grace... and so, if we know what's good for us, we will conform and behave. Which is the whole point of letting us know about the watching and the watchers.

Those who denounced the questioners are left to ponder what's next on the agenda...

Let Us Reason Together -- Competing Propagandas (or "Blame Bernays") (6)

One of our constant problems as Americans -- as humans trying to muddle through somehow and as participants in our own Fate -- is the persistence and predominance of propaganda in practically every aspect of our social and political lives.

Propaganda.

We are exposed to it all the time, through constant advertising, through the entire entertainment realm and much of the academic realm, through the yapping and yammering of "balanced news" broadcasts and opinion writinh, and through the many elements of the Alternative "News" business. Don't even get started on the "elections industry" and their cadres of consultants and pollsters and what have you.

We are seeing such an explosion of competing propagandas over such a wide variety of issues these days, from abortion to domestic and international surveillance, to climate science, to the situation at Fukushima Daiichi, and on and on.

There is much smoke but little -- and often no -- light. At times, every topic seems to be the exclusive purview of propagandists, polemicists and provocateurs. It's little wonder so many people tune it out.

Most people seem to have become inured to propaganda and propagandists and it's understandable that they rarely bother to hack their way through the thickets toward some kind of truth. Instead, as intended, they either ignore it all or they adopt one or another of the competing positions as the functional equivalent of "truth" and go forth, oblivious to any fact contrary to their belief.

In some cases, one is all but required to adopt a side in a controversy and root for one's team in the supposed "marketplace of ideas." And if no side is arguing anything approaching "truth," but all sides are mired in falsehood or irrelevancy, what is one to do?

Obviously, such a one cannot be allowed to play.

Edward Bernays figured this all out generations ago, and our "marketplace of ideas" is one of his many questionable legacies.

The level of propaganda -- and competing propagandas -- we're mired in becomes very obvious when something like the Summer NSA Story hits the "marketplace." There is almost no truth or objectivity in the story, though apparently a good deal of the relatively few documents so far released are authentic enough. The story, however, has all the elements of a spy thriller novel or movie, tailor made to sell a product on the one hand, and to develop loyalties to a team on the other. Much heat, very little light.

As intended.

Let's face it, "reality" is often enough a created fiction. We get mired in these fictions, which we think of at least temporarily as "reality." But they are created, they come out of a shop, quite a cynical shop in many cases, and they are not in any objective sense "real." The Snowden/NSA Story is one of those creations, I have no doubt. What is really going on will probably remain an Inscrutable Mystery for the rest of my life, but the outlines of what may be taking place on the backchannels is fairly clear.

The NSA is having its wings clipped. It isn't being destroyed or nor is its primary work being interfered with. Instead, it is being exposed (as it has been before) by an insider -- peripheral though he may have technically been -- for its gross overreach of mission, an overreach that is being marketed as "The NSA is Spying On You; the NSA is Spying on Everyone!!!!!™ Well. Yes. And?

We knew this. Some of us knew that there are multiple layers of surveillance on practically everyone in the whole wide world, and it has been so for many, many years. We live in a surveillance society, and we know that this surveillance has only increased -- massively -- by law and practice since the events of 9/11/2001, which "changed everything." Yes, we know.

Having documentary proof that it is so is little more than gilding the lily. We now know the names of some of the programs and have (perhaps) seen sketches or charts of how they are organized and what sort of hardware/software may be employed. This is important historical knowledge for those who seek means and methods of thwarting some of this surveillance. It is historical in that what is in place and operating currently may well be quite different than what has been exposed, and it is knowledge useful only to a few adepts. And from what I've heard, they are complaining because the "knowledge" we've been given is far from sufficient to do anything about the surveillance tactics being employed. In other words, it appears that what we've been told is only enough to whip up OUTRAGE!!!!™, not even close to enough to thwart the surveillance/security apparat.

OK then. Every day that goes by, the hoard of material Snowden took with him becomes less and less current and timely. Much of what has been revealed was already many years old, and everything in the Snowden Hoard ages by the minute.

But even as history, the People should know what has been done to them, what has been done in their names, and who the major players are. We don't have more than a hint -- we've never had much more than that -- even after months and months of "revelations" and hot-as-the-sun debate and controversy over them.

That is a function of propaganda. There may be all kinds of truth carried along with the propaganda, but the point of it is to present a kind of pageant that persuades us to believe certain things and root for Our Team against the Other in the supposed contest between something and something else.

In my view, there is a contest, but it's not one that we're involved in.

From what I've seen so far, the contest is between factions -- "shops," if you will -- within the bloated intelligence community, a contest for dominance. Because of the way the NSA is organized and has typically operated outside the lines of its mandate, the NSA is seen as an internal threat to other aspects of the security/surveillance state, and so must be curbed. The way chosen to do it is to invoke a public debate about its means and methods and to generate reforms to be determined and implemented as quickly as possible to rein in a rogue agency.

This sort of thing has an extensive precedence, going back to the revelations of COINTELPRO, the Church Committee, and all the rest. Modest reform comes, but it is very quickly subverted. It doesn't last, and it has to be done again and again. Really, the only way to overcome the threat to democracy and liberty posed by out of control security and surveillance apparats is to abolish them altogether and start over, and so far as I know, no state has done that except in utter defeat after war and conquest.

The only upshot I can see from this Story of the Century is that the NSA will be pruned of its extraneous operations which will be folded into other agencies, some of which will be newly hatched, like poisons out of the mud, and the Security/Surveillance State will go on as if little or nothing had taken place.

I will add, however, that the State we're talking about will be less and less a matter of constitutional self-government and more and more a matter of corporate governance through a staff of employees that masquerade for a time as an elected government, and then, after a while, drop the charade and become what they are: "staff."

Meanwhile, the propaganda is relentless.

Let Us Reason Together -- the Panopticon (5)

The Panopticon was Jeremy Bentham's 18th Century enlightenment notion of how it would be possible for a very limited staff of keepers to control a large population of inmates by making it possible for one keeper to look into any cell simply by turning around. The beauty of it was that the inmates would never know whether and when they were being watched, and that fact would work with innate human nature to enforce proper behavior within the prison. Rebellions and uprisings wouldn't occur. They couldn't. None could be organized without detection. There would be less need for brutality and the usual cruelties prisoners were subjected to. Harmony would reign.

Well, there was more to it than that, of course, but the general idea of the All Seeing Panopticon seemed perfectly rational at the time, and in due time, versions of Bentham's vision were tried with varying results. Part of the rationale for the Panopticon, in addition to the ability to watch prisoners at will, was the isolation of inmates, each to their own cell, rather than being held en masse in cages in the dungeons. A way to control unruly types through isolation was long known and understood, but employing it in general was considered too expensive. But the Panopticon made isolation economically reasonable because it reduced prison staffing requirements substantially.

Ultimately it was understood more or less widely that the simplest way to keep prisoners and reduce rebellions was to hold them in isolation and keep watch on them in ways they could never fully know while severely punishing any infraction of increasingly arbitrary and draconian rules.

Harmony would reign.

Then it was realized that the same principals that underlay the Panopticon for Prisons could be applied to the general population, thus curbing non-conformity and rebellion among the Rabble. The only problem was that there was no technology to do it efficiently and broadly until very recently. But even with more or less inefficient and primitive tactics, the principles of the Panopticon were employed in all sorts of social and political situations The watched actually become the watchmen and women and enforce conformity of mind and body without the necessity for an overly large and intrusive surveillance apparatus. Sure enough, it worked.

Until it didn't.

Harmony reigned temporarily, sometimes for quite a long time, and then it broke down.

Studies have been going on ever since to figure out why that breakdown occurred and to ensure that it never happens again, at least never again in that way. Our Chinese friends may be furthest along in figuring out how to suppress rebellion and enforce conformity on a more permanent basis. But that remains to be seen. As China undergoes as thorough a remaking of its social economy as it has ever endured, rebellion is constant. At the same time, there seems to be a level of relative harmony and peace, in the midst of fierce competition, that is unprecedented. From the perspective of many social engineers, China is obviously doing something very right. But what it is and exactly how they are doing it isn't entirely clear.

The recent hoo-hah around the world about the NSA and to a lesser extent (much lesser extent) about the more or less pervasive corporate and lower-level law enforcement surveillance of entire populations is related directly to the notion of the Panopticon and the principles of its operation. What we have learned is that the keepers now have the technology to keep an eye on every one of us essentially all the time or whenever they want, and we can never know for certain whether we are being watched at any particular moment. Thus our behavior is controlled in theory and largely in fact just by our knowing that we can be watched and any deviation from accepted norms in our behavior noted -- and can be used against us at any time our keepers choose. Even if we don't necessarily deviate from the norm (whatever that is declared to be at any given time), patterns of behavior can be manipulated to create false "deviations" which can then be utilized for prosecution or persecution -- or to sell you something you neither want nor need but which your "pattern" suggests you are susceptible to purchasing with the right persuasion.

It's a wonderful thing from the point of view of those who make and operate these surveillance/marketing/and population control systems. As for the general public, what I've taken to calling the Rabble, it's not so wonderful, but as long as it is not too intrusive, it seems, most people don't much mind that it is going on. Many may actually appreciate it on a visceral level.

Think Facebook, Twitter, and the endless devices of our modern world which make instant communications possible and inevitable and which for the most part provide the user with no privacy at all. Anyone can observe anyone else, and many, many people want to be observed in practically every aspect of their lives pretty much continuously. They can easily get their wish, more easily than ever before in human history. Nearly the entire world can vicariously participate in nearly anyone's life through modern technology.

That includes governments and their private sector sponsors. (Increasingly, "government" and "corporate" are distinctions without a difference as they subsume one another.)

The Panopticon principle as it is today is a versatile and useful tool of population control employed by corporate-governments on a broader scale than ever before in history. Because so many people are eager to share their lives with others through social media and the like, it is remarkably easy to get people in general to adopt technology which utilizes the Panopticon principle for control.

The notion that one can have privacy under the circumstances is absurd. You can't. No matter what you do, you cannot opt out of the technology of observation and surveillance that is built in to the devices, hardware and software of our lives, and even the loudest "privacy advocates" know this full well. There is no "secret place" within our devices where we can whisper secrets to one another without being overheard, any more than inmates in Bentham's Panopticon Prison could ever be sure they were unobserved.

The Revelations we've been exposed to the past few months are the details of a surveillance regime that is pretty much universal at this point and cannot be undone.

Where did the idea that electronic communications were somehow private come from?

It came from marketing. Marketing which obscured the facts.

One was sold the idea of encryption and secure communications, but it was never real in the sense that your online communications were ever truly private  and inaccessible to interested parties -- as we're finding out with more and more detail. A few adepts may have been able to temporarily secure and privatize their own communications, but for most internet users, there never was a time when the bulk of communications couldn't be accessed either by the carriers or by governments whenever and however desired. And there's never been a time that I was aware of that carriers weren't eager to sell their bulk information on their customers to government. The architecture of the internet is purpose-designed for this very practice, as most of us once knew but seem to have forgotten.

The ability to surveil the activities of users online -- constantly and automatically -- is one of the key industry ideals and motivations, both to be able to sell something to them and to be able to keep tabs on their potentials for disruption and rebellion (what's generally called "criminality.")

This has always been true of the intranets that gave birth to the internet -- which itself has never ever been either "free" or "private." Marketing myths that have long been sold to the public promise otherwise, of course, but they are simply false and always have been.

The notion of "privacy" itself is actually a recent social development that is in many ways tied to marketing ideas of the early 20th Century ("Blame Bernays.")  What I think the idea of universal privacy and the right to privacy came out of was the understanding that the Overclass of the 19th and early 20th centuries used their position to live private lives out of the view of the Rabble and more importantly to develop products and policies in secret from the public, policies and products which were then imposed often by main force, without consultation with or approval by the public. The idea was that if the public didn't know (at all or very much) about how their Betters lived their lives and what was being planned, they wouldn't be able to object or rebel before the policy was instituted, and they could be induced to admire rather than object to the lives of their Betters.

The idea of "privacy" as a general matter turned that understanding of what was being done to the public by the Overclass on its head by proposing a general right for everyone to the same sort of private lives their Betters had long enjoyed.

That's where I think the idea of "privacy" as it is commonly understood in the western world came from. It was heavily marketed as something desirable and necessary to a full and rewarding life -- because Our Betters had it. And you want to be like them, don't you?

Which is not to say that personal space of some sort ("A Room of One's Own" as it were) has not always been with us. It is the fetishization of privacy as the defining characteristic of what it means to be "human" that simply never existed before very recent times, and for most people, it doesn't compute at all.

Most societies exist under forms of formal and informal surveillance. The discovery that Our Own (Exceptional) Society is also under surveillance, and that our corporate-government is a -- or perhaps the -- leading purveyor and employer of surveillance technology is much less of a surprise than our media is making it out to be. We knew, but we made less of it, for the most part, than apparently we are supposed to now that we really know.

Yet there is no plan or movement to reduce or eliminate mass surveillance, quite the opposite. Instead, we are seeing any number of calls to restrict surveillance activities of government while leaving in place or even expanding corporate surveillance -- on the false premise that corporate surveillance is benign. It is not. It is extraordinarily invasive and potentially more dangerous to individual liberty ("") than anything the government might be able to do. Which is of course why corporate surveillance gets a pass.

The current drive for online privacy has many components, of course. One of them is intended to make it difficult or impossible for government to have access to certain aspects of one's life online, akin to the constitutional restrictions placed on government regarding reasonable search and seizure of one's home, papers, and effects requiring a warrant issued by a competent court before any such action can be taken. This is the Fourth Amendment restriction -- which unfortunately has been so riddled with holes and exceptions that it's all but moot in today's world. If some court actually wants to return the 4th to something akin to its original intent, I'm all for it, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Meanwhile, it's hard to imagine real online privacy unless the whole architecture of the internet is reconfigured to provide it, and I don't see that happening any time soon, either. Well, at least not on the "free" internet that most of us use.

There could well be another, "secure" internet established for use by "members," say by subscription -- and I'm not so naive to imagine such a thing doesn't already exist in some respects, I'm just noodling for the moment. This is where I see the "privacy" movement (such as it is) headed. We'll have a two-tier "public access" internet, part of which is "free" -- in that use does not require payment (whereas access still will) and which is essentially open to corporate-government surveillance, and there will be another, more costly, internet (parts of which already exist) that is not quite so open -- though still not entirely secure -- for use by those who choose what we might call a higher level of service, and there will be a multiplicity of proprietary, highly secure, internets not available or accessible to the public at all, which will be used by the High and the Mighty. All of these things are essentially already in place, they just need some tweaking to become the standard.

When the Snowden Thing first broke, Naomi Wolf expressed some reservations about it based on her personal knowledge of whistleblowers and how they had approached their duties and actions in the past. The Snowden Thing was a distinct outlier compared to previous episodes of whistleblowing. She noodled for a bit wondering why it might be so, and she suggested that there might be an ulterior reason for exposing the doings of the NSA in the way it was being done: when people know they are being watched -- or rather, can be watched at will -- they tend to modify their behavior, "conform" in a word, almost instinctively. Letting people know that the NSA was "watching" them was, she thought, a useful way to ensure conformity. It's based on human psychology and the principles behind the Panopticon.

Snowden partisans immediately denounced and smeared Wolf for daring to raise questions about the true nature of the Snowden Thing. It was done in a manner that formed the template for denouncing and smearing anyone who expressed reservations about Snowden's motives or authenticity. These denunciations are a form of propaganda -- quite obvious to anyone who has made a study of propaganda and its effects -- a form that was raised to practically an art form by previous totalitarian regimes (Stalin, Hitler, Mao...) and it's effective, at least for a time.

And then it isn't.

Mark Ames Explains It All For You

"Yeah, but... what do we do about it?"

One of the most often heard complaints about Greenwald's longstanding rage against government -- almost never corporate -- abuses of power is his determined failure to provide any course of action or recommendations for effective remedy.

Which is not to say he hasn't provided any outlets for frustration, far from it. He's been instrumental in setting up or participating in all sorts of supposed political action outfits, and is always encouraging donations to them as a means of Being Effective Against The Man, but exactly what they accomplish is subject to dispute. Certainly the very expensive efforts engaged in to bring down Blanche Lincoln and Joe Lieberman didn't accomplish what was being touted by a long shot. For the most part, Greenwald simply demurred when asked what he thought should be or could be done about all the many things he was OUTRAGED!!!!!™ about.

Mark Ames now at Pando.com has few qualms about either raging at The Man or suggesting remedies for the many OUTRAGES!!!!!™ We, the People endure at the whims of Our Betters.

In his latest, he runs through some of the less-known history of the NSA and previous revelations about its, erm... overreach.

Actually, I knew a bit of it, but he goes into much more detail than I was aware of previously. It's not so much surprising as it is confirmational and disheartening.

These agencies are rotten to the core, steeped in their own Original Sin and so far as can be determined, they cannot be reformed.

The Report I read in the days leading up to Christmas makes many, many recommendations about how to reform the NSA and other agencies that have overreached but it never suggests that the powers which have been assumed by them should be abolished. Instead, the recommendations are to transfer them to more appropriate locations within the surveillance state apparatus or outside it to a private entity.

This, as Ames points out, has been done before, only to later discover that the Hydra has regrown its heads and is more powerful and invasive than ever.

So, what to do about it?

Unfortunately, this time Ames has no solution -- nor much snark about it, either.

He's as stumped as anyone else.

So what happened to the abolitionists?

Byzantium

They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (Not Constantinople) from They Might Be Giants on Vimeo.

Complex systems and the need to stampede...

As I got near the conclusion of "The Report," visions of the Nature of Government began swirling in my brain, and the very Byzantine nature of the Intelligence Community was most definitely highlighted.

If the various elements of the National Security/Surveillance State have been running roughshod and rogue, it's plain to see why. It is in the nature of the beast. Without appropriate and rigorously enforced restraints, they will run wild, there is no way around it.

After 9/11 what minimal restraints they had been under were released, and we now live with the consequences. Reining them back in may prove to be more difficult and problematic than even the panelists on the Review Committee, all of whom have plenty of Deep State experience, recognize.

The key recommendation of The Report is the overhaul and reform of the NSA, essentially re-creating it from the ground up.

Clearly, from this recommendation alone, it's obvious that the Agency has seriously overstepped its bounds and authorities. What Snowden revealed, which seems now to be barely the tip of a very deep bottomed iceberg, barely scratched the surface of what this rogue agency has involved itself in. From the evidence in The Report, it appears that the NSA has violated the trust of the highest levels of the Government itself, and thus must face the consequences.

Seemingly it got that way almost by accident, but it was driven by ethos of the Cheney Faction within government, a faction that recognizes no bounds to its authority in law and custom and which seeks to impose as complete a system of quasi-dictatorial rule as possible. It would appear that the NSA has been seeing itself as the lead agency in that quest. This ethos, such as it is, all goes back to Nixon. Sigh. Will we never be free of it?

But make no mistake. It is in the nature of governmental systems to be this way, especially the more complex they become. It's almost unavoidable. Thus, of course, the key recommendation is to break up the NSA, to curb its tendency to overreach and to apply more rational control over its activities.

A good thing, right?

In a sense, sure. The problem is that once a system like the NSA is allowed to run free as it apparently has been for more than a decade, and once that system has developed extensive tentacles into both the government and the private sectors, as apparently the NSA has, it becomes nearly impossible to reform or remove it without affecting and perhaps damaging the rest of government.

The Report provides a roadmap forward, but it may not actually be possible to follow through. This is due in part to institutional inertia which can become self-perpetuating. Barring a serious and potentially devastating power play within the government (which may indeed be taking place), it may be too late to intervene in the metastasizing Surveillance State.

We may be stuck with what we've got.

I have a few more pages to go before get to the end of The Report, but I'm neither reassured nor hopeful given what I've read so far.

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 This logo/graphic appears on page 269 and 270, Appendix B, "Overview of NSA Privacy Protections under FAA 702/EO 12333"

As an aside, could the Target hack be related to the NSA lashing out at the idea of being curbed? Ohhhhhh......

Continuing to Slog Through "The Report"

I realize I'm not offering up commentary on specific recommendations or details of The Report at this point. It's partly due to the structure of The Report itself, heavy on conclusions at the outset, then quite dense (for this kind of thing) with details to back them up. What I've been trying to do is understand the subtext that flows through the whole thing and get a better idea of what's (perhaps) really going on.

The Snowden Thing is obviously the trigger mechanism for this Report, but where Snowden fits in the whole assembly is still somewhat obscure. I've had my doubts about the "genuineness," shall we say, of his whistle blowing from the outset of the summertime media frenzy over the story mainly because of the way it was being packaged and marketed and due to the rather surprising reluctance of the any of the participants to get into anything particularly substantive regarding the omnipresent Surveillance/Security State they were supposedly exposing.

The story had the earmarks of a Limited Hangout, purposely engineered by a faction within the Security State in order to hamstring or undermine some other faction.

Focusing almost exclusively on the NSA when there are dozens if not hundreds of elements to the overall apparat of surveillance and security in this country alone, most of them much, much closer to the day-to-day lives of individuals and affecting them much more immediately and stringently, was a "tell" for me that this set of revelations and the summertime media frenzy it engendered was not what it seemed and was being sold as.

There was clearly a background and backchannel within the government itself that was directing this story.

I saw it as a likely contest between the CIA and the NSA for Security State Pre-eminence, and I mentioned several times that there was a curiously silent Spook in all of this, one John Brennan, recently selected head of the CIA -- the very agency Snowden came out of before going to the NSA (or so the story went.)

The overall point of the stories was clearly to diminish the powers and authorities of the NSA -- some of which it had arrogated to itself contrary to law and custom  -- but not to get rid of them altogether. Instead, the idea seemed to be to put those elements elsewhere, either in other agencies or in the private sector.

This is clearly the intent and upshot of the recommendations in The Report. In no way that I can discern are the powers and authorities of the Surveillance/Security State diminished by the recommendations, nor are their validity and utility disputed within the detailed narrative. Their application by the NSA is, however, clearly recognized as a problem. Time after time, the NSA is singled out for criticism for overstepping its authorities, violating court orders, lying to oversight bodies and so on. If this is not a "rogue agency," I don't know what is.

On the other hand, there is no sign I've found in The Report that the powers and authorities that the S/S State holds should be diminished or removed. They should merely be better monitored by courts and "policymakers" (which is a whole other kettle of fish) and -- importantly -- should be redistributed among extant agencies (mostly unnamed).

The Report does take pains to point out that the NSA is only one aspect of the S/S State, and that it is not the primary element in many ways (though obviously it would like to be). This is something that the media (in the person of Greenwald) nearly completely ignores, but it is something that more and more other media have come to recognize -- slowly and timidly, but still....

The Report also goes into great, almost exhaustive, detail about some of the Programs that have caused so much heartburn during the past six months, much more detail about them than appeared in the media. For The Report to be so open about the Programs -- when the Agency has a history of being so secretive, and even the Snowden Revelations didn't get into such a level of granularity about them -- indicates to me that there has long been some kind of urge within the S/S State to reveal itself as fully and clearly as possible, an urge which heretofore, the NSA has opposed and resisted.

Well, they can't do it now.

An internal shake-up is underway.

But will it be more the cosmetics? Time will tell.