George Orwell's 1984 and American Today - A Country Under Surveillance

Today we are going to look back on two previous posts we have done, one from 2011 and one from 2013. Congress is currently debating what changes to make on how the Federal government spies on its citizens. This debate is critical to preserving our liberties, our rights, and our privacy as supposedly guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

However, it seems that most of the Washington political class is intent on usurping these rights and freedoms, first by the Patriot Act and then by an NSA running wild, collecting all sorts of electronic information and communications of American citizens without warrants and without the basic right to do so. Thus, the reason for reviewing both of these posts, both of which were focused on showing how the dictatorship which arose in George Orwell's novel, "1984," is actually a blueprint for what is going on today in America.

What is interesting is that the first post from 2011 predicted what was going on and going to happen, the details of which we did not find out about until after Edward Snowden showed us how the NSA was already collecting just about every form of electronic communication of every American, something that was predicted in 1984:

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

The second post from 2013 is very similar form the first but provides another perspective since by the time that second post was created, the horrifying details from Snowden were now public.

Hopefully, after reviewing the warnings from these two posts you will contact your Congressional representatives and demand they get the NSA and the rest of Washington under control from a spying on Americans perspective. Tell them that we do not want to live in a Orwellian world:

WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 2011

George Orwell, 1984, iPhones, And Freedom

Most of us are familiar with George Orwell's classic novel, "1984." This novel created a dysfunctional future where freedom, liberties and democracy have been replaced with an ever present, ever paranoid, and ever vindictive ruling class. Individuality is crushed and society is totally controlled in support of the state and Big Brother.

One of the more distressing aspects of Orwell's vision was the ability of the state, the political/ruling class, and government to be ever aware of where a person was, what they were doing, and what they were saying:

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

When this was written, it was no more than a scary, science fiction aspect of the future. However, according to recent news reports, as summarized in the May 6, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, this concept is still scary but is no longer fiction or in the future:

• Nathan Goulding, writing in the National Review, reported that two data scientists uncovered the fact that Apple's iPhones, iPads, and iTouches can store a user's GPS locations, store their movements for up to a year, and send this information back to Apple for storage and analysis
• The Goulding reporting claims that this is being done now, without getting the consent of the user or without the user being told what information is being collected on their habits and movements.
• According to Jordan Robertson of the Associated Press, there are no laws on the books that make this behavior illegal or would prevent Apple (and other smartphone manufacturers) from sharing this data with other parties without an individual's permission.
• John Naughton writing in the London Observer recalled a ten year old quote from Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems: "You have zero privacy. Get over it." Mr. Naughton concludes that McNealy is probably right.Scary, scary stuff, in my opinion. 

You cannot live in a free country if you have no privacy. You cannot live in a free country when every sound you make could be overheard and every move you make could be scrutinized. The possibility of abuse without proper judicial and legal protection is staggering. If you do not think this is the case, consider two examples of how it could be abused:

• First, in the March 18, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, a short article reviewed how the Chinese government is planning to install a massive tracking system that will monitor and track the location of every Chinese citizen that has a cell phone.
• The government claims this massive process would help them to ease traffic congestion, a very weak argument.
• Critics of the program, however, believe that the system would allow the authoritarian Chinese government to track and follow dissidents and journalists.
• This would allow the government to learn of protest sites, clandestine meetings, etc.The Chinese system sounds a lot like what could be done quite easily if the U.S. government ever decided that it also needed this individual citizen information to "ease traffic congestion." You have to be suspicious when something that exists in America is very close in scope and capability to what the repressive Chinese government is also doing.

Second, who is to say our political class would not abuse this system for their own good? We know that President Obama has already tried to silence or minimize the reach and influence of Fox News. We know that Nancy Pelosi recently said that elections should not be as important as they are currently treated. We know that a Colorado congressman wants to allow elected officials to serve 25 years at a time. We know that those opposed to some aspects of President Obama's health care reform bill were branded as racists, Neanderthals, Ku Klux Klan members, gerbils, un-American,etc. by members of the ruling political class, simply for expressing an honest difference of opinion. 

There are constantly assaults on our freedom in this country, almost always from the politicians that are running the government of this country. No, it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that this tracking system would be abused by those that currently rule the country. It happened in George Orwell's world and it is happening in China, the possibility of it happening here is no longer science fiction.

To fight back this onslaught on freedom, several steps need to be implemented as soon as possible:

• A smartphone user needs to be granted the option of not having his or her movements or conversations tracked. Traditionally in this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. The premise should still hold and you should be able to opt out of any tracking.
• The government, via a politician or law enforcement official, should not be able to access your smartphone information without a signed, court order from a judge, after the government agency has proven its case for probable cause of a crime. This is the process for getting a search warrant for a home, it should be the same for searching a person's smartphone history.
• If a court order is granted and the result of an investigation turns up no illegal activity on an American citizen, then that citizen needs to be told what information of theirs was obtained and why. This would ensure that law enforcement or other government agencies to not go on fishing expeditions without cause if they are forced to come clean after an investigation is over and the smartphone user is found innocent of all suspicions.

These three steps are very similar to the three steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," as it applies to the Patriot Act. (Steps 20 - 22). In fact, this whole situation needs to be framed as a subset within a national discussion on the whole idea of the Patriot Act and what needs to be done to better balance national security against national freedom.

Privacy is essential for a democracy to flourish and allowing someone to know where you are and who you are talking to without your permission is not privacy, even if it would help out the local traffic jam.

THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

Government Gone Wild, Part 8: Three More NSA Whistleblowers Come Forward, Part One Of Their Tale Of Their Bravery

This is the ninth installment in a series on government snooping and the destruction of the Fourth Amendment as it pertains to the Federal government and the NSA’s confiscating just about every form of electronic communications of every American under the false guise of fighting terrorism. This Orwellian and creepy snooping has resulted in skyrocketing book sales of George Orwell’s dismal prediction of a future dictatorship in this country in the novel, “1984.”

In fact, you can still take the quiz that asks you to choose whether a certain aspect of government intrusion and spying is from Orwell or from the Obama administration at the following link:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/06/government-gone-wild-part-4-orwell-or.html

The first installment in this seemingly never ending review of the Fourth Amendment destruction can be accessed at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/06/government-gone-wild-part-1-verizon.html

Today’s discussion focuses on three more NSA whistle blowers who have come forward to verify that the original whistle blower, Edward Snowden, who truly upended the apple cart of government snooping secrecy, was correct in his facts and in his actions to come forward as a concerned American who was scared about us losing our freedom and privacy to the Federal government. 

This now brings the total number of outed whistle blowers on this administration’s secret surveillance of Americans to at least six. We have Snowden and the three new NSA whistle blowers. We have California Congresswoman Maxine Walters who publicly told the world in February that Obama had a giant database containing every American’s electronic communications. We also have Shia LaBeouf who told Jay Leno in a 2008 interview that an FBI movie consultant told him that the government was listening in on up to 20% of Americans’ phone calls, an assertion that is in complete conflict with President Obama’s claim that the government was NOT listening to our phone calls.

The claims and accusations made by the three new NSA whistleblowers are just as scary and dire as Snowden’s. They were interviewed together in a June 16, 2013 USA Today article and interview. The entire article can be accessed at:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/

Some of their more serious assertions and claims from the article are just as creepy and scary as Snowden’s:

• Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe worked for the National Security Agency for many, many years and actually were deeply involved in developing the very systems that are now snooping on every American without due process or cause.
• According to the article, for years the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from unwary U.S. citizens with their audiences ranging from their immediate supervisors to Congressional committees to Federal investigators, and now the news media.
• Although they had spent decades in the upper management levels of the NSA designing and managing the current data-collection systems, they are speaking out now because they now believe their systems and work have been turned against Americans.
• Like Snowden and the brave State Department employees who spoke out because of the unnecessary murders of four innocent Americans at the Benghazi consulate, these three brave Americans have also been investigated as criminals and forced to give up careers, reputations and friendships built over a lifetime of serving America.
• Drake: “And we are seeing the initial outlines and contours of a very systemic, very broad, a Leviathan surveillance state and much of it is in violation of the fundamental basis for our own country — in fact, the very reason we even had our own American Revolution. And the Fourth Amendment for all intents and purposes was revoked after 9/11. …” Comment: Destruction of the Fourth Amendment, as witnessed by insiders who were close to the mechanism that did the destruction.
• Radack: “He [Snowden] is someone who exposed broad waste, abuse and in his case illegality. ... And he also said he was making the disclosures for the public good and because he wanted to have a debate.”
• Binney: “Ever since ... 1997-1998 ... those terrorists have known that we've been monitoring all of these communications all along. So they have already adjusted to the fact that we are doing that. So the fact that it is published in the U.S. news that we're doing that, has no effect on them whatsoever. They have already adjusted to that.” Comment: Which gets to our position yesterday, do we really think that the terrorists are that stupid to use basic, unencrypted communications modes?
• Drake: “I mean, it's [the Verizon secret court order to give up telephone information] the first time we've publicly seen an actual, secret, surveillance-court order. I don't really want to call it "foreign intelligence" (court) anymore, because I think it's just become a surveillance court, OK? And we are all foreigners now. By virtue of that order, every single phone record that Verizon has is turned over each and every day to NSA. There is no probable cause. There is no indication of any kind of counterterrorism investigation or operation. It's simply: "Give us the data." ... “ Comment: Scary observation and actual fact that we are now all “foreigners” in our own country.
• Drake and Binney: “One is that the FBI requesting the data. And two, the order directs Verizon to pass all that data to NSA, not the FBI. What it is really saying is the NSA becomes a processing service for the FBI to use to interrogate information directly. ... The implications are that everybody's privacy is violated, and it can retroactively analyze the activity of anybody in the country back almost 12 years.”
• Binney: “Now, the other point that is important about that is the serial number of the order: 13-dash-80. That means it's the 80th order of the court in 2013. ... Those orders are issued every quarter, and this is the second quarter, so you have to divide 80 by two and you get 40. If you make the assumption that all those orders have to deal with companies and the turnover of material by those companies to the government, then there are at least 40 companies involved in that transfer of information. However, if Verizon, which is Order No. 80, and the first quarter got order No. 1 — then there can be as many as 79 companies involved.” Comment: So the assertion by this administration that only top line telephone call information and only Verizon information was confiscated is probably bogus.That concludes the first half of the story that these three brave whistleblower/American heroes told USA Today. We will conclude their stories and insights tomorrow along with our conclusions of what needs to be done to fix this liberty sapping situation.

Call your Congressional representatives now before it is too late. Protect the Fourth Amendment.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

August, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 6: Graft In Virginia, Ignroance in Kentucky, Corruption in New York, and Economic Ignorance Everywhere

This is our sixth and hopefully last post on this month’s update on political class insanity. This monthly series covers the wasteful spending, the idiotic quotes, the effective government programs, the selfish greed and other sins of the current set of American politicians. It is through this series that we contend that we are currently being served by the most inept and greedy set of politicians America has ever had to endure.

1) Let’s start off today on the greedy angle. According to a recent Associated Press report, a Federal prosecutor has accused Virginia's former governor and his wife of illegally accepting gifts from a businessman who sought their influence to promote his company.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Aber opened the trial of the former governor and his wife, Bob and Maureen McDonnell, a trial that charges the couple with accepting more than $165,000 in gifts and loans from Jonnie Williams, the CEO of dietary supplements maker Star Scientific. They are accused of accepting the gifts in exchange for helping promote his products.

Which just goes to prove that politicians at the state government level may not be any different than corrupt and now jailed politicians at the Federal level. Innocent to proven guilty but disgraceful nonetheless that this former politician and his wife acted so greedily that the Federal government thinks it has enough to put them away for their actions.

2) The Iron Dome system is a missile defense system that shoots out missiles with the intent of destroying incoming missiles from an enemy. It has been in the news a lot lately because the Israeli deployment of its Iron Dome System, has probably saved hundreds, if not thousands, of Israeli lives, by intercepting the thousands of rockets that Hamas has shot into Israel over the past months.

Pretty simple concept: anti-missile shot up in the air to intercept and destroy incoming missiles. Simple, but apparently not simple enough for a politician who is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate from Kentucky. Democratic Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes says Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system prevents Hamas terrorists from tunneling into Israel.

Ms. Grimes was asked about the war going between the Israelis and Hamas during a recent interview with the Lexington Herald Leader: “The Iron Dome has been a big reason why Israel has been able to withstand the terrorists that have tried to tunnel their way in.”

Makes you wonder where she gets her information about life from. The Iron Dome is a MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM. It is not a giant iron cage or dome that is buried in the ground that prevent Hamas terrorists from tunneling into Israel. This is a quote and view of reality that is quickly moving up the charts as one of the dumbest quotes from a politician in recent times. 

According to an article in the Washington Beacon: the Iron Dome is a joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense system that is able to track terrorist rockets as they enter Israeli territory and destroy them in mid-air. The system has saved scores of Israeli lives and protected the Jewish state during Hamas’s latest terror campaign, in which some 9,000 rockets have been fired at Israel.

How out of touch can one be to not know this? How out of touch and inept is your campaign staff that they would allow you out in public so knowledge impaired? And you want to be a U.S. Senator? I don’t think so. Not if you are that naïve and out of touch with what is going on in the world.

3) A few days ago we reported on a New York Times article that reported on how New York governor Andrew Cuomo had shut down his own corruption investigation commission once the commission started investigating the potential wrong doings by one of companies he used for his election campaign.

Well, it seems that might not be the only shady dealings going on up in Albany. According to a recent Bloomberg report, the governor’s election campaign collected at least $650,000 in campaign contributions from companies or people whose companies were granted tax credits to redevelop industrial sites according to research done into state government data.

Related Cos. was the biggest donor, donating at least $262,700 to Cuomo’s campaign. Syracuse shopping-mall businessman Robert Congel, members of his family and executives at his Pyramid Cos. contributed $143,250.

According to Bloomberg, critics of the incentives, which have cost taxpayers more than $1 billion since 2006, claim they benefit wealthy developers and have done little to clean up contaminated industrial sites. Bloomberg cites a research study found that 94 percent of these tax credits have been used for redeveloping properties instead of fixing polluted and contaminated land.

Again, innocent until proven guilty. But as we have often said, the appearance of a conflict of interest is just as bad as a real conflict of interest. Deals and arrangements like this just smell bad, regardless of intentions, good or bad. 

That is why Step 7 from “Love My Country, Loathe my Government,” is needed in this country. Step 7 would allow only individual citizens to contribute to political election campaigns. Businesses, unions, PACs, Super Pacs, etc. would be prohibited form contributing and possibly buying influence and political favors. While it might not get rid of all the political hi-jinks and rip offs of taxpayers, a properly implemented and policed, Step 7 would go a long way to getting rid of even the appearance of conflicts of interest and might actually protect taxpayer interests in the long run.

4) According to a recent Bloomberg report that was summarized in the August 1, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, former secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made $12 million in speaking fees since leaving that position in February, 2013. That comes out to an amazing $750,000 a month. She is making in a MONTH, on average, fifteen times as much than what the average American household earns in a YEAR. I am sorry, nobody is worth that much money whose track record of accomplishment is next to nil.

5) More secrets about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) out of control spying on American citizens was made public recently. In an interview in the Guardian newspaper in England, former NSA analyst and whistleblower, Edward Snowden, made it known that NSA employees circulate ‘sexually compromising images” among co-workers that they came across when spying on innocent American citizens.

This type of behavior was “seen as sort of the fringe benefits of surveillance positions,” according to Snowden. We are getting oh so close to 1984 and Big Brother when the type of behavior is allowed to go on, secretly exploiting the lives of innocent American citizens using these same taxpayers’ wealth to do so.

6) According to a CNN.com report that was summarized in the August 1, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, a whopping 48% of the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation’s regulations and rules have not be formulated or written yet. This is four years after the legislation was passed. 

What good is passing legislation if four years later the Federal government is just about half way to getting the guidelines put together never mind having that legislation having an positive impact in the market? I cannot imagine the IRS letting any citizen get away with similar behavior, e.g. granting a four year extension to file income taxes. But somehow, politicians can get away with idiotic legislation that never really gets implemented. Insane.

7) We often make the case that the current set of American politicians have no economic background, no economic experience, no economic sense, and no economic training, resulting in economic programs and strategies that often to more harm than good in growing the economy. A recent article from Bloomberg, summarized in the July 18, 2014 issue of The Week, magazine reinforced this opinion.

Despite spending about $830 billion on a failed economic stimulus, trillions of dollars in Federal Reserve “quantitative easing," record low interest rates, and an energy boom, the political class has screwed up the economy so much that around 15% of all Americans, about 45 million people, still live below the poverty level in this country. The poverty level is defined as earning less than $23,600 a year. 

If we had taken that $830 billion from the failed economic stimulus and written a check to each of those 45 million Americans, a family of four living below the poverty line would have gotten a check for over $70,000 or at least three times their annual income. That would have been the far better economic decision rather than squandering the money like Washington did on stupid programs and crony infested programs, none of which stimulated any economic activity.

That will wrap up the political class insanity for this month. A depressing but necessary exercise that shows once and for all that we are living under the worst performing, most inept set of politicians in the history of this country. If you would like to help change this status, please visit the following term limits website and help us change out the current Washington insanity because, really, how much worst could it get:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Chinese Hackers, Gay Meth Texting, More Losses In The War On Drugs And More

This is the third in a our monthly series on political class insanity. Every month we devote a few days to the insanity, lunacy, corruption, and wasteful spending of the American political class. Unfortunately for us and the country, every month seems to bring a heavier and heavier load of the misdeeds from Washington and elsewhere, requiring more and more days of coverage just to keep up.

The first two posts on this month’s insanity can be accessed at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_2.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_3.html

We continue with the idiocy today:

1) Earlier this year, a Federally-funded study began to send “gay lingo” text messages to methamphetamine addicts to try to get them to use fewer drugs and more condoms. The cost to taxpayers for this program? $509,840!

Leading the project is Dr. Cathy Reback of the Friends Research Institute, Inc., in Baltimore. She and her team hope that, by sending these “gay lingo” text messages out for the next four years, methamphetamine users will clean up their act. The details of the study include the following parameters:

• The 285 study participants will be divided into three groups of gay meth users.
• All participants will report on their progress using self-evaluation forms.
• The first group will be able to communicate back and forth with the researchers.
• The second group will get text messages, but no two-way communication.
• The last group will be the control group and won’t get any messages at all.
• Thus, the program breaks down as follows: five text messages a day, for four years, to 285 study participants who will then report back every week, all for a cost to taxpayers of $509,840, or $1,789 per gay, methamphetamine-addicted man who engages in high risk sexual behaviors.

In a different reality, this might be a worthwhile project. But we are running annual trillion dollar deficits, we have a national debt load of almost $17 TRILLION, and there are far more other medical research needs that could better use another $500,000 of research money. Plus, there appears to be some serious flaws in this study:

• The sample size is very small, less than one hundred subjects per group, making extrapolation to a general population very dicey. Given the higher death rate of drug abusers, the sample saize will probably get even smaller over time.
• The study relies on self-evaluation forms. Drug abusers are probably not the most reliable people when it comes to non-drug related activities like filling out forms. I doubt the study leaders will get cogent, timely, and reliable data from a self evaluation form process.
• And even the sample size is extrapolatable and the forms are filled out correctly and in a timely manner, who cares? The population of gay men meth users who MAY benefit from a text program is miniscule compared to the number of Americans who die every year from breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancers, dementia, and drunk driving.

Better to take limited resources and apply those resources to the bigger health issues of our time and actually solve some major issue challenges for the country than to spend money on every possible health issue and resolve nothing.

Side note: According to a blurb in the April 19, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, according to a study by the Rand group, in 2010 the nation spent a whopping $109 billion to treat dementia in the U.S. We also spent $102 billion to treat heart disease and $72 billion to fight cancer. It is my opinion that limited health care and research resources should be spent fighting these major national health issues and not on a questionable study on a very small segment of the population.

2) Interesting statistic from the June, 2013 issue of Reason magazine. When Nixon started the so-called war on drugs in 1971, nonviolent drug offenders constituted less than 10% of all prisoners in all U.S. jails. Today, nonviolent drug offenders constitute more than 25% of all prisoners in all jails. And this 25% is of a much larger prison population.

Thus, we are locking up more people on both an absolute and percentage basis for nonviolent drug usage and the drug problem in this country is nowhere close to being curtailed, the original hope of Nixon back over forty years ago. Isn’t it about time we stop the insanity and exit the war on drugs, let people do to their bodies what they want to do as long as they are no endangering others, break the monetary back of the drug cartels, and save the money of trials, imprisonment, and enforcement related to a program that has failed for forty years?

3) Speaking of wasting money on idiotic wars, consider a New York Times article that was summarized in the May 10, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. According to the reporting, on a monthly basis for years, the United States has been sending suitcases, backpacks, and even plastic shopping bags filled with U.S. cash directly to the President of Afghanistan, President Karzai, in a vain attmept to influence events in the country.

Unfortunately, much of that cash, according to the Times, has ended up fueling corruption and in the hands of drug warlords and the Taliban, our sworn enemy in this ill-fated conflict. The article quotes one involved U.S. official with the following insight: “The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan is the United States.” Well said, sad but true.

Members of Congress belatedly became outraged when they learned of this mess, with Congressman Jason Chaffetz stating: “I thought we were trying to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan.” Two things Congressman: First, while I applaud your outrage, why weren’t you and your Congressional peers doing your job and identifying this waste, fraud, and abuse years ago before we probably wasted billions of dollars?

Second, you and your peers have not been able to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington’s programs and government entities, what makes you think you are capable of doing the same thing half way around the world?

4) Politicians and others have been making a big deal of the fact that many recent college graduates are leaving school with a diploma, a good thing, and massive student loan debt, a bad thing. This is especially trying for the many recent graduates who cannot find a good starting job because the mismanagement of the economy by the political class. They end up with low paying jobs but still have to pay off student loans.

No one seems to have come up with a good solution other than improving the ability of the economy to generate new job growth that allow recent graduates to find a good pay job to more easily pay off their debt. However, that does not appear to be an ability of the Federal government to execute to any degree.

Plus, according to a recent story by the Huffington Post that was summarized in the May 31, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, the government may not be in a hurry to fix any aspect of the student loan program. Why? According to Huffington, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Federal Department of Education will make about $51 billion in profit from the student loan program in 2013.

Disgraceful, that the Federal government would use the student loan industry and processes to generate profits for itself. Where in any part of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or our history does it say that the Federal government should be a profit generating entity, especially on the back of our kids?

To put this into perspective, the article points out that the Federal government’s profits in this endeavor is greater than the profits of Apple and Exxon and is larger than the COMBINED annual profits of the country’s four largest banks. Profits all on the backs of our kids graduating from college.

5) Edward Snowden is being condemned by many in the political class and Federal government as a traitor for telling the country that Washington, the Obama administration specifically, was abusing and shredding the Fourth Amendment with its massive electronics spying. I prefer to see him as a heroic figure who gave up the good life, his freedom as an American, and his high salary to protect the Constitution.

Nevertheless, if many view him as a traitor for giving up government secretes, what would you call those in the Federal government who were responsible for the top, top secret defense plans that the Chinese government recently hacked? According to an article in the June 7, 2013 issue of The Week, Chinese hackers stole the designs of some of America’s most sensitive and advanced weapons systems:

• The advanced Patriot missile system.
• Two ballistic missile systems that are the backbone of all our defense systems.
• The design for the F-35 fighter jet that the American taxpayer has already paid $14 TRILLION for without much success.
• Two dozen other defense weapons systems designs.

If Snowden is a traitor for divulging non-military, non-top secret, non-defense information and material, what should happen to those in Washington whose incompetence allowed the Chinese to steal our major defense plans that the American taxpayer paid TRILLIONS of dollars to develop? Insanity and incompetence combined together is never pretty.

That wraps up our third day of review relative to political class and government insanity. Every day, every month, those in Washington, the government, Congress, and the White House find new ways to astound us, to disappoint us, and to outrage us. And that astonishment, disappointment, and outrage will continue at least through tomorrow’s post

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w  

Government Gone Wild, Part 9: Three More NSA Whistleblowers Come Forward, Part 2 Of Their Tale Of Bravery

This is the second half of a story we started yesterday where we reviewed the revelations now coming out from three new NSA whistler blowers regarding the intrusive and unprecedented government snooping into all forms of electronic communications of all Americans. This is also the ninth in a series of posts regarding the overall Naitonal Security Agency spying and snooping on Americans, without just cause or due process, and the shredding of the Fourth Amednment of the Constitution.

This second half continues the review of the noteworthy quotes from the three whistleblowers and their USA Today interview:
Radack: “I consider this to be an unlawful order. While I am glad that we finally have something tangible to look at, this order came from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. They have no jurisdiction to authorize domestic-to-domestic surveillance.” Comment: As we have already asserted, secret warrants from secret judges sitting in secret courts with aoo facets breaking the law.

Drake: “For me, it was material evidence of an institutional crime that we now claim is criminal.”

Radack: ‘Congress has been a rubber stamp, basically, and the judicial branch has been basically shut down from hearing these lawsuits because every time they do they are told that the people who are challenging these programs either have no standing or (are covered by) the state secrets privilege, and the government says that they can't go forward. So the idea that we have robust checks and balances on this is a myth.” Comment: checks and balances is a myth, could not agree more regardless of what the President and his surrogates say.

Radack: “The proof is in the pudding. Last year alone, in 2012, they approved 1,856 applications and they denied none. And that is typical from everything that has happened in previous years. ... I know the government has been asserting that all of this is kosher and legitimate because the FISA court signed off on it. The FISA court is a secret court — operates in secret. There is only one side and has rarely disapproved anything.”

Radack: “Even for people in the know, I feel like Congress is being misled.”

Drake: “But see, I am Exhibit No. 1. ...You know, I was charged with 10 felony counts. I was facing 35 years in prison. This is how far the state will go to punish you out of retaliation and reprisal and retribution. ... My life has been changed. It's been turned inside, upside down. I lived on the blunt end of the surveillance bubble. ... When you are faced essentially with the rest of your life in prison, you really begin to understand and appreciate more so than I ever have — in terms of four times I took the oath to support the Constitution — what those rights and freedoms really mean. ... “

Drake: “Well, I feel extraordinary kinship with him [Snowden], given what I experienced at the hands of the government.”

Radack: “I would thank him for taking such a huge personal risk and giving up so much of his life and possibly facing the loss of his life or spending it in jail. Thank him for doing that to try to help our country save it from itself in terms of exposing dark, illegal, unethical, unconstitutional conduct that is being done against millions and millions of people.”

Binney: “Two basic principles you have to use. [to collect data on potential terrorists and protect the Fourth Amednment] ... One is what I call the two-degree principle. If you have a terrorist talking to somebody in the United States — that's the first degree away from the terrorist. And that could apply to any country in the world. And then the second degree would be who that person in the United States talked to. So that becomes your zone of suspicion. And the other one (principle) is you watch all the jihadi sites on the Web and who's visiting those jihadi sites, who has an interest in the philosophy being expressed there. And then you add those to your zone of suspicion. Everybody else is innocent — I mean, you know, of terrorism, anyway.” Comment: reasonable approach to keeping freedom intact and the citizens secure in this age of terrorism which we do not want to morph into the age of liberty destruction.

Drake: “It's been within our capabilities [to operate with these liberty safeguards] for well over 12 years.” Comment: which raises the obvious question: why were these safeguard capabilities not used?

Drake: ‘This (kind of surveillance) is all unnecessary. It is important to note that the very best of American ingenuity and inventiveness, creativity, had solved the major challenge problem the NSA faced: How do you make sense of vast amounts of data, provide the information you need to protect the nation, while also protecting the fundamental rights that are enshrined in the Constitution?” Comment: which gets us back to the old saying: just because you can does not mean you should. Just because you can collect and store EVERY piece of electronic communications from every American, the vast, vast amount are innocent of any wrongdoing does not mean you should, especially when more effective and targeted approaches are available.

Binney: “But when it comes to these data, the massive data information collecting on U.S. citizens and everything in the world they can, I guess the real problem comes with trust. That's really the issue. The government is asking for us to trust them.“

Binney: “It's not just the trust that you have to have in the government. It's the trust you have to have in the government employees, (that) they won't go in the database — they can see if their wife is cheating with the neighbor or something like that.” Comment: that this is the second major flaw in this strategy of secretly tracking everyone: not only is it unnecessary but the potential for abuse by government employees and government politicians is immense with very little positive benefit back to society.

Wow, scary and fascinating stuff. I applaud these newly identified whistle blowers and the others, Edward Snowden, Maxine Walters, and  Shia LaBeouf who also have done their part in exposing the massive attack on privacy and Fourth Amendment rights in this country. They have sacrificed personal and professional safety and careers to do the right thing.

There is a way to do this electronic surveillance without persecuting, tracking, and spying on every Americans’ communications like Big Brother would do in an Orwellian world. These experts have shown how to do it. Do we want to allow the non-experts in Congress and the White House to convince us that their creepy and all surveillance all the time approach is the only effective way to fight terrorism?

I for one would trust these brave whistleblower experts way before I would trust a Washington politician, given their recent and historical tendency to just plain out lie to our faces. That is why we continue to focus on the need for term limits for Washington politicians. They have gotten use into this liberty sapping situation for reasons that we now know from these data systems experts is totally unnecessary.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Government Gone Wild, Part 8: Three More NSA Whistleblowers Come Forward, Part One Of Their Tale Of Their Bravery

This is the ninth installment in a series on government snooping and the destruction of the Fourth Amendment as it pertains to the Federal government and the NSA’s confiscating just about every form of electronic communications of every American under the false guise of fighting terrorism. This Orwellian and creepy snooping has resulted in skyrocketing book sales of George Orwell’s dismal prediction of a future dictatorship in this country in the novel, “1984.”

In fact, you can still take the quiz that asks you to choose whether a certain aspect of government intrusion and spying is from Orwell or from the Obama administration at the following link:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/06/government-gone-wild-part-4-orwell-or.html

The first installment in this seemingly never ending review of the Fourth Amendment destruction can be accessed at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/06/government-gone-wild-part-1-verizon.html

Today’s discussion focuses on three more NSA whistle blowers who have come forward to verify that the original whistle blower, Edward Snowden, who truly upended the apple cart of government snooping secrecy, was correct in his facts and in his actions to come forward as a concerned American who was scared about us losing our freedom and privacy to the Federal government.

This now brings the total number of outed whistle blowers on this administration’s secret surveillance of Americans to at least six. We have Snowden and the three new NSA whistle blowers. We have California Congresswoman Maxine Walters who publicly told the world in February that Obama had a giant database containing every American’s electronic communications. We also have Shia LaBeouf who told Jay Leno in a 2008 interview that an FBI movie consultant told him that the government was listening in on up to 20% of Americans’ phone calls, an assertion that is in complete conflict with President Obama’s claim that the government was NOT listening to our phone calls.

The claims and accusations made by the three new NSA whistleblowers are just as scary and dire as Snowden’s. They were interviewed together in a June 16, 2013 USA Today article and interview. The entire article can be accessed at:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/

Some of their more serious assertions and claims from the article are just as creepy and scary as Snowden’s:

• Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe worked for the National Security Agency for many, many years and actually were deeply involved in developing the very systems that are now snooping on every American without due process or cause.
• According to the article, for years the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from unwary U.S. citizens with their audiences ranging from their immediate supervisors to Congressional committees to Federal investigators, and now the news media.
• Although they had spent decades in the upper management levels of the NSA designing and managing the current data-collection systems, they are speaking out now because they now believe their systems and work have been turned against Americans.
• Like Snowden and the brave State Department employees who spoke out because of the unnecessary murders of four innocent Americans at the Benghazi consulate, these three brave Americans have also been investigated as criminals and forced to give up careers, reputations and friendships built over a lifetime of serving America.
• Drake: “And we are seeing the initial outlines and contours of a very systemic, very broad, a Leviathan surveillance state and much of it is in violation of the fundamental basis for our own country — in fact, the very reason we even had our own American Revolution. And the Fourth Amendment for all intents and purposes was revoked after 9/11. …” Comment: Destruction of the Fourth Amendment, as witnessed by insiders who were close to the mechanism that did the destruction.
• Radack: “He [Snowden] is someone who exposed broad waste, abuse and in his case illegality. ... And he also said he was making the disclosures for the public good and because he wanted to have a debate.”
• Binney: “Ever since ... 1997-1998 ... those terrorists have known that we've been monitoring all of these communications all along. So they have already adjusted to the fact that we are doing that. So the fact that it is published in the U.S. news that we're doing that, has no effect on them whatsoever. They have already adjusted to that.” Comment: Which gets to our position yesterday, do we really think that the terrorists are that stupid to use basic, unencrypted communications modes?
• Drake: “I mean, it's [the Verizon secret court order to give up telephone information] the first time we've publicly seen an actual, secret, surveillance-court order. I don't really want to call it "foreign intelligence" (court) anymore, because I think it's just become a surveillance court, OK? And we are all foreigners now. By virtue of that order, every single phone record that Verizon has is turned over each and every day to NSA. There is no probable cause. There is no indication of any kind of counterterrorism investigation or operation. It's simply: "Give us the data." ... “ Comment: Scary observation and actual fact that we are now all “foreigners” in our own country.
• Drake and Binney: “One is that the FBI requesting the data. And two, the order directs Verizon to pass all that data to NSA, not the FBI. What it is really saying is the NSA becomes a processing service for the FBI to use to interrogate information directly. ... The implications are that everybody's privacy is violated, and it can retroactively analyze the activity of anybody in the country back almost 12 years.”
• Binney: “Now, the other point that is important about that is the serial number of the order: 13-dash-80. That means it's the 80th order of the court in 2013. ... Those orders are issued every quarter, and this is the second quarter, so you have to divide 80 by two and you get 40. If you make the assumption that all those orders have to deal with companies and the turnover of material by those companies to the government, then there are at least 40 companies involved in that transfer of information. However, if Verizon, which is Order No. 80, and the first quarter got order No. 1 — then there can be as many as 79 companies involved.” Comment: So the assertion by this administration that only top line telephone call information and only Verizon information was confiscated is probably bogus.

That concludes the first half of the story that these three brave whistleblower/American heroes told USA Today. We will conclude their stories and insights tomorrow along with our conclusions of what needs to be done to fix this liberty sapping situation.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w