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Telephony Of Destruction
This weekend I was fascinated with the story of how the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, was also interested in sound engineering. He submitted some 400 experimental discs that he made that had his voice on them. It was once again a rare treat to hear a ghostly voice from the 1800’s recorded and technologically recovered from wax discs.
From the 1880s on, until his death in 1922, Bell gave an extensive collection of laboratory materials to the Smithsonian Institution, where he was a member of the Board of Regents. The donation included more than 400 discs and cylinders Bell used as he tried his hand at recording sound. The holdings also documented Bell’s research, should patent disputes arise similar to the protracted legal wrangling that attended the invention of the telephone.
Bell conducted his sound experiments between 1880 and 1886, collaborating with his cousin Chichester Bell and technician Charles Sumner Tainter. They worked at Bell’s Volta Laboratory, at 1221 Connecticut Avenue in Washington, originally established inside what had been a stable. In 1877, his great rival, Thomas Edison, had recorded sound on embossed foil; Bell was eager to improve the process. Some of Bell’s research on light and sound during this period anticipated fiber-optic communications.
From the sound recordings and the invention of the telephone, we have had exponential growth in the ability to communicate. This has been a remarkable part of our evolution. Information and the ability to transfer data went from simple wax, tinfoil, and crystal sets to fiber optics and satellite feeds.
Many people will say that the invention of the Internet has been a remarkable blessing as information is right at our fingertips and smart phones combine the use of internet and telephone communications.
All this from Bell’s vision and we continue to see how communication has enabled us to become more informed and improve work load and efficiency.
However, no one would have guessed that Bell’s invention would also become an invasive tool that tramples on the right to privacy.
Under President Obama, the surveillance state in the United States has become the ultra-surveillance state. It has expanded with highly sophisticated spying equipment, including armed drones and secret space planes and satellites. Obama’s unprecedented war on the American right to privacy and unlawful search and seizure has in large part been designed to shield from the American public any knowledge of just how invasive this surveillance state has become.
It is obvious that the dictator will want control of the internet media, the internet and communications in order to maintain his unitary executive model of leadership. An executive model that includes surveillance, invasion of privacy, wire tapping , and tactical bullying provided by a militarized police force.
I know that when I talk about the police state I get a lot of people wince and want to say that this country is immune from police state activity or that it is all justified when we are fighting the open ended war on terror. Regardless of how clean you think you are, no one is above scrutiny or investigation. We have been bombarded with propaganda where we know that our various rights are being violated. We are all willing to call talk shows and vent our spleens over gun rights and the infringement upon the 2nd Amendment.
However, again I have to wonder about people who really do not care about 4th Amendment rights or due process or any other right that is being erased covertly without anyone standing up and commenting about it.
There seems to be a lack of consistency with a lot of people who have the responsibility of either being talk show hosts or even news reporters that decide that there are other rights being infringed upon. That includes some semblance of privacy or a right to not be unlawfully detained and searched without probable cause.
In the open-ended war of terror, is it now the norm to rationalize that no one, no American deserves a reasonable expectation of privacy?
As I have stated before, that in the Orwellian nightmare that no one is awakening from there are creative ways of describing the untold criminal methods our government uses in the name of combating terror. Torture has been called “enhanced interrogation,” The rich and wealthy are called “job creators” the stupid and ignorant are called “low information voters,” The poor are called “economically disadvantaged” innocent civilians are reduced to “collateral damage” when they are wiped out by drones.
Now we can add another word to the Orwellian newspeak lexicon and that is “sensitive investigative techniques.” The FBI has creatively used that Euphemism to cover up the use of cell phone tracking and spying on American citizens.
It has now been revealed that the bureau’s use of a controversial cell phone tracking technology called the “Stingray” has prompted fresh questions over the legality of the use of the tool to spy on U.S. citizens.
Functioning as a so-called “cell-site simulator,” the Stingray is a sophisticated portable surveillance device. The equipment is designed to send out a powerful signal that covertly dupes phones within a specific area into hopping onto a fake network. The feds say they use them to target specific groups or individuals and help track the movements of suspects in real time, not to intercept communications. But by design ‘Stingrays’, sometimes called “IMSI catchers,” collaterally gather data from innocent bystanders’ phones and can interrupt phone users’ service which critics say violates a federal communications law.
This tool intended to spy on suspected terrorists; however there are others who are quite aware that this technology has been used by drug traffickers and identity thieves for some time.
Mexican cartels would use ‘Stingray’ technology and used it to intercept cell phone calls by potential rivals who had no idea that they were even being spied upon – thousands of people discussing their drug business on cell phones turned up dead or missing. The ‘Stingray’ has been more effective in creating horrific numbers of murders against racketeers committed by Mexican cartels waging an unofficial civil war – than it has accomplished for the FBI as an eavesdropping tool to build criminal cases against racketeers.
It was also used in routine LAPD criminal investigations. It was reported that the Stingray tool was used 21 times in a four-month period during 2012, apparently without the courts’ knowledge that the technology probes the lives of non-suspects who happen to be in the same neighborhood as suspected terrorists.
The government has previously argued that tools like the Stingray are permissible without a search warrant outside the search and seizure protections offered by the 4th Amendment because they use them to gather location data, not the content of communications. The Justice Department says cell phone users have no reasonable expectation of privacy over their location data, a claim that has incensed privacy and civil liberties groups.
While the mainstream media attempts to push buttons about gun control, gay marriage, and now the old weapons of mass destruction ploy to move into Syria, the 4th Amendment rights of citizens is never spoken of and Americans have lost their right to privacy, proving once again that in the war on terror, the terrorists are winning as human rights and laws are being erased because of expediency leading us without protest into despotism.
The adjacent arm of the telephone, namely the Internet, is also facing some very draconian measures from the government and Internet privacy will also be violated soon. Even though CISPA is dying on its way through the Senate, the inevitability of abuses are still on the horizon and once again there is not a peep of protest of discussion about internet privacy and the right to the people’s free press.
The issue of online surveillance has taken on added urgency with the explosion of social media and chat services and the proliferation of different types of online communication. Technology firms are seen as critical sources of information about crime and terrorism suspects.
A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Facebook and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the effort.
Driven by FBI concerns that it is unable to tap the Internet communications of terrorists and other criminals, the task force’s proposal would penalize companies that failed to heed wiretap orders court authorizations for the government to intercept suspects’ communications.
Under the draft proposal, a court could levy a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars, on firms that fail to comply with wiretap orders, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. A company that does not comply with an order within a certain period would face an automatic judicial inquiry, which could lead to fines. After 90 days, fines that remain unpaid would double daily.
Instead of setting rules that dictate how the wiretap capability must be built, the proposal would let companies develop the solutions as long as those solutions yielded the needed data. That flexibility was seen as inevitable by those crafting the proposal, given the range of technology companies that might receive wiretap orders. Smaller companies would be exempt from the fines.
Some experts said a few companies will resist because they believe they might lose customers who have privacy concerns. Google, for instance, prides itself on protecting its search service from law enforcement surveillance, though it might comply in other areas, such as e-mail. “And Skype has lost some of its cachet as a secure communications alternative now that it has been bought by Microsoft and is reportedly complying with wiretap orders.”
After the bombings in Boston, Ground Zero producer James Evan Pilato expressed concerns about Twitter being compromised and bought out by Microsoft or some other conglomerate after it was learned that the social network, along with Reddit, were actually far more reliable sources of raw information about the terror suspects that what was presented on the major television networks. The Internet literally became a technological Paul Revere, giving information about the movements of the suspects and possible police corruption during the killing of one suspect and the capture of another.
This type of information can become a thing of the past, if the tentacles of the “militant surveillance” apparatus find their way into these resalable sources for news and information.
Giving the government intercept capability would guarantee more hacked systems in the future, and the inevitability of virus infections on computer systems, all for the so-called protection from terrorists.
The unfortunate thing about the typical American is that they are too comfortable with the idea that America is too big to fail. They believe that our very form of government is immune to collapsing into a different form. Americans should know full well that our government is teetering on the brink of socialism, communism and even despotism.
It is time to realize that Americans can’t allow their politics as usual to continue. They do not apply in chaos. They do not apply now, because terrorism is a tool that government is using as an excuse to breach the guarantees of liberty and civil liberties.
The global agenda still stands and if there is a revolt – it will be met with the harshest of consequences.
The reason no one wants to believe that America is plunging towards despotism is because we have “image and action parameters” that determine whether or not we are in a democracy or despotism. We all have an image of dictators and the horrible things they have done.
We don’t see an overt image of a dictator in military fatigues telling us how we should live. We do not think that our leaders carry out murders and order mass arrests. We do not think that coups can be successful in America — we see Mussolini or Hitler as examples of dictators and we also hear that Middle eastern madmen are also evil dictators. But how do we not see that dictatorship is annexing a mob mentality in America that can spark a class war, civil unrest and an asymmetrical attack from within?
We have all been duped into believing in the smooth pabulum that has been created by consultants, ad agencies and spin doctors that downplay and belittle the reality of tyranny. They blind side the public with issues like abortion, immigration, and global warming. Things like constitutional rights are no longer important to the average American citizen. Fear has determined that the constitution is a worn out document that is a death sentence.
That is why the shadow government will maintain continuity at all costs and they are waiting in the wings to enforce martial law.
The most confounding thing is why people will speak out about gun control, and fight for their right to bear arms, but fall short when privacy issues arise, especially issues regarding the use of your smart phone or computer.
The Unitary executive model of leadership in this country is now in play and the first thing that will have to go is your ability to communicate. The information and communication channels are going to be the next target by officials, because it is becoming more difficult to control the consensus reality.
Call it a power-grabbing conspiracy theory – call it what you will – we are close to having it completed. We are so close to having an emperor who will order to the neutralization of anyone who wishes to revolt against the system that they have prepared for us.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) established a panel of judges (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) who were empowered to issue warrants to federal government organizations, including the National Security Agency, to enable them to listen in on the conversations of American citizens or residents who were speaking to foreign nationals overseas or between two foreigners if the communications were intercepted at a hub located in the United States.
As originally construed, there had to be a foreign intelligence angle to the investigation and the activity would be limited to the monitoring of agents of foreign countries and their contacts. The intention of FISA was to protect against egregious violations of the 4th Amendment’s guarantee that Americans should have a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”
According to information gathered from Antiwar.com, even though FISA authorized the government to initiate surveillance on its own authority for up to 72 hours without any warrant or judicial review in cases where immediate action was justified, the Bush administration complained that the procedure was too slow and unresponsive when a terrorist threat might be developing. As a result, the restraint on what is referred to as bulk collection of communications information was ended by Congress with the passage of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which was specifically intended to legalize the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program.
Of course the American people did nothing to fight or at least raise a protest top illegal wire tapping and their right to privacy. Many believed it was necessary to combat terrorism. However, as the years have passed, we have seen that attempts at terrorist activity and FBI-induced threats have continued with dud bomb scares and domestic terrorists still have ways of getting their hands on military-grade weapons and they are now using them in public.
The federal appeals court has now ruled that the federal government may spy on Americans’ communications without warrants and without fear of being sued.
This decision reverses the first and only case that successfully challenged President George W. Bush’s Terrorist Surveillance Program. The case concerned a lower court decision in which two American attorneys — who were working with the now-defunct al-Haramain Islamic Foundation were awarded more than $20,000 each in damages and their lawyers $2.5 million in legal fees after a tortured legal battle where they proved they were spied on without warrants.
They sued under domestic spying laws that Congress adopted in the wake of President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal. The government appealed their victory and the appeals court dismissed the suit and the damages.
The impact of this decision now demonstrates to the American people that no one will be held accountable for violating your 4th Amendment rights. It also negates the idea that the Constitution is the fundamental and paramount law of this nation. You see, any act of the legislature repugnant to the Constitution is supposed to be illegal.
The Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the United States and any act that is carried out by government must be consistent with the Constitution.
I guess it is time to admit that the Constitution is now a metaphor and that it is only selectively applied in this new government that has been established where there is no rule of law. There is only a rule of law that is expedient. We are now in an adjustable pathocracy where evil is adjusted to fit the needs of the mob and now it looks as if the mob does rule in this time of uncertainty.
Text – Check out Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis Live Nightly @ http://www.groundzeromedia.org
2013-04-29 18:45:17
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