Infowars: The U.S. Government Is Monitoring All Phone Calls, All Emails And All Internet Activity
Michael Snyder
American Dream
May 7, 2013Big Brother is watching everything that you do on the Internet and listening to everything that you say on your phone. Every single day in America, the U.S. government intercepts and stores nearly 2 billion emails, phone calls and other forms of electronic communication. Former NSA employees have come forward and have described exactly what is taking place, and this surveillance activity has been reported on by prominent news organizations such as the Washington Post, Fox News and CNN, but nobody really seems to get too upset about it.
Either most Americans are not aware of what is really going on or they have just accepted it as part of modern life. But where will this end? Do we really want to live in a dystopian “Big Brother society” where the government literally reads every single thing that we write and listens to every single thing that we say? Is that what the future of America is going to look like? If so, what do you think our founding fathers would have said about that?
Many Americans may not realize this, but nothing that you do on your cell phone or on the Internet will ever be private again. According to the Washington Post, the NSA intercepts and stores an astounding amount of information every single day…
Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases.
But even the Washington Post may not have been aware of the full scope of the surveillance. In fact,National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney claims that the NSA has collected “20 trillion transactions” involving U.S. citizens…
In fact, I would suggest that they’ve assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about U.S. citizens with other U.S. citizens.
And NSA whistleblowers have also told us that the agency “has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google, for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations, countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email.”
So the NSA must have tremendous data storage needs. That must be why they are building such a mammoth data storage center out in Utah. According to Fox News, it will have the capability of storing 5 zettabytes of data…
The NSA says the Utah Data Center is a facility for the intelligence community that will have a major focus on cyber security. The agency will neither confirm nor deny specifics. Some published reports suggest it could hold 5 zettabytes of data. (Just one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62 billion stacked iPhones 5′s– that stretches past the moon.
Are you outraged by all of this?
You should be.
The U.S. government is spying on the American people and yet they continue to publicly deny that they are actually doing it.
Last week, this government spying program was once again confirmed by another insider. What former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente told Erin Burnett of CNN is absolutely astounding…
BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
Yes, “all of that stuff” is most definitely being “captured” and it is time for the Obama administration to be honest with the American people about what is actually going on.
Meanwhile, the recent bombing in Boston has many of our politicians calling for even tighter surveillance.
For example, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said that our interpretation of the U.S. Constitution will “have to change” to deal with the new threats that we are facing. More “smart cameras” are going up in New York, and Bloomberg says that we are “never going to know where all of our cameras are”. The following is from a recent RT article…
New York City police officials intend to expand the already extensive use of surveillance cameras throughout town. The plan, unveiled Thursday, comes as part of a drive for increased security around the US following the Boston Marathon attack.
New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly announced the plan during a press conference with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in which the two announced that the suspected Boston Marathon bombers were planning to attack New York next. The pair said they hope to discourage criminals by using so-called “smart cameras” that will aggregate data from 911 alerts, arrest records, mapped crime patterns, surveillance cameras and radiation detectors, among other tools, according to The Verge.
“You’re never going to know where all of our cameras are,” Bloomberg told reporters gathered outside City Hall. “And that’s one of the ways you deter people; they just don’t know whether the person sitting next to you is somebody sitting there or a detective watching.”
Will you feel safer if the government is watching you 100% of the time?
Do you want them to see what you are doing 100% of the time?
You might want to think about that, because that is where all of this is headed.
In fact, the truth is that spy cameras are not just going up all over New York City. Most Americans may not realize this, but a network of spy cameras is now going up all over the nation. The following is an excerpt from one of my previous articles…
“You are being watched. The government has a secret system – a machine – that spies on you every hour of every day.” That is how each episode of “Person of Interest” on CBS begins. Most Americans that have watched the show just assume that such a surveillance network is completely fictional and that the government would never watch us like that. Sadly, most Americans are wrong. Shocking new details have emerged this week which prove that a creepy nationwide network of spy cameras is being rolled out across the United States. Reportedly, these new spy cameras are “more accurate than modern facial recognition technology”, and every few seconds they send back data from cities and major landmarks all over the United States to a centralized processing center where it is analyzed. The authorities believe that the world has become such a dangerous place that the only way to keep us all safe is to watch what everyone does all the time. But the truth is that instead of “saving America”, all of these repressive surveillance technologies are slowly killing our liberties and our freedoms. America is being transformed into an Orwellian prison camp right in front of our eyes, and very few people are even objecting to it.
For many more examples of how the emerging Big Brother surveillance grid is tightening all around us, please see my previous article entitled “19 Signs That America Is Being Systematically Transformed Into A Giant Surveillance Grid“.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama is telling us to reject those that are warning us about government tyranny. The following is what he told the graduating class of The Ohio State University on May 5th, 2013…
Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.
So what do you think?
Should we just ignore all of the violations of our privacy that are happening?
Should we just ignore what the U.S. Constitution says about privacy and let the government monitor us however it wants to?
Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…
Texas CISPA Bill Scheduled for Monday Vote
The Texas CISPA bill, approved unanimously by the House last week, may be passed by the Legislature within 24 hours. It has been scheduled for a vote on Monday.
The bill, now slightly altered SB 1052 in the Senate, does the following:
- Requires any Internet provider that serves Texans to hand over private communication and files.
- Sets no standard for warrants for such seizures, enabling arbitrary violations of Texans’ privacy.
- Forces Internet providers to respond within 15-30 days (and sometimes 4-30), giving them almost no time to protect information not targeted.
- Makes it a crime for an officer, director or owner of a company to not comply with the request within the 15-30 day window.
- Opens the door to politically-motivated seizures of online communication.
(via seattle-gadgets)
News to Me: Pure Madness: U.S. Aims To Force Web Services To Compromise Message Encryption
Even if it accomplished nothing else, the Middle Eastern governments’ crackdowns on communications during the Arab Spring movement two years ago demonstrated how much governments, in general, and repressive governments, in particular, hate encryption—particularly in the hands of private citizens.
This is why governments from Egypt to Oman to India have tried to ban BlackBerry smartphones with their uncrackable encryption. Now, in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military and intelligence agencies are going after your encrypted communications on Google, Facebook and other Web communication services.
Google, as you’ll likely recall, was hacked by the Chinese military who tried to get into the email accounts of dissidents who use Gmail for communicating their pro-freedom activities. The Chinese, a repressive regime if there ever was one, just hates dissidents. So the military hackers wanted to read their email to find out who they were and what they were up to.
Google responded by encrypting its network from end to end. Facebook, after being attacked repeatedly, has done the same thing. Other networks that pride themselves on their security are also providing encrypted communications, including BlackBerry, which is widely used by the U.S. government precisely for this reason.
Of course those other repressive governments never actually banned BlackBerry devices because their own intelligence agencies also use them and needed the security more than they needed to read other people’s email.
So now we come to the FBI and other U.S. law-enforcement agencies that are trying to read the text messages, chats and the email of people they think are bad guys. The feds say that they’re doing this to fight crime and terrorism. And they say they have a right to get information if they have a legally obtained wiretap order.
The problem is, as The Washington Post reported recently, that not all providers of communications services have the ability to comply with a federal wiretap order. Their systems are secure and they’re meant to stay that way. What the FBI is asking for is the ability to fine those companies that don’t comply with a wiretap order, even if they’re technically unable to do so within a time limit set by the FBI.
In other words, if you can’t provide the feds with a back door to your system, the government will keep piling on fines until you go out of business. The idea, of course, is to compel companies that provide secure communications to also build in a means for the feds carry out get their wiretaps.
U.S. Aims to Force Web Services to Compromise Message Encryption
The stick that would compel them is a series of increasing fines that theoretically (if you do the math) keep doubling until it reaches an infinitely large amount of money. It’s maybe even enough money to make Google pay attention, although it’s not clear that’s even possible.
In one sense this is understandable. The federal government does have a requirement to catch criminals and prevent terrorists from carrying out attacks like the 9/11 attacks in New York or the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15.
It also has the right to get a court-approved warrant to obtain access to the private communications of suspected criminals. But to fine a company into oblivion for something that they can’t do or because they need time to develop the technical ability to comply with the government’s demands seems insane. Sure, it will get their attention, but if the government drives the communication service out of business, law-enforcement officials won’t get the information they want.
Worse, threatening such a punitive response to a technically difficult problem only means that the federal government is either going to make locating a business in the U.S. unprofitable, result in wretchedly poor service or both.
Faced with such a punitive fine as the feds are contemplating, why would a company willingly place itself in harm’s way? After all, the Internet is everywhere. All that the FBI may accomplish is that these companies place themselves beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement by, say, moving to Canada or Mexico.
Or, if the company is already in the U.S., they could very well force the creation of a back door that would satisfy the FBI, but at the same time lets in those same international and domestic bad guys that the FBI is chasing. This would happen because of the FBI’s time limit—to develop a back door in 60 days (or whatever they set the deadline at) or you’re fined into bankruptcy.
Does the FBI really want to force U.S. communications providers to implement insecure solutions just so they can satisfy their need for instant gratification? Does it really want to force the Facebooks of the world to locate in Canada, the European Union or some other nation that isn’t likely to honor a warrant from a U.S. court? But are such punitive measures really worth it?
For some reason, I’m reminded of a comment from the days of the Vietnam War as reported by legendary journalist Peter Arnett: “We had to burn down the village in order to save it.” Is that really the goal of the federal law-enforcement agencies–to cripple Internet communications and destroy companies that don’t have the means to comply with their demands?
Infowars: U.N.’s ITU pursues Internet control — again — this week
Violet Blue
zdnet.com
May 13, 2013The Fifth World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (“WTPF-13″) will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, this week for three days, May 14-16.
As with the bellicose WCIT-12 (the U.N.’s 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications) last December in Dubai and its accompanying protests and dramatic walkout by the U.S. delegation, this Forum will be run by the United Nations notoriously dubious telecommunications arm, the ITU.
WTPF-13 — with its Twitter hashtag #WTPF13 and counter-tag #OpWTF — is ITU’s final preparation forThe 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (“PP-14″), ITU’s Fall 2014 plenipotentiary meeting.
In February, outgoing U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell testified to Congress in a joint U.S. House subcommittee hearing on international Internet governance that U.N.’s ITU Internet plans “must be stopped.”
Infowars: Bilderberg 2.0: New Technocratic Construct In The Works?
New generation of elites taking the transnational reins?
Jurriaan Maessen
Infowars.com
May 13, 2013As today’s groundbreaking revelations by Infowars will possibly reveal, Bilderberg is moving itself into a new hybrid leviathan, with Google as the new vehicle for policy implementation. A new generation has emerged, alligning itself with the good old boys at Bilderberg. Not that this newer generation has appeared out of thin air to rock the world of the old-timers. Far from it. The key players now taking the digital helm in this probable “Googleberg” construct are literally the offspring of the older players who are keenly aware that if the ancient agenda is to endure, a merger with the new guard needs to be established.
One such key player who has presumably been offered the steering wheel in both policy setting- and operational activities, is the son of the former queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau. As EU commissioner Neelie Kroes’ first man in her “digital agenda” cabinet, Constantijn is well placed to play a key role in securing the reigns in the hands of international bankers who make the final decisions. Constantijn was described as “programme associate” of the Bilderberg group on the official royal website back in 2009. Although the website scrubbed the mention shortly after I published this information on Infowars.com, the original cached page was salvaged thanks to vigilant observers in the alternative media.
Constantijn’s benefactor in the world of global governance, Neelie Kroes, attended all Bilderberg meetings from 2006 onward- and since 2011 is the European commissioner for the digital agenda. Kroes, who is right up there with Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, is now handing over some of the responsibilities to a new generation of technocrats. Not very surprising then that Van Orange- the grandson of Bilderberg founder Bernhard- has recently been appointed by Kroes to head up her commission cabinet.
Kroes’ agenda as commissioner and dedicated Bilderberg member has been from the very onset to create and expand a mandatory electronic ID system for all citizens within the EU. In 2012 Kroes announced that a common “electronic signature”- a single authenticating ID- should safeguard access to the Internet, online data and commerce- described by Aaron Dykes on May 23 2012 as “nothing short of an attempt to phase in a Mark of the Beast system, and a prominent Bilderberg attendee is behind the scheme.”
Dykes also pointed out that such a common digital signature, used by all people within the EU, is destined for worldwide expansion:
“According to EurActiv.com, Neelie Kroes would later “widen the scope of the current Directive by including also ancillary authentication services that complement e-signatures, like electronic seals, time/date stamps, etc,” as the supra-national body attempts to corral more nations into participation.”
In 2009 Constantijn wrote a RAND technical paper, stating that the EU and a few elite nations should take the lead role in deciding a global governance structure for internet regulation and developing technologies. In the paper titled Trends in connectivity technologies and their socioeconomic impacts, the prince envisions a global coordination role for the EU:
“ (…) both policy issues and effective responses must be defined at a global level; to influence the solution a global coordination and ‘enlightened leadership’ is required.” and “policy issues, not always solutions, will be defined at a global level. Those few countries or regional blocks like the EU where these technologies are already at an advanced stage may take a more or less enlightened lead role.”
Constantijn’s speciality in his days with the RAND Corporation ranged from several technical reports on web 2.0 to RFID technology and other matters concerning “global governance” and electronics. In 2008 Constantijn was promoted to head the Brussels RAND office, expanding his influence even more. In 2009 Constantijn published his “discussion paper on critical issues” under the RAND-umbrella titled The Future of the Internet Economy. In it, he is quite uninhibited in his call for the emergence of an overall system of control to steer the course of events globally.
“(…) the Internet as a global infrastructure needs a global governance structure”, Van Oranje writes. “International governance is necessary to deal with global issues and ensuring effective functioning of the Internet, following principles of good governance.”
The intentionally vague addition of “good governance” is a smart way to circumvent explaining that only a tyrannical transnational system can guarantee “effective functioning of the Internet.” Furthermore, the prince advocated the ideal tool for future slavery: one common, global electronic denominator hooked into a hive-like supercomputer:
“Though a sectoral, geographic and multi-layered patchwork is likely, a scenario with a more unified system is not impossible either. There are significant benefits for citizens, governments and commercial operators to have a more standardised system that would support a large range of eGovernment services and functions. One system would eliminate the need for multiple cards, would increase the possibility for interconnecting systems”, and the list goes on.
The warnings of Aaron Russo immediately spring to mind, don’t they? As one of the determinants of such a common system through which all of human traffic should be channelled, the report mentions:
“The level of Pan-European ambition towards the use of a single eIdentity throughout Europe by 2015: Will policy makers of Commission (European Commission) and Member States agree on a system that is to support only simple identity; will Pan-European services be build/transformed in a way that they benefit directly from eID; or will there be a natural evolution towards one single European IDM, adequate for most national and Pan-European Government Services?”
As the royal family’s own website reports, from 2001 to 2003 prince Constantijn worked as a strategic policy consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton operating out of London, England. Booz Allen is a globally operating, self-proclaimed “private consulting firm” right out of a John Grisham novel with all the dark intrigue that goes along with it. Since its creation in the early 1900s, Booz, Allen & Hamilton has been intimately tied to the military-industrial complex including “long-standing relationships with federal intelligence agencies”- as a superficial glance on Wikipedia reveals. A March 8 2008 article in CorpWatch reported that the firm “is a key advisor and prime contractor to all of the major U.S. intelligence agencies (…). Among the many services Booz Allen provides to intelligence agencies, according to its website, are war-gaming- simulated drills in which military and intelligence officials test their response to potential threats like terrorist attacks.”
A most interesting speciality of the firm is the development of electronic surveillance equipment and other spy-tools. After Van Oranje’s promising career at this key corporation within the intelligence community, his obvious next step was the RAND Corporation where the young prince could work on his policy-making skills while at the same time maintaining his close relationship with the big foundations. In Daniel Estulin’s 2005 bestseller “The Bilderberg Group” the author clarifies the ties between the RAND Corporation and these global entities:
“The interlocking leadership between the trustees at RAND, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations is a classic case of Bilderberg modus operandi. The Ford foundation gave one million dollars to RAND in 1952, at a time when the president of the Ford Foundation was simultaneously the chairman of RAND.”
RAND plays a key role in developing technologies that may be used by intelligence agencies who in turn want to get rid of certain non-compliant regimes. In a RAND document from 2012 titled Using Social Media to Gauge Iranian Public Opinion and Mood After the 2009 Election the authors describe collecting thousands of tweets from the Iranian people in the months following the Iranian elections of 2009. The think tank complained about the shortcomings of just scanning through Iranian blogs and such. In order to assess the Iranian zeitgeist, RAND turned to an extraordinary computer-program called LIWC:
“Given the shortcomings of the manual approach, using a computerized method to study the content of social media can serve as a useful complement, compensating for some of these limitations. Such a tool exists: an automated content analysis program called “Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2007” (LIWC, pronounced “Luke”).”
“Focusing on Twitter, we used LIWC as a means of tapping into Iranian public opinion and mood during the tumultuous months following the highly controversial 2009 presidential election”, the report states.
Admitting that the probing and analyzing of Iranian tweets serves the national security interests of the United States, the RAND researchers in the same breath admit:
“Given that LIWC is largely untried in non-Western political contexts, we used Iran during this period as a test case. On the one hand, we sought to shed light on how public opinion and mood evolved after the 2009 election. But at the same time, we intended to examine the validity of a new methodology—one incorporating the LIWC tool—for analyzing foreign public sentiment on political topics, as expressed through the social media platform, Twitter.”
The results, according to the authors, are so full of promise that they seek to expand the program even further. Under the header “Expanding the Scope of the Current Work” they state:
“To extend this current work, applying the methodology to other forms of social media is an obvious next step. For instance, we have conducted initial analyses of Iranian, Persian-language blogs, and of political leaders’ Facebook postings, which are not reported here.”
The authors are aware of the implications of their research when it comes to national security “interests”:
“We could also extend the current research by looking across more than one country at a time to gauge the sentiments that social media users in each country express on topics of interest to them all”, the report continues.
“For example, using the current methodology, it is possible to compare sentiments expressed across Iran, Pakistan, and other countries on topics including the United States, nuclear weapons, and domestic political issues. Other extensions of the current research could focus on Asian countries that are high on the national security agenda, such as China and Taiwan, or on Middle Eastern countries where political protests in early 2011 were reportedly influenced by social media use, such as Egypt and Tunisia.”
Because the methods used by RAND were retrospective in nature, the authors envision using this and other software for monitoring of international conflicts “as they unfold”:
“A final way to extend the current methodology is to build a real-time tracking tool for social media texts. Such a tool could automatically download texts as they are posted, run them through a parsing algorithm, and place them into a database for processing through LIWC (or other software). Using such a tool, it would be possible to view and analyse patterns in written texts almost as quickly as they unfold. Given the policy relevance of our findings, these recommendations for validation and extensions of the methodology illustrate the potential of analysing social media to understand public mood and opinion in various populations of interest.”
Studies such as these should not give on the impression that these monitoring and surveillance technologies are being used without the consent of corporations like Twitter, Google and Facebook- nor have they been hijacked at some point. On the contrary, as has become clear from countless “incidents” where these corporations have been caught censoring information, they are an active player within the technocratic architecture, set up from their very beginnings by globalist money. As Google Ideasillustrates, already hybrid connections between Google and the US government are being strengthened. According to several Stratford e-mails released by Wikileaks in March of 2012, Google Ideas’ current director Jared Cohen was presumably working for the White House as he attempted to fire up the spark of regime change. As Alahkbar reported, the Brookings Insititute valued Google Ideas as “the best new think tank established in the last 18 months.” Such accolade arguably suggests that Google Ideas is expected to be a major player in the near future.”
Brookings, an extremely influential think tank advising policymakers within the US government, also use their academically preconditioned brains to think about using Google, Twitter and Facebook as tools to achieve regime change in dissenting nations. As their document Which Path To Persia demonstrates, the plans for such operations are already being contemplated. In chapter 7 of the manuscript titled “Inspiring an Insurgency”, it examines the possibility of propagandizing the Iranian people into helping out the globalists loot their nation, stating “U.S. media and propaganda outlets could highlight group grievances and showcase rival leaders.”
The merging of Bilderberg’s post WW2-style corporate complex with technocratic giants will now accelerate an agenda that has been long in the making. By Benito Mussolini’s definition of fascism, that’s what it is. “Fascism”, Mussolini wrote, “should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Already in the works for decades this construct, or governance structure- merging big government with big corporations- is now taking a decisive digital leap with Bilderberg 2.0 which, by Mussolini’s definition, equals a new and enhanced version of the same old fascism.
Jurriaan Maessen’s website is Explosivereports.com.
Democratic Sen. Mark Udall says the Justice Department should not allow FBI agents to peruse Americans' private communications without obtaining a search warrant from a judge.
Last month, Sen. Mark Udall and a handful of other privacy-focused politicians persuaded the IRS to promise to cease warrantless searches of Americans’ private correspondence.
Now Udall, a Colorado Democrat, is taking aim at the Justice Department, which has claimed the right to conduct warrantless searches of Americans’ e-mail, Facebook chats, and other private communications.
“I am extremely concerned that the Justice Department and FBI are justifying warrantless searches of Americans’ electronic communications based on a loophole in an outdated law that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled was unconstitutional,” Udall said in a statement sent to CNET Thursday.
Udall’s statement cites a CNET article yesterday that was the first to disclose the Justice Department and the FBI’s electronic search policies. The article was based on internal government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The senator’s statement urges Congress to move quickly to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act — enacted during an era of dialup modems and the black and white Macintosh Plus — that currently does not require search warrants for all e-mail messages. The 6th Circuit ruled in 2010, however, that the privacy protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment require police to obtain search warrants signed by a judge first.
FOX NEWS: Internet Wiretap Proposal (by LibertyPen)
Megaupload Launches Frontal Attack on White House Corruption
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has been announcing it for months on his website and a white paper released today is the first big step towards that goal.
Titled “The United States vs You (and Kim Dotcom)” and written by Megaupload lawyers Ira Rothken and Robert Amsterdam, the paper accuses the Obama administration of being a pawn of big corporations. It further describes in detail how the authorities obliterated Megaupload on flaky legal grounds.
“The message is clear. The White House is for sale. Due process and the rule of law have little value to the current administration. More and more of our rights are eroding away to protect the interests of large corporations and their billionaire shareholders,” Dotcom tells TorrentFreak.
According to Dotcom his case is just one example of how corporate interests threaten people’s rights and freedom on the Internet in general.
“Silicon Valley has been turned into Surveillance Valley. Kids with keyboards are the new terrorists. Copyright is now a matter of national security. This is all very un-American. Read the White Paper and wake up.”
The 38-page white paper starts with a bang:
“The criminal prosecution of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom is purportedly the ‘largest copyright case in history,’ involving tens of millions of users around the world, and yet it is founded on highly dubious legal principles and apparently propelled by the White House’s desire to mollify the motion picture industry in exchange for campaign contributions and political support,” the white paper begins.
One of the main complaints against the legal process is that under U.S. law Megaupload and its employees can’t be held criminally responsible for copyright infringements committed by the site’s users.
“The prosecution seeks to hold Megaupload and its executives criminally responsible for alleged infringement by the company’s third-party cloud storage users. The problem with the theory, however, is that secondary copyright infringement is not – nor has it ever been – a crime in the United States.”
“The federal courts lack any power to criminalize secondary copyright infringement; the U.S. Congress alone has such authority, and it has not done so. As such, the Megaupload prosecution is not only baseless, it is unprecedented,” Rothken and Amsterdam write.
The paper continues to give a detailed overview of legal jurisprudence in Megaupload’s favor. Among other things, the lawyers note that Megaupload granted very broad DMCA takedown powers to copyright holders, who could remove any file from the cloud hosting service without oversight.
Most of the legal arguments laid out in the white paper have been highlighted previously. What is new, however, is the legal team’s frontal attack on the Obama administration. The suggestion is, that the White House has been corrupted by corporate money and that the assault on Megaupload was a payoff.
“The degree to which the Copyright Lobby, and the MPAA specifically, have managed to instrumentalize the current Administration to take down a foreign corporation and its executives is, quite literally, un-American,” the lawyers write.
Corrupted by sizable election contributions from corporate interest groups, the United States no longer stands for principled standards and the rule of law, the lawyers argue.
“Those values appear to have fallen by the wayside under this White House, which seems content to violate the due process rights of criminal defendants, mislead the courts, and advance baseless legal theories so long as its fund-raising remains uninterrupted.”
The Truth Will Come Out
Megaupload’s lawyers see the MPAA as the driving force behind the criminal prosecution of the cloud hosting site and its employees. According to them, it is no coincidence that the Hollywood group is headed by former Senator Chris Dodd, one of Vice President Joe Biden’s best friends.
“As the new Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, Chris Dodd improperly leveraged his friendship with Joe Biden to achieve the MPAA’s objectives. Former Senator Dodd’s relationship with the Vice President– who comes off manipulated, a cheerfully credulous facilitator – together with the Obama Administration’s ravenous hunger for campaign contributions, has given the MPAA absolute control over how the U.S. Department of Justice plays the game in enforcing copyright law,” they write.
Continuing on the corruption theme, Rothken and Amsterdam go on to describe MPAA’s influence in Washington as “State Capture.”
“The MPAA’s overt use of campaign contributions to sway the U.S. government into engaging in what amounts to unlawful action against Megaupload reflects a form of State Capture, a term coined by the World Bank to describe a brand of corruption characterized by the ability of a relatively small number of private interests to shape the official rules of the game through direct payments or other forms of financial influence.”
One cited example of how political funding was used to influence decisions was a January 2012 threat from the MPAA’s Chris Dodd. He stated that Hollywood would stop donating to politicians who fail to protect their interests.
“By threatening to revoke vital political and monetary support from the Administration at a crucial moment, the MPAA has exercised de facto control over key levers of executive power in Washington – law enforcement, prosecutors, trade negotiators – and is using those instruments of state power to further the financial interests of its members in Hollywood.”
The white paper further gives numerous examples of how Megaupload’s lawyers believe the authorities abused their power to further the interests of the copyright lobby. The overall conclusion is that people’s rights and freedoms are trumped to secure political donations, which are clear signs of contract prosecution.
“The U.S. government’s attack against Megaupload bears all the hallmarks of a contract prosecution: a case resting on erroneous theories of criminal law, littered with due process violations and prosecutorial abuses, carried out for the benefit of a select few in exchange for their political and financial support,” the lawyers write.
“In the name of eliminating copyright infringement, Hollywood has exerted a corrupting influence in Washington, leading us all down a slippery slope that not only threatens innovation and Internet freedom, but also has profound implications for constitutional principles of free speech, privacy and due process.”
Finally, the white paper suggests that this is not an isolated incident. It warns the public that these corrupt forces can quash anything that stands in the way of the private interests of those who make significant campaign contributions.
“Megaupload and Kim Dotcom are today’s targets, but the crosshairs can just as easily be trained on anybody who dares challenge or inconvenience a special interest that holds sway in Washington, and the current Administration – with its notoriously insatiable appetite for campaign contributions – seems all too willing to cooperate.”
The above points are just samples from the white paper, which is certainly worth reading in its entirety. There is no doubt that the Megaupload legal team have just planted a virtual bomb under the Megaupload prosecution. It will be interesting to see how this is received, and whether we will hear a response from the accused.
Senate passes internet sales tax bill amid opposition from conservatives
Bill to overturn 1992 court decision has support of Obama, Amazon and Walmart â but its future in the House is uncertainObama, Amazon, and Walmart all support an internet tax to make the world a “fairer” place which can also be explained as a place where big business and government are equally powerful.
A tax on the internet is not going to create equality for anyone- in fact it will make it even more difficult for internet business start-ups to compete with huge companies like Amazon who can easily deal with the costs of time-consuming regulations to adhere to. It will not help the consumer, as naturally anything you buy online will be more expensive. Taxing business and market transactions stifles an already troubled economy and ensures it stays that way.
I again ask the simple question: if we tax beer and cigarettes to encourage people to not buy them, why is taxing internet business or other products sold in-store any different? Even the government recognizes adding taxes is a hindrance to sales.Beyond the immorality and thievery of taxation, it is worth mentioning that we are also taxed far, far more than the colonies when they were inspired to rebel and create this “free” country in the first place.
Congressman Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) refuses to answer constituent’s question about CISPA — then tucks his tail between his legs and runs away.
Ladies and Gentlemen, one of your fine Tennessee representatives.
This was shot this morning (april 22) in Chattanooga, TN (not by me).
(via seattle-gadgets)
This will be the only post to this website today, as we are participating in #CISPABlackout.
If you’re eligible to vote in the USA, please take 10 minutes today to call your Senator and tell them that your right to privacy is important to you.
ALABAMA
Sessions, Jeff
(202) 224-4124
Contact: http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ConstituentServices.ContactMe
Shelby, Richard C.
(202) 224-5744
Contact: www.shelby.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/emailsenatorshelby
ALASKA
Begich, Mark
(202) 224-3004
Contact: www.begich.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=EmailSenator
Murkowski, Lisa
(202) 224-6665
Contact: www.murkowski.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact
ARIZONA
Flake, Jeff
(202) 224-4521
Contact: www.flake.senate.gov/contact.cfm
McCain, John
(202) 224-2235
Contact: http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm
ARKANSAS
Boozman, John
(202) 224-4843
Contact: www.boozman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
Pryor, Mark L.
(202) 224-2353
Contact: www.pryor.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactMe
CALIFORNIA
Boxer, Barbara
(202) 224-3553
Contact: www.boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/
Feinstein, Dianne
(202) 224-3841
Contact: www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
COLORADO
Bennet, Michael F.
(202) 224-5852
Contact: www.bennet.senate.gov/contact/
Udall, Mark
(202) 224-5941
Contact: www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=contact
CONNECTICUT
Blumenthal, Richard
(202) 224-2823
Contact: www.blumenthal.senate.gov/contact/
Murphy, Christopher
(202) 224-4041
Contact: www.murphy.senate.gov/contact.cfm
(via seattle-gadgets)
After Boston Bombing, Everyone Is Being Watched—and Everyone is Watching
By monitoring social media and using crowd-sourced evidence, authorities have turned the public into both suspects and investigators.
April 19, 2013 | FBI special agent and head of the bureau’s Boston office Richard DesLauriers has been running an crowd-sourced campaign for information about suspects in the Boston marathon bombing that left three dead and more than 170 wounded. So far, it appears to be working—but it also may herald in an unexpected end to privacy and civil liberties in the U.S.
Let’s take a look at the strategy, thus far.
The investigator released photos and videos of the two men authorities identified as suspects and created a website where tipsters and witnesses could come forward with pertinent information about the attack.
At a press conference yesterday, DesLauriers said the release of photographs and videos showing the bombers’ clothes, baseball hats, and faces could pull clues from anyone — in the United States or internationally — who had ever seen or known the suspects.
“With the media’s help, in an instant, these images will be delivered directly into the hands of millions around the world,” DesLauriers said.
And indeed they were. By the time the new information prompted a shootout in a Boston suburb that left one suspect dead, DesLauriers had already received more than 2,000 tips.
At the same time that the FBI was pouring over images and videos from the bombings, so too were internet users. On Reddit and 4Chan, vigilante investigators pointed out in photos and videos people and behavior they deemed suspicious. Claiming a man’s backpack was shaped as if it might have a pressure cooker in it, Reddit users identified the same wrong ‘suspect’ the New York Post pictured on its front page yesterday. The man, Salah Barhoun, was indeed not being sought by police. He was simply an innocent teenager.
“It’s the worst feeling that I can possibly feel,” Barhoun told ABC News, “I’m only 17.”
The FBI’s investigation helped to clear the name of the high schooler. But he remains worried that his life will be forever stained by those who remember that NY Post and much of the internet portrayed him as a terrorist.
While some people have standards for the kind of information they will post to Facebook, we have yet to establish a precedent for how authorities — and average civilians — may use social media to identify suspects in crimes. With spying as easy as the click of a mouse, privacy, like hand-written letters, becomes a thing of the past. At the same time, questions about how we can maintain security and safety have largely gone unaddressed.
Is there a time and place for police work, or is everything on the internet free reign? For example, should the FBI be allowed to scour through the Facebook and twitter profiles of every person they identified at the Boston marathon? Or, to push the question even further, should NYPD officers monitor Facebook pages to identify “at-risk” youths before they have committed crimes?
Whether internet vigilantes or trained investigators are using social media for crime analysis, the privacy of the people on the other end is often pushed aside in the name of safety. If this phenomenon continues un-checked, the impact on civil liberties could be as swift and severe as the false reports that followed the attack.
How Reddit Became A Hub Of The Crowdsourced Boston Marathon Bombing Investigation | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
Reddit’s users launched a new subreddit Findbostonbombers where hundreds of amateur sleuths are crowdsourcing clues and suspects in the Boston terrori…Over at Fast Company, I’m conducting an ongoing conversation about the pluses and minuses of crowdsourced terrorist investigations. What happens when internet users post the names of people they think are suspects, what happens when these peoples’ families are harassed, what happens when news gets out that they are not actually suspects? What happens when law enforcement officials follow Reddit to see if there are any leads they are missing? What happens to forensics when they are left to the crowd? Check it out.
