There are things so startling, so counter to what we have always believed of ourselves that they are impossible to hold in our heads. If others are like me. I will revert to the next things, the smaller things, the thing I can understand more easily rather than go and cogitate upon the larger things.
Glenn Greenwald: How America's Surveillance State Breeds Conformity and Fear left me poleaxed.
snip..all the way back to the 1920s, when the government first began developing the detective audio capability to eavesdrop on American citizens and heightened as the power heightened through the 1940s, when WWII would justify it; into the '50s when the Cold War did, and the 1960s when the social unrest justified surveillance. What Senator Church found was that literally every single administration under both Democratic and Republican presidents had seriously abused this power.
There are two Democratic senators that are very, kind of, mainstream, loyal, Democratic Party supporters. They’re President Obama supporters [ ... ] One is Ron Wyden of Oregon and the other is Mark Udall of Colorado. And what these two Democratic Party senators have been doing for the last three years is running around warning that the Patriot Act is so much worse than anything that any of us thought all that time when we were objecting to it. And the reason it’s so much worse is because the U.S. government has secretly interpreted it -- what the Patriot Act admits it to do in terms of surveillance on American citizens, is completely unrelated to what the law actually says, and it’s something that almost nobody knows.
NSA responded to these senators' inquiries thus:
"We can’t tell you how many millions of Americans are having their e-mails read by us, and their telephone calls listened in by us, because for us to tell you that would violate the privacy of American citizens."
Now there are those, like myself, rather overwhelmed with the completeness of our systems breakdowns. We know these things but they hurt to think about. There are those who have less comprehension perhaps, who are only wanting to be safe. They think perhaps that only the guilty should worry. Others think only other issues matter. Maybe after the next election or the next or the next we can solve this thing.
At the same time other law enforcement agencies use our cell phone data.
More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance
http://www.nytimes.com/...
MB has a diary:
Massive amount of cellphone data sought
In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.
So those occupiers that were stopped, routine traffic violation right? And then framed for some cockamamie thing like Molotov cocktails from a brewing kit. Put the dots together. If you know who is coming to an event (and how would you know? emails, twitters, facebook) and you know where they are at times (how? cell phones my friend) then you can stop them check out their gear and concoct a story. It doesn't have to be true. By the time they are subjected to beatings and intimidation, they might not have the moxie to mount a good defense on their own behalf.
To add to this there is a story out about cops being outsourced. I picked up on that through twitter and in trying google to get back to it I got:
Outsourcing professionals!
Naturally I couldn't find the source of the privitized cops, but I found an oldy but goody from Crooks and Liars
OPD doesn't live there
Now if cops who don't live in the community are not GOOD for the community how much more of a distance does privatizing cause?
And another story: Cops drive around scanning people through their cars and clothes.
So the solution to all of this? In some ways it was easier to think of corporations and banksters cause we could just move our money. There was a solution, even if we couldn't get everybody on the same page. Getting enough people on one page at one moment has done wonders for Limbaugh and Alec and Susan G. Konen. But this? What could we ever do to make a dint in this? How could we ever get enough "Better Democrats" to make even a hearing? What is your solution? Move? The great tentacles of NSA probably also compromise Canadian data what you bet? I have thought that we need a separate internet, one that is not compromised by ATT. I don't know that that is possible, but it would be the easiest. It wouldn't stop being surveilled in all our nakedness by roving cops and the HS at the airports. Maybe aluminum shields? But that would just make the cops and the HS folks attack us.
One worrisome thought. Even though I might think NSA isn't out to get me I cannot believe that the banksters wouldn't love to have all my data.