Former Facebook security chief, Max Kelly, now with NSA

The American people don’t much want to talk about it because they have too many other problems to worry about in their daily lives. They know something doesn’t feel right whenever their privacy is violated. Spying is not new; societies have been doing this for thousands of years. There’s only one exception: technology is smarter than it ever was. The NSA spying makes the Watergate scandal look good.

They nailed President Nixon to the wall for far less malicious activity than what is being allowed today. And it is widely known that politicians in the past played hardball, almost all of them, or at least many of them. The reason to assassinate Nixon’s career was political, and was effective.

Collecting metadata is not a partial gesture, it’s nonstop total surveillance.

The web that was weaved (pun intended) has entangled the likes of bureaucracy and corporation. The NSA and Silicon Valley partnership has literally become a revolving door.

There’s been little fanfare regarding the former chief security officer for Facebook, Max Kelly, and his exit from Facebook in 2010 for another position. Guess where he landed? You got it. At NSA.

This should leave little doubt where the tech industry is headed and no struggling tech company is going to turn down big profits doled by government, especially when start-ups are funded from the same hand.

And one computer nerd turns to another and slyly proclaims his steadfastness: “They can’t collect my data because I turn my computer off and unplug it from the modem every night.” Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but the NSA can gather your data with the computer off. Yes, it’s been confirmed.

Kudos to the New York Times for the report: N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers. Since 2008, this method has been deployed.

Phone calls, text messages, and more are stored for future inquiries, which have been many. The Dishfire program collects millions of text messages daily.

Perspicuous Politics

Glenn Greenwald — The reforms are little more than a PR attempt.

This scam has been so frequently used that it is now easily recognizable. In the mid-1970s, the Senate uncovered surveillance abuses that had been ongoing for decades, generating widespread public fury.

But the new court (FISA) was designed to ensure that all of the government’s requests were approved: it met in secret, only the government’s lawyers could attend, it was staffed with the most pro-government judges, and it was even housed in the executive branch. As planned, the court over the next 30 years virtually never said no to the government.

As a result, the committees, ostensibly intended to serve an overseer function, have far more often acted as the NSA’s in-house PR firm. The heralded mid-1970s reforms did more to make Americans believe there was reform than actually providing any, thus shielding it from real reforms.

Steve Lendman — NSA Spying: Worse Than You Think

So is doublethink. US officials know what’s going on. They lie. They speak with forked tongue. They claim otherwise. They do it with a straight face.

If Mr. Nixon were alive today, he might have cringed at the title, NSA Spying: Worse Than You Think. No matter what any president says, the domestic spying will continue, regardless of the rhetoric.

Isn’t this called phone tapping President Obama?

President Richard M.Nixon — Nov. 17, 1973

Because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.

A Chilling Look Into The Future From The Past (1967)

A 1967 movie (The President’s Analyst) provides a chilling look into the future, from the past. This is a satirical film starring James Coburn. Released on December 21, 1967, it makes one wonder just how much the writers knew about the future and the phone chip in the brain, or the cerebrum communicator. CC for short…

Surveillance is the underlying theme of course.

“Are you trying to tell me that every phone in the country is tapped?”