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I didn't know that NSA posted public statements to the world, but apparently they do. This is a Fourth of July greeting and, apparently, a response to the Restore the Fourth demonstrations whose participants they were closely monitoring through their massive surveillance system? Anyway they say, you'll be happy to know that it's okay for you citizens to protest NSA, but if you do, and since they decide who goes on their "selector" lists, they'll make a special place on their lists for you if you carry around mean signs about the NSA! Okay that was me speculating/joking, sort of. I don't know who decided to publish this (presumably the all powerful Gen. Keith Alexander) but it is just creepy. (Hat tip to emptywheel for this).
NSA - 3 July 2013 Statement on planned Fourth of July demonstrations
The Fourth of July reminds us as Americans of the freedoms and rights all citizens of our country are guaranteed by our Constitution. Among those is freedom of speech, often exercised in protests of various kinds. NSA does not object to any lawful, peaceful protest. NSA and its employees work diligently and lawfully every day, around the clock, to protect the nation and its people.
Did you notice that he slipped that word "lawfully" in there? Is he tempted, with that giant data base of everybody's communications at his fingertips, to find out what people are saying about him? How about the part where he says that the NSA doesn't object to protests? Why would we care if the NSA did object? Again, just really creepy.
Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? (Good Will Hunting)
Now, about those Restore the Fourth protests and meany signs about the NSA...
Krugman believes that, despite all the differences between now and then, we are largely the same country that we were in 1776, that there is "a thread of continuity in our national identity".
E Pluribus Unum
But the real America is, in fact, a nation of metropolitan areas, not small towns. Tellingly, even when Ms. Palin made her infamous remarks in 2008 she did so in Greensboro, N.C., which may not be in the Northeast Corridor but — with a metropolitan population of more than 700,000 — is hardly Mayberry. In fact, two-thirds of Americans live in metro areas with half-a-million or more residents.
Nor, by the way, are most of us living in leafy suburbs. America as a whole has only 87 people per square mile, but the average American, according to the Census Bureau, lives in a census tract with more than 5,000 people per square mile. For all the bashing of the Northeast Corridor as being somehow un-American, this means that the typical American lives in an environment that resembles greater Boston or greater Philadelphia more than it resembles Greensboro, let alone true small towns.
[...]
And ethnically we are, of course, very different from the founders. Only a minority of today’s Americans are descended from the WASPs and slaves of 1776. The rest are the descendants of successive waves of immigration: first from Ireland and Germany, then from Southern and Eastern Europe, now from Latin America and Asia. We’re no longer an Anglo-Saxon nation; we’re only around half-Protestant; and we’re increasingly nonwhite.
[...]
Of course, our democratic ideal has always been accompanied by enormous hypocrisy, starting with the many founding fathers who espoused the rights of man, then went back to enjoying the fruits of slave labor. Today’s America is a place where everyone claims to support equality of opportunity, yet we are, objectively, the most class-ridden nation in the Western world [...] But that very hypocrisy is, in a way, a good sign. The wealthy may defend their privileges, but given the temper of America, they have to pretend that they’re doing no such thing. The block-the-vote people know what they’re doing, but they also know that they mustn’t say it in so many words. In effect, both groups know that the nation will view them as un-American unless they pay at least lip service to democratic ideals — and in that fact lies the hope of redemption.
emptywheel considers some of the abuses enumerated in the
Declaration of Independence.
Happy Birthday, You Rebels!
But this year, particularly given the coup in Egypt, I want to contemplate this passage.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
With Edward Snowden, we appear to have placed demands on NATO countries France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal to deny Evo Morales overflight. But Austria, not a NATO country, offered Morales a place to land. Did we secretly declare Snowden mutual defense threat against NATO, because he revealed how much the government spies on us all?
We don’t have soldiers sleeping in our homes. We’re a long way from that kind of militarization. But we are, increasingly, becoming a military empire at the expense of the Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness of American liberty and — even more so — the liberty of people around the globe.
RT ran a liveblog of the protests.
#Restorethe4th: Anti-NSA protest LIVE UPDATES
An anti-NSA surveillance nationwide protest and online campaign is launching on Thursday. It aims to restore the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which protects US citizens from "unreasonable searches and seizures."
The ‘Restore the Fourth’ campaign was born on Reddit last month and is being supported by Mozilla, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and other US and international press freedom organizations.
Still thinking about the NSA... That NSA message about the protests was on the
NSA web site. And though the web site is nsa.gov, the banner says that it is both "National Security Administration" and "Central Security Service" and they are given equal billing. Is this a new thing or has it always been that way? Has anyone even heard of the "Central Security Service" before? What is that? Gen. Alexander is the head of three organizations: NSA, Central Security Service and United States Cyber Command.
Central Security Service
The Central Security Service (CSS) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense, established in 1972 by a Presidential Directive to promote full partnership between the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Service Cryptologic Elements (SCE) of the United States Armed Forces in the field of signals intelligence.[1]
[...]
The blue background of the CSS emblem represents "fidelity" and "steadfastness", with the symbols for the cryptologic service elements provided shown clockwise from top right as follows: Army Intelligence and Security Command, United States Marine Corps, Naval Security Group, United States Coast Guard and Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency with the symbol of the NSA/CSS in the center.[1]
[...]
According to James Bamford, NSA/CSS was initially conceived as a separate "fourth service" beside the three US armed services. The latter resisted this idea, and therefore the CSS was founded as an inter-service organization. The day-to-day work of the CSS is to capture enemy signals (radar, telemetry, radio/satellite communications) using the means of the involved service. For example, the Navy has special submarines for tapping undersea cables; the Air Force operates aircraft with sophisticated antennas and processing gear to listen to enemy radar and radio; and on the ground, the Army operates similar eavesdropping equipment.[2]
[...]
The Special Collection Service (SCS) is a group within the Central Security Service[citation needed] that is not officially recognized. Its purpose is to put sophisticated eavesdropping equipment—from bugs to parabolic antennas—in difficult-to-reach places. It also attempts to target for recruitment key foreign communications personnel such as database managers, systems administrators, and IT specialists.[3] The SCS facility is located in Beltsville, Maryland.[4]
The specialized intelligence gathering capabilities of the Special Collection Service include:
Clandestine operations involving surveillance and penetration of target facilities, including "black bag" style operations.[citation needed]
Cryptographic side channel and key recovery attacks involving EMSEC and COMSEC specialties.[citation needed]
Covert communication capture and relay of target information.[citation needed]
Operation of unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance and perimeter penetration.
And the new Cyber Command, the third organization that Alexander commands. Gen. Alexander must be a busy guy. I wonder how many people are in this branch of the military (which has three sub branches). We know that NSA has 500K contractors alone. How many people are in the CSS and this Cyber Command? And of course, how much does all of this cost? Will we ever know? Those numbers are classified. But how much does this NSA, CSS and Cyber Command costs us every year? We do know that DoD money for cybersecurity is flowing like crazy and every defense contractor is becoming a cyber expert, rushing to get that money, and it's a new and exciting field. Presumably, these new wars will all be fought on the internet. What will become of the internet as billions and billions are poured into making it the new world battlefield? Seriously, is there any part of the globe, real or virtual, that this country and its military and the multinational corps will not seek to own and dominate? What about the civilian population on the internet? This is all surreal.
United States Cyber Command
United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) is an armed forces sub-unified command subordinate to United States Strategic Command. The command is located in Fort Meade, Maryland and led by General Keith B. Alexander.[1] USCYBERCOM centralizes command of cyberspace operations, organizes existing cyber resources and synchronizes defense of U.S. military networks.
"USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."[2]
[...]
U.S. Cyber Command is composed of several service components, units from military services who will provide Joint services to Cyber Command.
- Army Cyber Command/Second Army (Army)
[...]
- Fleet Cyber Command/Tenth Fleet (Navy)
[...]
= Air Forces Cyber/Twenty-Fourth Air Force (Air Force)
Booker’s Opponents May Use His Friendship With Christie Against Him
He has been a guest at the governor’s state-owned beach house and once spent time backstage with the governor’s wife and children after a Taylor Swift concert.
He even introduced Mr. Christie to his new friend, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, who has since raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the governor.
For years, Cory Booker, the celebrity mayor of Newark, has been an unlikely supporter, ally and even friend of Mr. Christie, the only New Jersey politician with a national following to rival his own.
[...]
With the mayor enjoying a huge lead in the polls, his opponents are signaling that they plan to make his ties to the governor a major theme in the primary campaign, arguing that it is emblematic of the complicated relationship the mayor has had with his own party, particularly its liberal base.
Egypt braces for protests after Muslim Brotherhood calls for 'day of rejection'
Supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi gather at rallies as Brotherhood refuses to engage with 'usurping authorities'
Egypt is braced for drama after Friday prayers as the vanquished Muslim Brotherhood called for a "day of rejection" following a widespread crackdown on its leadership by the country's new interim president, Adly Mansour.
Supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, still reeling from the military coup that removed their leader from power, have begun to gather at rallies following a series of raids and arrests that decimated the Muslim Brotherhood's senior ranks and consolidated the military's hold on the country.
A Brotherhood statement read to supporters near the Rabia al-Adawiya mosque in eastern Cairo said: "We declare our complete rejection of the military coup staged against the elected president and the will of the nation. We refuse to participate in any activities with the usurping authorities."
One of the group's most senior leaders, Mohamed Beltagy, who has not been arrested, appeared before the crowd. Tens of thousands are expected at the mosque and may march to the nearby defence ministry building.
Action
Stop Watching Us.
The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.
Massive Spying Program Exposed
Demand Answers Now (EFF petition)
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