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For The Record  

FTR #786 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 16: The Obverse Oswald–Update and Summary Analysis

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

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Side 1  Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: Sup­ple­ment­ing and sum­ming up the exhaus­tive FTR series on “The Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” series, this pro­gram sets forth the Snow­den “psy-op” against the back­ground of Lee Har­vey Oswald, the U.S. spy infil­trat­ed into the Sovi­et Union and then into left­ist orga­ni­za­tions in the Unit­ed States, Oswald was framed for JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and then killed before he could defend him­self.

Where­as Oswald was por­trayed as a vil­lain, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s oper­a­tion is the obverse, with Snow­den decamp­ing first to Chi­na and then to Rus­sia. Snow­den is not only a spy but a fas­cist, who advo­cates the elim­i­na­tion of Social Secu­ri­ty and the return to the gold stan­dard.

Snow­den’s Russ­ian sojourn appears to have been arranged by Wik­iLeaks, which also appears to have arranged his flight to Chi­na from Hawaii. Throw­ing Oba­ma’s “reboot” with Rus­sia under the bus, the Snow­den “op” is prob­a­bly part of the broad­er oper­a­tion–financed to the tune of $5 bil­lion–that brought the Nazi heirs to the OUN/B to pow­er in the Ukraine. We do not think it is coin­ci­den­tal that Cit­i­zen Green­wald’s finan­cial angel Pierre Omid­yar helped to finance the fas­cist coup in Ukraine, nor do we think it coin­ci­dence that the ele­ments of the Swedish neo-Nazi milieu to which Carl Lund­strom belongs are decamp­ing to Ukraine to bolser the Swo­bo­da and Pravy Sek­tor fas­cists.

The Turn­er Diaries and Hunter, pub­lished by Green­wald’s client, the Nation­al Alliance

Ger­man and Brazil­ian dri­ves to update and pop­u­lar­ize their IT sec­tors, sup­pos­ed­ly in response to Edward Snow­den’s “dis­clo­sures,” can be safe­ly assumed to have been antic­i­pat­ed quite some time ago. The things Snow­den has dis­cussed have not only been known for some time, but are stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for intel­li­gence ser­vices all over the world.

The Snow­den “psy-op” is almost cer­tain­ly a device for pro­pa­gan­diz­ing on behalf of the German/Brazilian dri­ve, which con­sti­tutes eco­nom­ic war­fare against the U.S. high-tech busi­ness, under the cir­cum­stances.

The pro­gram also notes oth­er aspects of this appar­ent psy-op, includ­ing fur­ther desta­bi­liza­tion of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy.

With Cit­i­zen Green­wald’s Nazi clients hav­ing fore­shad­owed the 9/11 attacks and pre­dict­ed and advo­cat­ed the destruc­tion of the Unit­ed States through ter­ror­ist acts using WMD’s, it appears that the ongo­ing desta­bi­liza­tion of the NSA and GCHQ as a result of the actions of the Obverse Oswald and the forces that con­trol him are prepara­to­ry for just such an onslaught.

We are strong­ly sup­port­ive of the NSA and GCHQ for this rea­son.

We end on a spec­u­la­tive note: Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal the­o­ries are fas­cist and fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt’s New Deal. His belief that we must get rid of Social Secu­ri­ty and bring back the gold stan­dard are prop­a­gat­ed by the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute, the ide­o­log­i­cal font of Snow­den’s polit­i­cal idol Ron Paul.

Arguably the most famous mem­ber of the Aus­tri­an School of Eco­nom­ics that spawned and dom­i­nates the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute is Friedrich von Hayek. An immi­grant from Aus­tria, von Hayek was osten­si­bly an “anti-Nazi.” In 1944, he pub­lished The Road to Serf­dom, which attacks the New Deal poli­cies of F.D.R. Begun well before the Canaris memo, von Hayek’s work has been a sta­ple of GOP/Underground Reich pro­pa­gan­da ever since its pub­li­ca­tion, as well as a foun­da­tion­al ele­ment of revi­sion­ist his­to­ry.

We present a doc­u­ment drawn up by the head of Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence (the Abwehr) in 1944. Abwehr chief Admi­ral Wil­helm Canaris notes that under­cov­er pro­pa­gan­da assets in the Unit­ed States should be uti­lized to gen­er­ate anti-Roo­sevelt sen­ti­ment and help his elec­toral defeat in the 1944 elec­tions. The Third Reich viewed the defeat of Roo­sevelt as con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant.

We  won­der if von Hayek–ostensibly one of the “anti-Nazis” cryp­ti­cal­ly referred to at the end of the doc­u­ment below, was one of the Third Reich’s under­cov­er pro­pa­gan­da and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare assets among the Allies. The Road to Serf­dom was heav­i­ly pub­li­cized by The Read­ers Digest in the UniT­ed States.

We are also of the con­sid­ered pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion that the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute is an impor­tant ele­ment of the Under­ground Reich.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion about U.S. high-tech com­pa­nies col­lab­o­rat­ing in order to hold down the salaries of their employ­ees; dis­cus­sion of the Euro­pean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Stan­dards Insti­tute’s man­dat­ing of back­doors to Euro­pean soft­ware and hard­ware so that intel­li­gence ser­vices and law enforce­ment can con­duct exact­ly the kind of sur­veil­lance that Ger­many, Brazil and the EU are com­plain­ing about; Snow­den’s leaks about mon­i­tor­ing of Ger­man high-tech com­pa­nies have com­pro­mised NSA and GCHQ sur­veil­lance of tar­gets that are absolute­ly legit­i­mate and have ter­ror-relat­ed con­cerns; the leak­ing of NSA spy­ing in Chi­nese tech giant Huawei while Michelle Oba­ma was in Chi­na on a good will vis­it and on the eve of Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi’s vis­it to Europe to speak with Angela Merkel; review of Green­wald’s Nazi client Nation­al Alliance and their fore­shad­ow­ing of the 9/11 attacks and the degree of coin­ci­dence of those attacks with Hitler’s plans for destroy­ing the Unit­ed States; com­par­i­son of the GOP with Mus­soli­ni and Hitler.

1a. The lev­el of hypocrisy on the part of the Euro­pean coun­tries on the NSA and GCHQ spy­ing is con­sum­mate:

“NSA Sur­veil­lance Sparks Talk of Nation­al Inter­nets” by John Blau; IEEE Spec­trum; 1/23/2014.

. . . . . . . .Back­doors are essen­tial­ly soft­ware designs in net­works that allow author­i­ties to con­duct “deep pack­et” inspec­tion to mon­i­tor and inter­cept data. The Euro­pean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Stan­dards Insti­tute, for instance, works close­ly with oper­a­tors, gov­ern­ment, and law enforce­ment agen­cies to inte­grate sur­veil­lance capa­bil­i­ties into com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works. [!!!–D.E.] But many oper­a­tors are con­cerned about how access to the back­door “keys” is reg­u­lat­ed, and, in the case of some equip­ment vendors—notably China’s Huawei Tech­nolo­gies Co.—about whether secret back­doors are built into net­work sys­tems with­out oper­a­tors’ knowl­edge. . . .

1b. The dis­cus­sion under­scores analy­sis of the loss of busi­ness by U.S. tech firms as a result of the Snow­den “op.”

“Rev­e­la­tions of N.S.A. Spy­ing Cost U.S. Tech Com­pa­nies” by Claire Cain Miller; The New York Times; 3/22/2014.

Microsoft has lost cus­tomers, includ­ing the gov­ern­ment of Brazil.

IBM is spend­ing more than a bil­lion dol­lars to build data cen­ters over­seas to reas­sure for­eign cus­tomers that their infor­ma­tion is safe from pry­ing eyes in the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment.

And tech com­pa­nies abroad, from Europe to South Amer­i­ca, say they are gain­ing cus­tomers that are shun­ning Unit­ed States providers, sus­pi­cious because of the rev­e­la­tions by Edward J. Snow­den that tied these providers to the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency’s vast sur­veil­lance pro­gram.

Even as Wash­ing­ton grap­ples with the diplo­mat­ic and polit­i­cal fall­out of Mr. Snowden’s leaks, the more urgent issue, com­pa­nies and ana­lysts say, is eco­nom­ic. Tech­nol­o­gy exec­u­tives, includ­ing Mark Zucker­berg of Face­book, raised the issue when they went to the White House on Fri­day for a meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma.

It is impos­si­ble to see now the full eco­nom­ic ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the spy­ing dis­clo­sures — in part because most com­pa­nies are locked in mul­ti­year con­tracts — but the pieces are begin­ning to add up as busi­ness­es ques­tion the trust­wor­thi­ness of Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts. . . .

. . . . “It’s clear to every sin­gle tech com­pa­ny that this is affect­ing their bot­tom line,” said Daniel Cas­tro, a senior ana­lyst at the Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Inno­va­tion Foun­da­tion, who pre­dict­ed that the Unit­ed States cloud com­put­ing indus­try could lose $35 bil­lion by 2016.

For­rester Research, a tech­nol­o­gy research firm, said the loss­es could be as high as $180 bil­lion, or 25 per­cent of indus­try rev­enue, based on the size of the cloud com­put­ing, web host­ing and out­sourc­ing mar­kets and the worst case for dam­ages.

The busi­ness effect of the dis­clo­sures about the N.S.A. is felt most in the dai­ly con­ver­sa­tions between tech com­pa­nies with prod­ucts to pitch and their wary cus­tomers. The top­ic of sur­veil­lance, which rarely came up before, is now “the new nor­mal” in these con­ver­sa­tions, as one tech com­pa­ny exec­u­tive described it. . . . .

1c. In FTR #769, we not­ed that the GOP (its “shut down,” lib­er­tar­i­an wing in par­tic­u­lar) has twinned with the Under­ground Reich, Ger­many and Brazil in the eco­nom­ic war­fare against U.S. high-tech busi­ness. An arti­cle from The Courthose News Ser­vice sums up the char­ac­ter of the Repub­li­can par­ty.

“Weak Fas­cism” by Robert Kahn; Cour­t­house News Ser­vice; 3/28/2014.

Repub­li­cans are liv­ing down to their self-pro­claimed role as the par­ty of ideas. What they have been propos­ing for years is a form of weak fas­cism: not one in which the cor­po­ra­tions are put in har­ness to strength­en the gov­ern­ment, but one in which the gov­ern­ment is shack­led to the pow­er of cor­po­ra­tions.

Fas­cism, Webster’s Sec­ond Edi­tion tells us, is “a sys­tem of gov­ern­ment char­ac­ter­ized by rigid one-par­ty dic­ta­tor­ship, forcible sup­pres­sion of the oppo­si­tion (unions, oth­er, espe­cially left­ist, par­ties, minor­ity groups, etc.), the reten­tion of pri­vate own­er­ship of the means of pro­duc­tion under cen­tral­ized gov­ern­ment con­trol, bel­liger­ent nation­al­ism and racism, glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of war, etc.: first insti­tuted in Italy in 1922.”

The only dif­fer­ence between Mussolini’s Fas­cism and Repub­li­can fas­cism is the four words under cen­tral­ized gov­ern­ment con­trol, yet if pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions con­trol or can dic­tate to the gov­ern­ment, that’s a dis­tinc­tion with­out a dif­fer­ence.

Mus­solini har­nessed the cor­po­ra­tions to the state. Repub­li­cans would har­ness the state to the cor­po­ra­tions. They claim they want to free the cor­po­ra­tions from the shack­les of gov­ern­ment.. . .

. . . .Local con­trol — states’ rights, in vot­ing, racial poli­cies, “sci­ence” and reli­gious cur­ricu­lum in pub­lic schools, what women should be allowed to do, and so on, is, of course, a ban­ner cause of the so-called tea par­ty — the Repub­li­can fas­cists.

Mod­ern Amer­i­can fas­cism, then, has just one essen­tial dif­fer­ence from Ital­ian or Ger­man fas­cism of the bloody 20th cen­tury: whether the con­trols should be exert­ed by gov­ern­ment or cor­po­ra­tions.

Tea par­ty Repub­li­cans are square­ly on the side of the cor­po­ra­tions, and this is a place where Repub­li­can fas­cism and Lib­er­tar­i­ans meet.

2a. Ger­man e‑mail providers have tout­ed a “secure data stor­age” capa­bil­i­ty. This has been described as “great mar­ket­ing stunt at exact­ly the right time.” We are of the opin­ion that the Snow­den “op” was exe­cut­ed and timed to pro­vide psy­cho­log­i­cal impe­tus to the ramp­ing up of Ger­man and Brazil­ian inter­net and high-tech busi­ness. Note that these “secure” e‑mail and data stor­age capa­bil­i­ties will NOT be secure from BND sur­veil­lance.

“Cryp­to Experts Blast Ger­man e‑mail Providers’ ‘Secure Data Stor­age’ Claim by Cyrus Fari­var; Ars Tech­nica; 8/10/2013.

GPG devel­oper calls move a “great mar­ket­ing stunt at exact­ly the right time.”

In the wake of the shut­down of two secure e‑mail providers in the Unit­ed States, three major Ger­man e‑mail providers have band­ed togeth­er to say that they’re step­ping for­ward to fill the gap. There’s just one prob­lem: the three com­pa­nies only pro­vide secu­rity for e‑mail in tran­sit (in the form of SMTP TLS) and not actu­al secure data stor­age.

GMX, T‑Online (a divi­sion of Deutsche Telekom), and Web.de—which serve two-thirds of Ger­man e‑mail users—announced on Fri­day that data would be stored in Ger­many and the ini­tia­tive would “auto­mat­i­cally encrypt data over all trans­mis­sion paths and offer peace of mind that data are han­dled in com­pli­ance with Ger­man data pri­vacy laws.” Start­ing imme­di­ately, users who use these e‑mail ser­vices in-brows­er will have SMTP TLS enabled, and start­ing next year, these three e‑mail providers will refuse to send all e‑mails that do not have it enabled.

“Ger­mans are deeply unset­tled by the lat­est reports on the poten­tial inter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion data,” said René Ober­mann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, in a state­ment. “Our ini­tia­tive is designed to coun­ter­act this con­cern and make e‑mail com­mu­ni­ca­tion through­out Ger­many more secure in gen­eral. Pro­tec­tion of the pri­vate sphere is a valu­able com­mod­i­ty.”

These com­pa­nies have dubbed this effort “E‑mail made in Ger­many,” and tout “secure data stor­age in Ger­many as a rep­utable loca­tion.” In prac­tice, that appears (Google Trans­late) to sim­ply mean that start­ing in 2014, these providers will “only trans­port SSL-encrypt­ed e‑mails to ensure that data traf­fic over all of their trans­mis­sion paths is secure.”

Ger­many has noto­ri­ously strong data pro­tec­tion laws—likely the strongest in the world. But those laws do have law enforce­ment excep­tions for secu­rity agen­cies, like the BND, Germany’s equiv­a­lent to the Nation­al Secu­rity Agency. The BND like­ly can eas­ily access e‑mails stored unen­crypted on Ger­man servers with lit­tle legal or tech­ni­cal inter­fer­ence. Clear­ly, forc­ing users (par­tic­u­larly less tech-savvy ones) to use SMTP TLS pro­vides a mod­icum of bet­ter pro­tec­tion for data in tran­sit, but it’s hard­ly any­where close to improved secu­rity for stored data.

Law enforce­ment can still get stored e‑mail

Ger­man tech media and the well-respect­ed Chaos Com­puter Club have lam­basted this approach, dis­miss­ing it as “pure mar­ket­ing.”

“The basic prob­lem with e‑mail is that it’s a post­card read­able by all—[this] changes noth­ing,” wrote Andre Meis­ter on the not­ed Netzpolitik.org blog (Ger­man).

Lukas Pitschl of GPG­Tools told Ars this was mere­ly a “mar­ket­ing stunt,” which would “not add real val­ue to the secu­rity of e‑mail com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

“If you real­ly want to pro­tect your e‑mails from pry­ing eyes, use OpenPGP or S/MIME on your own desk­top and don’t let a third-par­ty provider have your data,” he told Ars. “No one of the ‘E‑Mail made in Ger­many’ ini­tia­tive would say if they encrypt the data on their servers so they don’t have access to it, which they prob­a­bly don’t and thus the gov­ern­ment could force them to let them access it.”

The Chaos Com­puter Club prac­ti­cally laughed (Google Trans­late) at this new announce­ment:

“What com­peti­tors [have had] for years as standard—a forced encryp­tion when access­ing a per­sonal e‑mail account—is now sold pro­mo­tion­ally as a new, effec­tive tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment,” the group wrote. “The NSA scan­dal has shown that cen­tral­ized ser­vices are to be regard­ed as not trust­wor­thy when it comes to access by secret [agen­cies].”

2b. Cit­i­zen Green­wald is resid­ing in Brazil, one of the coun­tries whose IT indus­try accel­er­a­tion appears to have been aid­ed by the Snow­den “psy-op.” It is essen­tial to note in this regard that the vac­u­um­ing up of elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions by NSA and GCHQ has been known for years. Such prac­tices are also stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for all major intel­li­gence agen­cies. The pro­fessed motive for Brazil­ian, Ger­man and Euro­pean actions as being “in response” to the “dis­clo­sures” of Snow­den are non­sen­si­cal. The Snow­den psy-op is pro­pa­gan­da to boost the Brazil­ian and Ger­man actions.

The Snow­den psy-op is part of an eco­nom­ic war­fare pro­gram against the Unit­ed States.

“On Inter­net, Brazil Is Beat­ing US at Its Own Game” by Bill Wood­cock; Al Jazeera; 9/20/2013.

. . .The third and less doc­u­mented area of devel­op­ment con­sists of pri­vate over­land fiber cable sys­tems link­ing Brazil to each of its South Amer­i­can neigh­bors. These fol­low a pat­tern sim­i­lar to Brazil­ian pri­vate-sec­tor invest­ment in under­sea cables but on a much small­er scale. This is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant with regard to the land­locked coun­tries of Paraguay and Bolivia. With no inde­pen­dent access to the under­sea inter­na­tional cable sys­tems, they depend entire­ly on this form of tran­si­tive con­nec­tiv­ity through their coastal neigh­bors. Because these over­land cables will lie exclu­sively with­in the sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ries of their respec­tive users, it’s much less like­ly that they will be tapped than their under­sea equiv­a­lents. They are thus like­ly to pro­vide effec­tively pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels between Brazil and its neigh­bor­ing coun­tries....

3a. It appears that Assange and Wik­iLeaks were instru­men­tal in get­ting Snow­den to Rus­sia. As dis­cussed in FTR #771, it also appears that Jacob Apple­baum and Wik­iLeaks also got Snow­den to Chi­na from Hawaii. In short, the Snow­den “op” is an exten­sion of Wik­iLeaks.

Assange him­self admit­ted in an inter­view last Decem­ber that he specif­i­cally advised to Snow­den that Rus­sia would be the safest place to stay:

“Julian Assange’s ‘Ghost­writer’ Evis­cer­ates The Wik­iLeaks Founder In Crush­ing Tell-All” by Michael Kel­ley; Busi­ness Insid­er; 2/23/2014.

. . . . In Jan­u­ary 2011, Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange chose Scot­tish nov­el­ist and non-fic­tion author Andrew O’Hagan to ‘ghost­write’ his autobiography/manifesto. . . .

. . . . O’Hagan, an Edi­tor at Large of Esquire, has now writ­ten a 25,000-word lam­bast­ingin the Lon­don Review of Books, in which he describes the 42-year-old Aus­tralian as “thin-skinned, con­spir­a­to­r­ial, untruth­ful, [and] nar­cis­sis­tic.”

O’Hagan, who is actu­ally quite sym­pa­thetic to Assange, spent months around the pub­lisher and his entourage.

The account, which seems gen­uine, is dev­as­tat­ing to pop­u­lar notions of Assange as a hero of trans­parency who has been per­se­cuted by the gov­ern­ments that he holds into account.

...

Dur­ing O’Hagan’s last vis­its with Assange, they spoke about Edward Snow­den. Assange had sent his per­sonal assis­tant and girl­friend, Sarah Har­ri­son, to advise the 30-year-old leak­er some­time after he out­ed him­self in Hong Kong on June 10.

Assange, who O’Hagan notes has chat­ted with Snow­den, con­sid­ers the NSA fugi­tive the ninth best hack­er in the world (while he con­sid­ers him­self to be No.3).

Har­ri­son accom­pa­nied Snow­den on June 23 when he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow, where Snow­den was prompt­ly strand­ed. Har­ri­son, who O’Hagan describes as “strung between lov­ing [Assange] and being baf­fled,” stayed with Snow­den for more than four months before going to Berlin.

Assange told Janet Reit­man of Rolling Stone that he advised Snow­den that the for­mer CIA tech­ni­cian “would be phys­i­cally safest in Rus­sia.” And that’s where Snow­den remains for the fore­see­able future. . . . 

3b. More about Wik­iLeaks’ role in get­ting Snow­den to Rus­sia:

“Snow­den and Green­wald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets” by Janet Reit­man; Rolling Stone; 12/4/2013. 

. . . . Green­wald has a com­pli­cated rela­tion­ship with Wik­iLeaks and Assange, whom he con­sid­ers an ally, though giv­en Assange’s con­tro­ver­sial rep­u­ta­tion in the Unit­ed States, he admits that “Julian step­ping for­ward and being the face of the sto­ry wasn’t great for Snow­den.” But he cred­its Assange with hav­ing helped save Snow­den from almost cer­tain extra­di­tion to the U.S. Snow­den, how­ever, nev­er want­ed to go to Rus­sia, which Assange acknowl­edges.

Assange, how­ever, dis­agrees. “While Venezuela and Ecuador could pro­tect him in the short term, over the long term there could be a change in gov­ern­ment. In Rus­sia, he’s safe, he’s well-regard­ed, and that is not like­ly to change. That was my advice to Snow­den, that he would be phys­i­cally safest in Rus­sia.” . . . .

4. The tim­ing of arti­cles pub­lished by The New York Times and Der Spiegel is sus­pi­cious and fits direct­ly into the tem­plate we con­struct­ed in FTR #762.

“NSA Infil­trates Servers of Chi­na Tele­com Giant Huawei: Report” [Reuters]; Yahoo News; 3/23/2014.

. . . .The Times and Der Spiegel arti­cles were pub­lished just days before Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping vis­its Europe and will hold talks with Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel, her­self a tar­get of elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance by the NSA.

They also were pub­lished dur­ing U.S. first lady Michelle Oba­ma’s vis­it to Chi­na. In Bei­jing on Sat­ur­day, she told an audi­ence of col­lege stu­dents that open access to infor­ma­tion — espe­cial­ly online — is a uni­ver­sal right. . . .

5. Note the tar­gets of an NSA and GCHQ spy­ing pro­gram, as report­ed by Der Spiegel. All of these would be log­i­cal focal points of inves­ti­ga­tion of ter­ror-relat­ed activ­i­ties. We note in this con­text, that Brazil–part of the Three Bor­ders Area–as been a major stag­ing point for Islamist ter­ror and is, there­fore, a more than legit­i­mate focal point for NSA and GCHQ counter-intel­li­gence.

In FTR #767, we not­ed he Snow­den “op” as the desta­bi­liza­tion of the NSA and GCHQ. This sto­ry appears to fur­ther that end, expos­ing sur­veil­lance of enti­ties that are valid tar­gets for sur­veil­lance.

” ‘A’ for Angela: GCHQ and NSA Tar­get­ed Pri­vate Ger­man Com­pa­nies and Merkel” by Lau­ra Poitras, Mar­cel Rosen­bach and Hol­ger Stark; Der Spiegel; 3/29/2014.

. . . . The head­quar­ters of Stel­lar, a com­pa­ny based in the town of Hürth near Cologne, are vis­i­ble from a dis­tance. Sev­en­ty-five white anten­nas dom­i­nate the land­scape. The biggest are 16 meters (52 feet) tall and kept in place by steel anchors. It is an impres­sive sight and serves as a pop­u­lar back­drop for scenes in TV shows, includ­ing the Ger­man action series “Cobra 11.”

Stel­lar oper­ates a satel­lite ground sta­tion in Hürth, a so-called “tele­port.” Its ser­vices are used by com­pa­nies and insti­tu­tions; Stel­lar’s cus­tomers include Inter­net providers, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies and even a few gov­ern­ments. “The world is our mar­ket,” is the high-tech com­pa­ny’s slo­gan.
Using their ground sta­tions and leased capac­i­ties from satel­lites, firms like Stel­lar — or com­peti­tors like Cetel in the near­by vil­lage of Rup­pichteroth or IABG, which is head­quar­tered in Otto­brunn near Munich — can pro­vide Inter­net and tele­phone ser­vices in even the most remote areas. They pro­vide com­mu­ni­ca­tions links to places like oil drilling plat­forms, dia­mond mines, refugee camps and for­eign out­posts of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions. . . .

. . . .Accord­ing to Cetel CEO Gui­do Neu­mann, the com­pa­ny pri­mar­i­ly serves cus­tomers in Africa and the Mid­dle East and its clients include non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions as well as a north­ern Euro­pean coun­try that uses Cetel to con­nect its diplo­mat­ic out­posts to the Inter­net. . . .

6. As not­ed in FTR #774, “pri­va­cy advo­cates” should be more con­cerned with the tech com­pa­nies whose wares and ser­vices the pub­lic has so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly and pre­cip­i­tous­ly endorsed.

Note the pre­vail­ing moral­i­ty that guides the “Titans of Tech.” Bear in mind the tech­nolo­gies they are devel­op­ing: Ama­zon and Face­book are devel­op­ing drones, and Google is devel­op­ing robots with mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions. What sort of judi­cial over­sight is going to apply to these oper­a­tional devices?

And you can bet that they will be hacked.

“Revealed: Apple and Google’s Wage-Fix­ing Car­tel Involved Dozens More Com­pa­nies, Over One Mil­lion Employ­ees” by Mark Ames; Pan­do Dai­ly; 3/22/2014.

“British medieval ordi­nances of Bris­tol cob­blers in 1364 state, ‘Mas­ters are for­bid­den to poach work­ers from oth­er mem­bers of the craft.’”

— Orly Lobel, Tal­ent Wants To Be Free

Back in Jan­u­ary, I wrote about “The Tech­to­pus” — an ille­gal agree­ment between sev­en tech giants, includ­ing Apple, Google, and Intel, to sup­press wages for tens of thou­sands of tech employ­ees. The agree­ment prompt­ed a Depart­ment of Jus­tice inves­ti­ga­tion, result­ing in a set­tle­ment in which the com­pa­nies agreed to curb their restrict­ing hir­ing deals. The same com­pa­nies were then hit with a civ­il suit by employ­ees affect­ed by the agree­ments.

This week, as the final sum­mary judge­ment for the result­ing class action suit looms, and sev­eral of the com­pa­nies men­tioned (Intu­it, Pixar and Lucas­film) scram­ble to set­tle out of court, Pan­do has obtained court doc­u­ments (embed­ded below) which show shock­ing evi­dence of a much larg­er con­spir­acy, reach­ing far beyond Sil­i­con Val­ley.

Con­fi­den­tial inter­nal Google and Apple mem­os, buried with­in piles of court dock­ets and reviewed by Pan­do­Daily, clear­ly show that what began as a secret car­tel agree­ment between Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt to ille­gally fix the labor mar­ket for hi-tech work­ers, expand­ed with­in a few years to include com­pa­nies rang­ing from Dell, IBM, eBay and Microsoft, to Com­cast, Clear Chan­nel, Dream­works, and Lon­don-based pub­lic rela­tions behe­moth WPP. All told, the com­bined work­forces of the com­pa­nies involved totals well over a mil­lion employ­ees.

Accord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources famil­iar with the case, sev­eral of these new­ly named com­pa­nies were also sub­poe­naed by the DOJ for their inves­ti­ga­tion. A spokesper­son for Ask.com con­firmed that in 2009-10 the com­pany was inves­ti­gated by the DOJ, and agreed to coop­er­ate ful­ly with that inves­ti­ga­tion. Oth­er com­pa­nies con­firmed off the record that they too had been sub­poe­naed around the same time.

Although the Depart­ment ulti­mately decid­ed to focus its atten­tion on just Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intu­it, Lucas­film and Pixar, the emails and mem­os clear­ly name dozens more com­pa­nies which, at least as far as Google and Apple exec­u­tives were con­cerned, formed part of their wage-fix­ing car­tel.

A con­fi­den­tial Google memo (above, left) titled “Spe­cial Agree­ment Hir­ing Pol­icy,” dat­ing from Novem­ber 2006, divides the company’s wage-fix­ing agree­ments into two cat­e­gories: “Do Not Cold Call” and “Sen­si­tive Com­pa­nies.” Below that, the Google memo offers a brief chronol­ogy and list of com­pa­nies:

The fol­low­ing com­pa­nies have spe­cial agree­ments with Google and are part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list.

The first entry marks the begin­ning of Google’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the wage-sup­pres­sion scheme:

Effec­tive March 6, 2005:

• Genen­tech, Inc.
• Intel Cor­po­ra­tion
• Apple Com­puter
• Pay­pal, Inc.
• Com­cast Cor­po­ra­tion

Until now, nei­ther Pay­pal (owned by eBay), Com­cast nor Genen­tech have been pub­licly men­tioned as part of the wage-sup­pres­sion car­tel. Nor have they been pub­licly named in crim­i­nal or civ­il actions relat­ing to this par­tic­u­lar case, although both the DOJ and the state of Cal­i­for­nia are cur­rently pur­su­ing a sep­a­rate but relat­ed antitrust suits against eBay.

The “effec­tive date” of Google’s first wage-fix­ing agree­ments, ear­ly March 2005, fol­lows a few weeks after Steve Jobs threat­ened Google’s Sergey Brin to stop all recruit­ing at Apple: “if you hire a sin­gle one of these peo­ple,” Jobs emailed Brin, “that means war.”

Jobs threat­ened Brin and Google on Feb­ru­ary 17, 2005; nine days lat­er, Apple’s VP for Human Resources sent out an inter­nal email to Apple recruit­ing,

All,

Please add Google to your “hands-off” list. We recent­ly agreed not to recruit from one anoth­er so if you hear of any recruit­ing they are doing against us, please be sure to let me know.

Please also be sure to hon­or our side of the deal.

That was Feb­ru­ary 26; on March 6, Google’s iden­ti­cal non-solic­i­ta­tion agree­ment with Apple became “effec­tive.”

This time­line is impor­tant to estab­lish because it demon­strates pre­cisely what makes this scheme ille­gal: secret cross-agree­ments between two or more par­ties to fix wages in the labor mar­ket, at a time when tech engi­neer wages were soar­ing, threat­en­ing prof­its.

This is just a tiny sam­ple of the “over­whelm­ing” evi­dence used by both the Jus­tice Department’s antitrust divi­sion, and the Dis­trict Court judge in San Jose, to debunk the com­pany exec­u­tives’ claims that each had coin­ci­den­tally imple­mented iden­ti­cal non-solic­i­ta­tion poli­cies at the same time, with the same com­pa­nies, with­out know­ing what the oth­er side was doing.

...

All of the above is just what’s in the moun­tain of pre-tri­al court doc­u­ments. It’s high­ly like­ly that more names will spill out dur­ing tes­ti­mony. Pan­do will con­tinue to report any new devel­op­ments and also will be cov­er­ing the sum­mary judg­ment hear­ing next week.

For now, it’s enough to try to absorb what all of these cross-com­pa­ny, cross-indus­try secret labor-fix­ing agree­ments mean. Most labor sto­ries about wage theft and cor­po­rate abuse tend to focus on low-wage earn­ers and the most dis­ad­van­taged. Cer­tainly it strains one’s sen­si­bil­i­ties to com­pare an exploit­ed low-wage work­er in the fast food or retail indus­try to tech engi­neers and pro­gram­mers, who are far bet­ter com­pen­sated, live more com­fort­ably, and rarely wor­ry about putting food in their children’s mouths.

In terms of pathos, there is no com­par­i­son; min­i­mum wage earn­ers are strug­gling to sur­vive, and near­ly all of the well-edu­cat­ed, priv­i­leged-born peo­ple in the media world agree that tech indus­try work­ers are all a bunch of over­paid misog­y­nist lib­er­tar­ian bros, a car­i­ca­ture that makes it per­fectly fine to hate the entire class, and impos­si­ble to con­sider them as polit­i­cal com­rades stuck in the same predica­ment as the rest of the non-mul­ti­mil­lion­aires in this coun­try.

What’s more impor­tant is the polit­i­cal predica­ment that low-paid fast food work­ers share with well-paid hi-tech work­ers: the loss of pow­er over their lives and their futures to the grow­ing mass of con­cen­trated pow­er in Sil­i­con Val­ley, whose ten­ta­cles are so strong now and so great, that hun­dreds of thou­sands of work­ers around the globe—public rela­tions and cable com­pany employ­ees in the British Isles, pro­gram­mers and tech engi­neers in Rus­sia and Chi­na (accord­ing to oth­er doc­u­ments which I’ll write about soon)—have their lives con­trolled and their wages and oppor­tu­ni­ties stolen from them with­out ever know­ing about it, all the while being bom­barded with cul­tural cant about the wis­dom of the free mar­ket, about the effi­ciency of free knowl­edge, about the need to take per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity and to blame no one but your­self for every­thing that hap­pens in your life and your career.

...

7a. The pro­gram con­tin­ues with a review of for­mer Third Reich defense min­is­ter Albert Speer’s account of Hitler’s vision of the anni­hi­la­tion of New York City.

“The Swasti­ka & the Cres­cent” by Mar­tin A. Lee; Intel­li­gence Report; Spring 2002 [#105]; Pub­lished by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter; p. 1.

. . . . As Germany’s defeat loomed dur­ing the final months of World War II, Adolf Hitler increas­ing­ly lapsed into delu­sion­al [?] fits of fan­ta­sy. Albert Speer, in his prison writ­ings, recounts an episode in which a mani­a­cal Hitler ‘pic­tured for him­self and for us the destruc­tion of New York in a hur­ri­cane of fire.’ The Nazi fuehrer described sky­scrap­ers turn­ing into ‘gigan­tic burn­ing torch­es, col­laps­ing upon one anoth­er, the glow of the explod­ing city illu­mi­nat­ing the dark sky.’ An approx­i­ma­tion of Hitler’s hell­ish vision came true on Sep­tem­ber 11, when ter­ror­ists destroyed the Twin Tow­ers in New York, killing near­ly 3,000 peo­ple. . . .

7b. Even more telling is the fact that Hitler’s plan for destroy­ing New York involved crash­ing air­craft into the sky­scrap­ers with kamikaze-style attacks!

Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11; Matthias Kuntzel; Telos Press Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2007 Telos Press Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 10: 0–914386–36–0; pp. XIX-XXI.

. . . . Not only Hitler’s fan­ta­sy but also his plan for real­iz­ing it recall what hap­pened in 2001: the idea was for Kamikaze pilots to fly explo­sive –crammed light air­craft lack­ing land­ing gear into the Man­hat­tan sky­scrap­ers. The draw­ings for the Daim­ler-Benz ‘Amerik­abomber’ actu­al­ly exist. They show giant four-engine planes with raised under­bel­lies beneath which small bombers could be strapped. The bombers were to be released short­ly before the plane reached the East Coast, after which the moth­er plane would return to Europe. . . .

8. Next, the pro­gram reviews a speech made by William Pierce 1998, the pro­gram sets forth the Nation­al Alliance leader’s eerie fore­shad­ow­ing of the events of 9/11. (Pierce is the author of The Turn­er Diaries and Serpent’s Walk.) Pierce spoke of Osama bin Laden attack­ing tall build­ings, such as the World Trade Cen­ter, and the com­ing of bio-ter­ror­ism to the U.S.

“Neo-Nazis and 9/11” by Jack McCarthy; Coun­ter­punch; 10/29/2001.

. . . Upon perus­ing his speech­es from 1998–99, I dis­cov­ered that Pierce, who heads the so-called ‘Nation­al Alliance,’ did indeed utter some most inter­est­ing (pre‑9/11—if not prophetic—remarks about Osama bin Laden and bio-ter­ror­ism. The run­ning theme in Pierce’s com­men­taries is—to para­phrase his hero Hitler—that Osama Bin Laden’s warn­ing to Amer­ica is ‘I Am Com­ing.’ And so is bio-ter­ror­ism. . . . In one chill­ing com­men­tary Pierce, (after not­ing that Bin Laden and the rest of the lost gen­er­a­tion of angry Moslem youth had it with their par­ents’ com­pro­mises and were hell bent on revenge against infi­del Amer­ica) issued this stark, prophet­ic warn­ing in a 1998 radio address titled, ‘Stay Out of Tall Build­ings.’ ‘New York­ers who work in tall office build­ings any­thing close to the size of the World Trade Cen­ter might con­sider wear­ing hard hats . . .’ Pierce warned. . . .

9. The cli­mac­tic episode of The Turn­er Diaries is a low-lev­el, sui­cide aer­ial attack on the Pen­ta­gon which occurs on the Ger­man “Day of Destiny”–November 9th. A Ger­man would write that date as–9/11!

The Turn­er Diaries; “Andrew Mac­don­ald;” Bar­ri­cade Books, Inc. [SC] 1996; Copy­right 1978, 1980 William Pierce; ISBN 1–56980–086–3; pp. 201–205.

. . . .I con­ferred pri­vately with Major Williams of the Wash­ing­ton Field Com­mand for more than an hour on the prob­lem of attack­ing the Pen­ta­gon. The military’s oth­er major com­mand cen­ters were either knocked out on Sep­tem­ber 8 or sub­se­quently con­sol­i­dated with the Pen­ta­gon, which the top brass appar­ently regards as impreg­nable. And it damned near is. We went over every pos­si­bil­ity we could think of, and we came up with no real­ly con­vinc­ing plan—except, per­haps one. That is to make an air deliv­ery of a bomb.

In the mas­sive ring of defens­es around the Pen­ta­gon there is a great deal of anti-air­craft fire­power, but we decid­ed that a small plane, fly­ing just above the ground, might be able to get through the three-mile gaunt­let with one of our 60-kilo­ton war­heads. One fac­tor in favor of such an attempt is that we have nev­er before used air­craft in such a way, and we might hope to catch the anti-air­craft crews off their guard.

Although the mil­i­tary is guard­ing all civ­il air­fields, it just hap­pens that we have an old crop duster stashed in a barn only a few miles from here. My imme­di­ate assign­ment is to pre­pare a detailed plan for an aer­ial attack on the Pen­ta­gon by next Mon­day. We must make a final deci­sion at the time and then act with­out fur­ther delay.

Novem­ber 9, 1993. It’s still three hours until first light, and all sys­tems are ‘go.’ I’ll use the time to write a few pages—my last diary entry. Then it’s a one-way trip to the Pen­ta­gon for me. The war­head is strapped into the front seat of the old Stear­man and rigged to det­o­nate either on impact or when I flip a switch in the back seat. Hope­fully, I’ll be able to mange a low-lev­el air burst direct­ly over the cen­ter of the Pen­ta­gon. Fail­ing that, I’ll at least try to fly as close as I can before I’m shot down. . . .

. . . . Thus end Earl Turner’s diaries, as unpre­ten­tiously as they began. His final mis­sion was suc­cess­ful, of course, as we all are remind­ed each year on Novem­ber 9—our tra­di­tional Day of the Mar­tyrs. . . .

10. We end on a spec­u­la­tive note: Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal the­o­ries are fas­cist and fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt’s New Deal. His belief that we must get rid of Social Secu­ri­ty and bring back the gold stan­dard are prop­a­gat­ed by the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute, the ide­o­log­i­cal font of Snow­den’s polit­i­cal idol Ron Paul.

Arguably the most famous mem­ber of the Aus­tri­an School of Eco­nom­ics that spawned and dom­i­nates the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute is Friedrich von Hayek. An immi­grant from Aus­tria, von Hayek was osten­si­bly an “anti-Nazi.” In 1944, he pub­lished The Road to Serf­dom, a mud­dled ide­o­log­i­cal tract which attacks the New Deal of F.D.R. Begun well before the Canaris memo, von Hayek’s work has been a sta­ple of GOP/Underground Reich pro­pa­gan­da ever since its pub­li­ca­tion, as well as a foun­da­tion­al ele­ment of revi­sion­ist his­to­ry.

We present a doc­u­ment drawn up by the head of Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence (the Abwehr) in 1944. Abwehr chief Admi­ral Wil­helm Canaris notes that under­cov­er pro­pa­gan­da assets in the Unit­ed States should be uti­lized to gen­er­ate anti-Roo­sevelt sen­ti­ment and help his elec­toral defeat in the 1944 elec­tions. The Third Reich viewed the defeat of Roo­sevelt as con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant.

We  won­der if von Hayek–ostensibly one of the “anti-Nazis” cryp­ti­cal­ly referred to at the end of the doc­u­ment below, was one of the Third Reich’s under­cov­er pro­pa­gan­da and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare assets among the Allies. The Road to Serf­dom was heav­i­ly pub­li­cized by The Read­ers Digest in the Unied States.

We are also of the con­sid­ered pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion that the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute is an impor­tant ele­ment of the Under­ground Reich.

 Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin by T.H. Tetens; Hen­ry Schu­man & Sons [HC]; Copy­right 1953 by Hen­ry Schu­man, Inc.; pp. 233–235.

 “Direc­tive of the Ger­man High Com­mand on Polit­i­cal War­fare in the U.S.A.”

The fol­low­ing direc­tive was issued by the Chief of the Intel­li­gence Divi­sion of the Ger­man High Com­mand, Admi­ral Wal­ter Wil­helm Canaris, in 1944. The doc­u­ment lays bare the basic Ger­man strat­e­gy of scar­ing the U.S.A. with Bol­she­vism . . . .

 SECRET STATE MATTER

OKW–Abwehr

March 15, 1944

At a meet­ing of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the For­eign Office, the Secu­ri­ty Divi­sion, (“SD”) and the Depart­ment of Defense (“Abwehr”), the fol­low­ing res­o­lu­tions were adopt­ed for uni­fied action by all our agents in for­eign coun­tries:

Uti­lize to the fullest extent all avail­able pos­si­bil­i­ties in neu­tral and ene­my coun­tries, in order to sup­port our mil­i­tary efforts with polit­i­cal and pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns.

  1. Our goal is to crush the enemy’s plan whose object is to destroy for­ev­er the Ger­man Reich mil­i­tar­i­ly, eco­nom­i­cal­ly, and cul­tur­al­ly.

The new reg­u­la­tions put into effect by the polit­i­cal lead­ers for the dis­so­lu­tion and dis­in­te­gra­tion of the ene­my bloc should be car­ried out more intense­ly. We must do our utmost to cre­ate a state of con­fu­sion and dis­trust among our ene­mies. Such a state of dis­uni­ty would enable us to sue for a quick sep­a­rate peace with either side. While it is true that the efforts made in that direc­tion have failed so far due to the implaca­ble hate pol­i­cy of Roo­sevelt and Churchill, it does not mean that some day, under dif­fer­ent con­di­tions, the unnat­ur­al front of our ene­mies could not be bro­ken. Roosevelt’s elec­toral defeat this year could have immea­sur­able polit­i­cal con­se­quences. . . .

. . . . Right now, the chances for a sep­a­rate peace with the West are a lit­tle bet­ter, espe­cial­ly if we suc­ceed, through our pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign and our “con­fi­den­tial” chan­nels, to con­vince the ene­my that Roosevelt’s pol­i­cy of “uncon­di­tion­al sur­ren­der” dri­ves the Ger­man peo­ple towards Com­mu­nism.

There is great fear in the U.S.A. of Bol­she­vism. The oppo­si­tion against Roosevelt’s alliance with Stal­in grows con­stant­ly. Our chances for suc­cess are good, if we suc­ceed to stir up influ­en­tial cir­cles against Roosevelt’s pol­i­cy. This can be done through clever pieces of infor­ma­tion, or by ref­er­ences to unsus­pi­cious neu­tral eccle­si­as­ti­cal con­tact men.

We have at our com­mand in the Unit­ed States effi­cient con­tacts, which have been care­ful­ly kept up even dur­ing the war. The cam­paign of hatred stirred up by Roo­sevelt and the Jews against every­thing Ger­man has tem­porar­i­ly silenced the pro-Ger­man bloc in the U.S.A. How­ev­er, there is every hope that this sit­u­a­tion will be com­plete­ly changed with­in a few months. If the Repub­li­cans suc­ceed in defeat­ing Roo­sevelt in the com­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, it would great­ly influ­ence the Amer­i­can con­duct of war towards us.

The KO-lead­ers abroad and their staffs have innu­mer­able oppor­tu­ni­ties of con­stant­ly refer­ring to Roosevelt’s hate pol­i­cy. They must use in this cam­paign all the exist­ing con­tacts and they should try to open up new chan­nels. We must point to the dan­ger that Ger­many may be forced to coop­er­ate with Rus­sia. The great­est cau­tion has to be observed in all talks and nego­ti­a­tions by those who, as “anti-Nazis,” main­tain con­tact with the ene­my. When ful­fill­ing mis­sions, they have to com­ply strict­ly with instruc­tions. [That would include the “anti-Nazi” von Hayek–D.E.]

(Sgd.) Canaris

 

Discussion

3 comments for “FTR #786 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 16: The Obverse Oswald–Update and Summary Analysis”

  1. So this hap­pened:

    Esquire
    The Pol­i­tics Blog
    The Snow­den Effect, Con­tin­ued

    By Charles P. Pierce on April 17, 2014

    This, dear boy, is a very bad move.


    “I’ve seen lit­tle pub­lic dis­cus­sion of Rus­si­a’s pol­i­cy of mass sur­veil­lance,” Snow­den said. “So I’d like to ask you: Does Rus­sia inter­cept, store, or ana­lyze the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of mil­lions? And do you believe that sim­ply increas­ing the effec­tive­ness of law enforce­ment agen­cies can jus­ti­fy plac­ing soci­eties, rather than indi­vid­ual sub­jects, under sur­veil­lance?” Putin wel­comed Snow­den’s ques­tion, even rec­og­niz­ing him as a sort of col­league. “Mr. Snow­den, you are a for­mer spy. I used to work for an intel­li­gence agency,” Putin said. “We can talk one pro­fes­sion­al lan­guage.” “First of all, our intel­li­gence efforts are strict­ly reg­u­lat­ed by our law,” he added. “You have to get the court’s per­mis­sion to stalk a per­son. We don’t have a mass sys­tem of inter­cep­tion. With our law, it can­not exist. Of course, we know crim­i­nals and ter­ror­ists use tech­nol­o­gy for their crim­i­nal acts and of course the spe­cial ser­vices have to use tech­ni­cal means to respond to their crimes. Of course, we do some efforts like that but we do not have mass scale effort. I hope we don’t do that. We don’t have the mon­ey or the kind of devices they have in the Unit­ed States. Our spe­cial ser­vices are strict­ly con­trolled by the soci­ety and the law, and are reg­u­lat­ed by the law.”

    As it hap­pens, I actu­al­ly believe the U.S. capac­i­ty for sur­veil­lance prob­a­bly is greater than that of Rus­sia. (USA! USA!). But this “Our spe­cial ser­vices are strict­ly con­trolled by law” yad­da-yad­da is such hilar­i­ous­ly arrant bull­shit that Snow­den ought to be embar­rassed for help­ing to cat­a­pult it into the dia­logue. If you’re try­ing to con­vince peo­ple that you are a dis­in­ter­est­ed seek­er of truth who hap­pens to be in Moscow because of a vari­ety of very strange cir­cum­stances — The new Van­i­ty Fair has a long piece on how Snow­den came to be in Rus­sia in which Julian Assange and the Wik­iLeaks peo­ple do not come off well at all — and that you are not oper­at­ing too close­ly with the cur­rent Russ­ian regime, hav­ing Vladimir Putin get pub­licly chum­my with you, spy-to-spy, is real­ly not the way to make your case.

    That upcom­ing Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle should be pret­ty inter­est­ing...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 17, 2014, 12:50 pm
  2. This is rather fas­ci­nat­ing: Snow­den is reit­er­at­ing his desire to tes­ti­fy about NSA spy­ing on Ger­many, and to sweet­en the deal he’s now alleg­ing that he had been “per­son­al­ly involved with infor­ma­tion stem­ming from Ger­many” and he has new infor­ma­tion on these mat­ters:

    Snow­den says would have much to tell Ger­man inquiry — mag­a­zine

    (Reuters) — For­mer U.S. intel­li­gence con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den told a Ger­man mag­a­zine that he has new infor­ma­tion to share with a Ger­man par­lia­men­tary inquiry inves­ti­gat­ing U.S. sur­veil­lance and that he believes all Ger­mans’ rights were vio­lat­ed.

    Ger­man law­mak­ers on a com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the spy­ing decid­ed ear­li­er this month they want­ed to ques­tion Snow­den, but they could not agree on whether he should be invit­ed to tes­ti­fy in per­son or remote­ly.

    Snow­den, who risks being arrest­ed and extra­dit­ed if he sets foot in any U.S.-allied coun­try, told Stern mag­a­zine he had been “per­son­al­ly involved with infor­ma­tion stem­ming from Ger­many” and that in that process the “con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of every cit­i­zen in Ger­many were infringed”.

    He had used sys­tems able to inter­cept large amounts of data, he said, adding: “I’d be sur­prised if Ger­man law­mak­ers learnt noth­ing new if I laid out all the infor­ma­tion.”

    Snow­den said Ger­many’s for­eign intel­li­gence agency, the BND, had used the same meth­ods as the Amer­i­cans and that might be the rea­son why some in Berlin were reluc­tant to hear him.

    He was charged last year in the Unit­ed States with theft of gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty, unau­tho­rised com­mu­ni­ca­tion of nation­al defence infor­ma­tion and wil­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion of clas­si­fied intel­li­gence to an unau­tho­rised per­son.

    An option would be for him to tes­ti­fy from abroad but the Ger­man oppo­si­tion argues that Snow­den can only express him­self freely if he is in Ger­many. Snow­den’s Ger­man lawyer has ruled this out, say­ing it could jeop­ar­dise his stay in Rus­sia.

    Angela Merkel’s con­ser­v­a­tives have so far reject­ed quizzing Snow­den in Berlin, fear­ing it could fur­ther dam­age rela­tions with Wash­ing­ton which have suf­fered from the rev­e­la­tions that U.S. spies tapped the Ger­man chan­cel­lor’s own phone.

    The chair­man of the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee, con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­er Patrick Sens­burg, said in response to Snow­den’s inter­view: “Accord­ing to the infor­ma­tion we have Edward Snow­den was nev­er espe­cial­ly involved with the mass spy­ing of Ger­man cit­i­zens in Ger­many.

    “If he does­n’t deliv­er proof in terms of orig­i­nal doc­u­ments soon, he could lose all cred­i­bil­i­ty with the com­mit­tee.”

    ...

    “Accord­ing to the infor­ma­tion we have Edward Snow­den was nev­er espe­cial­ly involved with the mass spy­ing of Ger­man cit­i­zens in Germany....If he does­n’t deliv­er proof in terms of orig­i­nal doc­u­ments soon, he could lose all cred­i­bil­i­ty with the com­mit­tee.” That’s quite an ulti­ma­tum.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 27, 2014, 10:34 am
  3. Thomas Drake and William Bin­ney, two of the NSA whistle­blow­ers that recent­ly tes­ti­fied in Berlin, did­n’t mince words. But it’s worth not­ing that some of those words were direct­ed right back at the Ger­man gov­ern­ment:

    Irish Times
    NSA whistle­blow­ers’ tes­ti­mo­ny elec­tri­fies Bun­destag com­mit­tee
    Berlin Let­ter: Spy scan­dals have returned a Cold War atmos­phere to the Ger­man cap­i­tal

    Derek Scal­ly
    Sat, Jul 5, 2014, 09:59

    Nos­tal­gia is not what it used to be, but espi­onage fans can rejoice that Berlin is once again bristling with spy scan­dals just as it was in the Cold War era.

    At the cen­tre of it all is Germany’s fed­er­al for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice, the Bun­desnachrich­t­en­di­enst or BND. After decades in a leafy sub­urb of Munich, the agency is in the process of mov­ing its secre­tive oper­a­tions – and 4,000 staff – to a new bunker-like head­quar­ters in the heart of Berlin.

    ...

    Data col­lec­tion

    A cross-par­ty Bun­destag inquiry was this week hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny about US mass data col­lec­tion from two for­mer NSA agents-turned-whistle­blow­ers, William Bin­ney and Thomas Drake.

    Bin­ney, who for 30 years was a cryp­to­math­e­mati­cian and tech­ni­cal direc­tor at the NSA, resigned in Octo­ber 2001 in protest at what he calls the agency’s “wrong turn”, using the 9/11 attacks to jus­ti­fy a mass glob­al sur­veil­lance dri­ve. “The goal is con­trol of the peo­ple,” he told Ger­man MPs. “They want to have infor­ma­tion about every­thing; this is real­ly a total­i­tar­i­an approach.”

    “Total­i­tar­i­an” is not a word to be used light­ly in Berlin, and the repeat­ed use of the word by the 70-year-old NSA vet­er­an – an idol of Edward Snow­den – elec­tri­fied the Ger­man com­mit­tee. Asked about co-oper­a­tion con­tracts between the NSA and BND, Bin­ney answered the ques­tion only after the com­mit­tee went into closed ses­sion.

    Duplic­i­ty

    A sec­ond NSA man turned whistle­blow­er, Thomas Drake, told the com­mit­tee his for­mer employer’s spy­ing was the “ulti­mate form of con­trol” that was “stran­gling the world”. Drake dis­missed as “beyond any cred­i­bil­i­ty” Ger­man intel­li­gence claims that they knew noth­ing of mass data col­lec­tion by the NSA on Ger­man soil. He even accused Ger­many of duplic­i­ty in its out­rage over US mass sur­veil­lance, say­ing the BND oper­at­ed as an “adden­dum appen­dix of the NSA”.

    It is these claims of BND co-oper­a­tion with the NSA that are like­ly to cause the most fric­tion in the Berlin inquiry. Such alleged co-oper­a­tion is one sug­gest­ed rea­son why the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment – and gov­ern­ment MPs in the inquiry – have been so cool on accept­ing Edward Snowden’s offer to tes­ti­fy in Berlin. The inquiry mem­bers have offered to meet Snow­den in Moscow for an infor­mal chat, but the ex-NSA con­trac­tor says he is not inter­est­ed in assist­ing them unless he is grant­ed asy­lum to tes­ti­fy in per­son in Berlin.

    Fac­ing into a long, hot sum­mer of hear­ings, oppo­si­tion com­mit­tee mem­bers claim the government’s luke­warm approach to Snow­den speaks vol­umes about their true lev­el of con­cern over NSA sur­veil­lance. Things should get inter­est­ing when the com­mit­tee ques­tions the heads of the BND and domes­tic intel­li­gence about how the NSA man­aged to spy on Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

    Key ques­tion
    The key ques­tion: did they real­ly know noth­ing about it until Der Spiegel mag­a­zine passed on Snow­den infor­ma­tion to Merkel’s office? If not, why not?

    If need be, the Ger­man leader her­self may be called to tes­ti­fy along­side Ger­man IT stu­dent Sebas­t­ian Hahn. Like the chancellor’s mobile phone, his com­put­er was iden­ti­fied this week as anoth­er tar­get of NSA sur­veil­lance via the XKeyscore pro­gramme.

    Hahn, who oper­ates a serv­er on behalf of the anonymis­ing inter­net net­work “Tor”, is now prepar­ing a for­mal com­plaint for the Ger­man author­i­ties. “It’s a mas­sive inva­sion of my pri­va­cy to have every serv­er con­nec­tion from my com­put­er in Ger­many record­ed by a for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice,” he said.

    After 12 hours of tes­ti­mo­ny on Thurs­day, com­mit­tee mem­bers were shak­en awake late in the evening by a BND announce­ment it had uncov­ered a dou­ble agent in its ranks.

    The unnamed 31-year-old man has report­ed­ly admit­ted sell­ing secret doc­u­ments to Russ­ian intel­li­gence. And, in an ele­gant le Car­ré twist, he report­ed­ly offered to pass on to the NSA con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion about Berlin’s inquiry into the US agency’s activ­i­ties.

    So we have Thomas Drake refer­ring to the NSA activ­i­ties as “the ulti­mate form of con­trol” that is “stran­gling the world” while also dis­miss­ing as “beyond any cred­i­bil­i­ty” that the BND did­n’t know about NSA spy­ing in Ger­many that because the BND oper­at­ed as an “adden­dum appen­dix of the NSA”. That sure would seem to sug­gest that Ger­many is also “stran­gling the world”, along with the rest of the 5–14 “Eyes”. As the arti­cle sug­gests, it’s Drakes asser­tions about BND knowl­edge and coop­er­a­tion in the NSA’s activ­i­ties that is prob­a­bly the biggest bar­ri­er to Ger­many invit­ing Snow­den to Ger­many to tes­ti­fy. But now that we have an alleged dou­ble agent scan­dal the day after Drake and Bin­ney’s tes­ti­monies, folks like Drake are renew­ing calls for Snow­den to come to Ger­many. Could this self-admit­ted dou­ble agent be the cat­a­lyst for Ger­man asy­lum for Snow­den?

    Also note that the new XKeyScore sto­ry by Jacob Appel­buam that’s prompt­ing the Ger­man IT stu­dent to file a for­mal com­plaint with the Ger­man gov­ern­ment over the NSA’s mon­i­tor­ing of his Tor serv­er might involve some sub­stan­tial mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 5, 2014, 3:14 pm

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