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.)
Updated on 8/7/2013.
COMMENT: Before doing summary posts (or, perhaps, broadcasts in lieu of that) we highlight some additional, devastatingly interesting developments in connection with L’Affaire Snowden.
We have done numerous posts since the beginning of this dance macabre, and emphatically encourage users of this website to study them at length and in detail: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV, Part XV, Part XVI. It is well beyond the scope of this article to sum up the information presented in them. Users of this website are emphatically encouraged to examine them at length and detail.
In this post, we note more interesting developments in EU defense and intelligence posture, justified as an outgrowth of the Snowden “disclosures” (note the quotes.) Perhaps even more significantly, we highlight potential developments vis a vis the future of The Internet which may drastically affect the American economy and world affairs.
Taken together, these developments MIGHT signal the beginning of a Third World War–perhaps economic in nature and/or military. The implications for U.S. internet business and the American economy could not be exaggerated.
We note that this massive, critically important series will be “downloaded” as a series of broadcasts presently.
A number of considerations to be weighed in this post:
- In our last post, we speculated: “Will the collaboration between NSA and BND be decoupled, “by popular request” and “in keeping with democratic principle,” after the disclosures by Snowden?”
- That same day, just such a measure was announced! (See text excerpts below.)
- We note, again, that Germany does EXACTLY the same thing! The Germans are planning on expanding their program!
- Supposedly justified by Snowden’s disclosures, the EU is developing its own military force, internet surveillance and intelligence service. Will this be used against troubled eurozone austerity victims, or against the U.S. and/or U.K.? We highlighted this in our last post.
- The damage to U.S. internet business–and the U.S. economy–appears more and more likely as a result of “Snowden’s ride.” (See text excerpts below.)
- A German minister has floated the idea of banning Google and other U.S. companies from doing business in Europe as a result of the Snowden disclosures. (See text excerpts below.)
- Beyond damage to the U.S. economy, the regulation of the internet may gravitate more toward a U.N.–controlled paradigm, much as China and Russia have been endorsing. This adds still greater dimension to Snowden’s decamping first to China and then to Russia. (See text excerpts below.)
- In past posts, we have speculated that the “psy-op” that Snowden and the Underground Reich structure that commands him may intend to alienate to younger, more idealistic voters from Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. That remains a key part of our analysis. We also note that the fallout from the psy-op may propel the big money in Silicon Valley toward the Nazified GOP in upcoming elections. In addition, focus on the NSA scandal will detract attention and support from Obama’s attempts at realizing his political agenda.
- We stress, yet again, that blaming all of this on “NSA spying” is misplaced. This information has, almost in its entirety, been public for years. Indeed, as we stress, yet again, a European Parliament report on this very phenomenon (NSA/Echelon/Menwith Hill) was published shortly before the 9/11 attacks. (See text excerpts below.)
- We should also emphasize that the Third World War would be waged in true Von Clausewitz style. It will be done through “Other Means.”
- Economics and politics would be used, on the balance, instead of military means with regard to the United States, as expressed to Dorothy Thompson in 1940. Proxy war, using the Muslim Brotherhood, seems altogether likely. Drones would make an effective force against dissident European nations and peoples, so that German citizens would not have to join combatant ranks. Another effective device would be Tesla/HAARP technology, such as tornado manipulation, already “on the table.”
On the day after this post was published, two developments reinforce our working hypothesis. As reported by The New York Times, threats against U.S. embassies in North Africa (made by Al Qaeda) have increased. U.K. facilities also appear to be threatened. This will ramp up divisions in the United Stats over NSA surveillance, as well as exacerbating tensions between the U.S. and other countries over that same issue. As discussed in so many posts and programs, Al Qaeda is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Underground Reich’s proxy warriors and Germany’s erstwhile allies in World War II. In our last post, we speculated about just such an eventuality! One wonders if these threats were real or simply “chatter” generated to test and overextend the monitoring capabilities of U.S. and U.K. intel. (See text excerpts below.)- In that same issue of The New York Times, there was a story about the effect of the GOP-mandated sequester on the U.S. economy–disastrous in a word. Manifesting “Kamikaze economics,” the GOP is forcing German-endorsed austerity on the United States at a time when we cannot afford it, in diametric opposition to fundamental economic theory and practice. This will further damage the U.S. economy and military, realizing Von Clausewitz’s goals for Germany, vis a vis the United States. (See text excerpts below.)
- In an update, we note that a casualty of Snowden’s Ride may be plans for U.S. cyberdefense. Whether this ends up enabling a future cyberterrorist incident remains to be seen. (See text excerpts below.)
- Yet another update by the vigilant “Pterrafractyl” informs us that both China and–surprise–Germany and the EU are pushing for developing technology to compete with U.S. technology. This will undoubtedly damage the U.S. economy.
EXCERPT: Germany canceled a Cold War-era surveillance pact with the United States and Britain on Friday in response to revelations by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden about those countries’ alleged electronic eavesdropping operations.
Chancellor Angela Merkel had raised the issue of alleged National Security Agency spying with President Barack Obama when he visited Berlin in June. But with weeks to go before national elections, opposition parties had demanded clarity about the extent to which her government knew of the intelligence gathering operations directed at Germany and German citizens.
Government officials have insisted that U.S. and British intelligence were never given permission to break Germany’s strict privacy laws. But they conceded that an agreement dating back to the late 1960s gave the U.S., Britain and France the right to request German authorities to conduct surveillance operations within Germany to protect their troops stationed there.
“The cancellation of the administrative agreements, which we have pushed for in recent weeks, is a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement. . . .
EXCERPT: This column over the weekend, by the British academic John Naughton in the Guardian, takes us one more step in assessing the damage to American interests in the broadest sense– commercial, strategic, ideological — from the panopticon approach to “security” brought to us by NSA-style monitoring programs.
Naughton’s essay doesn’t technically tell us anything new. For instance, see earlier reports like this, this, and this. But it does sharpen the focus in a useful way. Whoever wrote the headline and especially the subhead did a great job of capturing the gist:
Edward Snowden’s not the story. The fate of the internet is.
The press has lost the plot over the Snowden revelations. The fact is that the net is finished as a global network and that US firms’ cloud services cannot be trusted.
In short: because of what the U.S. government assumed it could do with information it had the technological ability to intercept, American companies and American interests are sure to suffer in their efforts to shape and benefit from the Internet’s continued growth.
* American companies, because no foreigners will believe these firms can guarantee security from U.S. government surveillance;
* American interests, because the United States has gravely compromised its plausibility as world-wide administrator of the Internet’s standards and advocate for its open, above-politics goals.
Why were U.S. authorities in a position to get at so much of the world’s digital data in the first place? Because so many of the world’s customers have trusted* U.S.-based firms like Google, Yahoo, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc with their data; and because so many of the world’s nations have tolerated an info-infrastructure in which an outsized share of data flows at some point through U.S. systems. Those are the conditions of trust and toleration that likely will change.
The problem for the companies, it’s worth emphasizing, is not that they were so unduly eager to cooperate with U.S. government surveillance. Many seem to have done what they could to resist. The problem is what the U.S. government — first under Bush and Cheney, now under Obama and Biden — asked them to do. [This, by the way is wrong. It predates both Bush/Cheney and Obama Biden. I discussed this on air, from open sources, well before either team assumed power. This highlights my statement that; “Journalists are like a flock of birds. When one lands, they all land. When one flies away, they all fly away.”–D.E.] As long as they operate in U.S. territory and under U.S. laws, companies like Google or Facebook had no choice but to comply. But people around the world who have a choice about where to store their data, may understandably choose to avoid leaving it with companies subject to the way America now defines its security interests.
Here’s Naughton’s version of the implications:
The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty....
NSA Blowback: German Minister Floats US Company Ban; Der Spiegel; 8/5/2013.
EXCERPT: With the NSA spying scandal continuing to make headlines in Europe, the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has raised the possibility of new, tangible measures to punish corporations that participate in American spying activities. In an interview with Die Welt, the liberal Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called for the creation of EU-wide rules to regulate the protection of information, and said that, once those rules are in place, “United States companies that don’t abide by these standards should be denied doing business in the European market.”
Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said that a package of EU measures is required in order to fight “the widespread spying of foreign spy services” and that German data protection laws should be a yardstick for the rest of the European Union — German privacy laws are considerably tighter than those of the United States and much of Europe.
German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich also raised corporate accountability in July, when he suggested requiring European firms to report any data they hand over to foreign countries. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who is running for reelection in September as part of the pro-business Free Democratic Party, did not further specify which kinds of penalties she would like American companies to face, though it seems unlikely that Europe would completely ban companies like Google, which dominate the online search market, or Facebook from doing business. Both of those companies were implicated in the documents leaked by former intelligence worker Edward Snowden.
It is the latest development in a German election season that has come to be dominated by online privacy issues. Chancellor Angela Merkel has faced widespread criticism from the opposition for her handling of the NSA scandal and Peer Steinbrück, the Chancellor candidate of the opposition SPD party, recently told German television channel ZDF that Merkel should demand written assurances from the Americans they will respect German laws and interests and not engage in industrial espionage . . . .
EXCERPT: One year ago, many users were engaged in a contentious debate over the question of who should govern the Internet. The debate pitted the current model led by a U.S.-based organization known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN, supported by the U.S.) against a government-led, United Nations-style model under which countries such as China and Russia could assert greater control over Internet governance. The differences between the two approaches were never as stark as some portrayed since the current model grants the U.S. considerable contractual power over ICANN, but the fear of greater foreign government control over the Internet led to strong political opposition to UN involvement.
While supporters of the current model ultimately prevailed at a UN conference in Dubai last December where most Western democracies, including Canada, strongly rejected major Internet governance reforms, the issue was fundamentally about trust. Given that all governments have become more vocal about Internet matters, the debate was never over whether government would be involved, but rather about who the global Internet community trusted to lead on governance matters. . . .
. . . . Not only do the surveillance programs themselves raise enormous privacy and civil liberties concerns, but oversight and review is conducted almost entirely in secret with little or no ability to guard against misuse. In fact, U.S. officials have now acknowledged providing inaccurate information on the programs to elected politicians, raising further questions about who is watching the watchers.
The surveillance programs have emerged as a contentious political issue in the U.S., and there are several reasons why the reverberations are likely to extend to the global Internet governance community.
First, the element of trust has been severely compromised. Supporters of the current Internet governance model frequently pointed to Internet surveillance and the lack of accountability within countries such as China and Russia as evidence of the danger of a UN-led model. With the public now aware of the creation of a massive, secret U.S.-backed Internet surveillance program, the U.S. has ceded the moral high ground on the issue.
Second, as the scope of the surveillance becomes increasingly clear, many countries are likely to opt for a balkanized Internet in which they do not trust other countries with the security or privacy of their networked communications. This could lead to new laws requiring companies to store their information domestically to counter surveillance of the data as it crosses borders or resides on computer servers located in the U.S. In fact, some may go further by resisting the interoperability of the Internet that we now take for granted.
Third, some of those same countries may demand similar levels of access to personal information from the Internet giants. This could create a “privacy race to the bottom,” where governments around the world create parallel surveillance programs, ensuring that online privacy and co-operative Internet governance is a thing of the past. . . .
EXCERPT: [Notice when this was published–9/6/2001.–D.E.] . . . The United States-led spying system known as Echelon can monitor virtually every communication in the world — by e‑mail, phone or fax — that bounces off a satellite, the European Parliament was told. But in reporting on a yearlong study of the system that was prompted by concern that American companies were using data from the system to gain a competitive edge, Gerhard Schmid, a German member of the Parliament, said that many European countries had similar abilities . . .
“Qaeda Messages Prompt U.S. Terror Warning” by Eric Schmitt; The New York Times; 8/2/2013.
EXCERPT: The United States intercepted electronic communications this week among senior operatives of Al Qaeda, in which the terrorists discussed attacks against American interests in the Middle East and North Africa, American officials said Friday.
The intercepts and a subsequent analysis of them by American intelligence agencies prompted the United States to issue an unusual global travel alert to American citizens on Friday, warning of the potential for terrorist attacks by operatives of Al Qaeda and their associates beginning Sunday through the end of August. Intelligence officials said the threat focused on the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which has been tied to plots to blow up American-bound cargo and commercial flights.
The bulletin to travelers and expatriates, issued by the State Department, came less than a day after the department announced that it was closing nearly two dozen American diplomatic missions in the Middle East and North Africa, including facilities in Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Britain said Friday that it would close its embassy in Yemen on Monday and Tuesday because of “increased security concerns.” . . . .
EXCERPT: . . . .Corporate and academic economists say that Washington’s fiscal fights have produced budget policies that amount to a self-inflicted drag on the economy’s recovery.
Joseph J. Minarik, director of research at the corporate-supported Committee for Economic Development and a former government economist, said he could not remember in postwar times when fiscal policy was so at odds with the needs of the economy.
“The macroeconomic situation is highly unusual,” he said, adding: “We have to be concerned about our debt getting totally out of hand, so we are concerned about the federal budget. But the concern has got to be tempered by the fact that we have got to get some economic growth going as well.” . . . .
. . . . “The disjunction between textbook economics and the choices being made in Washington is larger than any I’ve seen in my lifetime,” said Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. “At a time of mass unemployment, it’s clear, the economics textbooks tell us, that this is not the right time for fiscal retrenchment.”
Given that rough consensus in an otherwise quarrelsome profession, he added, “To watch it be ignored like this is exasperating, horrifying, disheartening.” . . . .
EXCERPT: Even while rapidly expanding its electronic surveillance around the world, the National Security Agency has lobbied inside the government to deploy the equivalent of a “Star Wars” defense for America’s computer networks, designed to intercept cyberattacks before they could cripple power plants, banks or financial markets.
But administration officials say the plan, championed by Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency and head of the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, has virtually no chance of moving forward given the backlash against the N.S.A. over the recent disclosures about its surveillance programs.
Senior agency officials concede that much of the technology needed to filter malicious software, known as malware, by searching incoming messages for signs of programs designed to steal data, or attack banks or energy firms, is strikingly similar to the technology the N.S.A. already uses for surveillance.
“The plan was always a little vague, at least as Keith described it, but today it may be Snowden’s biggest single victim,” one senior intelligence official said recently, referring to Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who released documents revealing details of many of the agency’s surveillance programs.
“Whatever trust was there is now gone,” the official added. “I mean, who would believe the N.S.A. when it insists it is blocking Chinese attacks but not using the same technology to read your e‑mail?” . . . .
Uncle Sam and The Swastika
The “balkanization” of the internet has been going on for some time. It may not be as obvious if you live within the US but when the internet first started everything was in English and it was indeed a worldwide community. However, for the last 6 or 7 years all the mayor search engines detect your IP and will forcibly take you to, for example: Google.ar (if you live in Argentina), Yahoo.mx (If you live in Mexico), youtube.br (if you live in Brazil) and all the pages will appear in Spanish or Portuguese. This happens EVEN IF you set your preferences to English or US. This, of course, is being done for commercial purposes and it used to drive me up the wall until I found a way to mask my IP. So, storing information domestically is just the last step in this direction.
What I don’t understand is the FTR 700 program you referenced in Snowden’s Ride, Part 9. As you know, I am new to your web site and it will probably take me years to get up to speed with all the work you’ve done so I apologize if you have clarified this in previous posts but, I see a contradiction in the Underground Reich’s desire to debilitate and balkanize Europe and the US so they can once again consolidate themselves as the new world power based in Germany.
First of all it would contradict Germany’s public image and the image the Germans have of themselves as you can see in the following article:
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21576142-germans-are-losing-patience-being-cast-euro-zones-scapegoats-dont-make-us-führer
“The Germans are not yet openly angry. That would be out of character in a people who have, since the second world war, been eager to atone for the past and be good European partners. In one recent poll, 34% of Germans even said they empathised with the wrath of the southern Europeans. ”
“The Germans are not alone in these views. The Dutch, Finns and Slovaks broadly share them. What makes Germany different is that it is big and central. To historians such as Brendan Simms of Cambridge University, author of a new book, “Europe: the Struggle for Supremacy”, this sounds eerily familiar. Europe has long grappled with the “German question”. Sometimes Germany was too weak, sometimes too strong. Or, as Henry Kissinger, a former American secretary of state, put it, referring to Germany just after unification in 1871, it was “too big for Europe, but too small for the world”. Today, Mr Simms argues, “it sits uneasily at the heart of an EU that was conceived largely to constrain German power but which has served instead to increase it, and whose design flaws have unintentionally deprived many other Europeans of sovereignty.”
The question is whether Germany can use its power by unapologetically leading. Given Germany’s past, its political culture militates against even trying. As Joschka Fischer, a former foreign minister, jokes, “it’s nice to go to a conference of ‘young leaders’, but you don’t want a conference of ‘junge Führer’.” Most Germans worry that others might again come to hate or fear them. Their neighbours are less concerned. As Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, put it in a speech in Berlin in 2011, “I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.”
Another problem would be French and British mistrust and rejection of Germany’s economic supremacy as it states in the following article:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/carnage-as-europeans-refuse-to-take-their-medicine-20120427–1xqbd.html
“The French delivered a loud ”non” to Berlin’s euro policies, handing a first-round victory to the socialist Francois Hollande, whose central campaign pledge was to reopen Chancellor Angela Merkel’s eurozone fiscal pact, an international treaty signed by 25 EU leaders. Almost one-in-five French also voted for the europhobic National Front of Marine Le Pen,who wants the single currency scrapped and the French franc restored.”
And last but not least, even though fascist elements within the US (mainly patriot and militia movements) have indeed been pushing for secession, why would fascist American politicians overturn the Posse Comitatus Act, increase military spending and militarize the police force?
http://www.examiner.com/article/s1867-would-overturn-posse-comitatus-act
http://www.businessinsider.com/military-spending-budget-defense-cuts-2011–10?op=1
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/militarized_police_overreach_oh_god_i_thought_they_were_going_to_shoot_me_next”/
This doesn’t sound like a federal government that would allow secession.
Maybe I’m mistaken but if the Underground Reich were to come out openly as the Fourth Reich it would probably do so through the US instead of Germany. As you said: “Could the recent Snowden affair and Russia’s open defiance of the US vis-à-vis Syria be the prelude to WWIII?”….
@Shibusa–
You are indeed new to this website.
This site contains all the work I have done since 1979, plus a library of anti-fascist books that are fundamental to understanding the lines of argument presented here.
The Manning text on the Bormann flight capital organization is essential. So are the Reiss text on the Nazis going underground and the Tetens text on the re-instituion of Nazi elements in Germany after the war.
You questions have been answered already.
You need to take the time necessary to come to terms with the material.
Admittedly, the sheer volume of information presented here is daunting.
On top of that, the analysis is sophisticated, and not for those of superficial or rigid mindset.
The Reich is an Underground Reich. It proceeds forward using “other means,” as I have stressed time and again.
You need to read the books and do some key word searches.
When you come up with the results of those keyword searches, take time to digest the posts and broadcasts that they yield.
Search for “Von Clausewitz”, “other means”, “Bertelsmann”, “proxy war”, “Serpent’s Walk”, “corporacracy”, “Muslim Brotherhood”, “Friedrich List”, “Dorothy Thompson”, “Nazi connections to 9/11”, “Loftus”, “B as in Bush”, “von Bolschwing”, “von Damm”, “Gipper”, “Underground Reich”.
You are thinking in old terms. The Underground Reich, on the other hand, anticipated the future.
Using the EMU, Germany is already doing what they set out to do.
Many inside, and outside, of Europe are beginning to understand, albeit too late.
Again, patience and perseverance are an absolute must, if you wish to grasp the lines of inquiry presented here.
Thanks for your attention to this website.
Best,
Dave
@Shibusa–
Another thought: Check out this post;
https://spitfirelist.com/news/fascism-and-the-dangers-of-economic-concentration/
It contains the last 7 or eight minutes of a program I did in May of 1980.
Then listen to the entire broadcast, one hour in length.
See how that corresponds to what has happened in the more than three decades since it was recorded.
Then listen to, and read the description for, FTR #186, recorded in December of 1999.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-186-what-does-the-w-in-george-w-bush-stand-for/
Supplement that with FTR #310. https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-310-bush-league-associates-and-actions-of-the-georges-bush-part‑1/
Then listen to, and read the description for, FTR #356, recorded almost two years later, as well as FTR #464, recorded two years after #356.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-356-mein-jihad-part‑4/
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-464-i-told-you-so%e2%80%94more-about-the-subversion-of-operation-green-quest/
Note my observations about BCCI/Bush/FBI director Mueller.
In addition check out side “A” of FTR #412, recorded in June of 2003. See if the discussion bears any relevance to what has happened since then.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-412-the-engineer-intends-to-wreck-the-train/
This will give you some perspective on Yours Truly, as well as the material itself.
Thanks again for paying attention to this website.
Best,
Dave
test
@Participo–
Your difficulties posting comments may well have been due to the fact that I was working on the site.
Others have had similar problems, under the circumstances.
Best,
Dave
@Dave: Yeah. Well, it happens. No biggie.
In any case, I’d like to know one thing, and it concerns both Brad Manning & Snowden: Why is it, that Bradley Manning is now about to serve 150+ years in prison, while Snowden, who arguably did far more damage, has been allowed to go free, into the hands of the Russians?
Manning, useful idiot that he ended up being, at least seemed to genuinely believe that he was doing the world a favor.....but Snowden? I think we both can agree that he was playing us all along, and HE KNEW IT. And yet, the latter man is now roaming the streets of Moscow.....
@Steven L.–
The difference is that Bradley Manning is a “useful idiot”–a genuinely tragic figure, in the classical sense.
He is not a hero, however. He downloaded a number of documents onto a flash drive and leaked them without knowing what was on all of them.
That is very, very reckless and could, conceivably, have gotten millions killed. (Suppose there was info about access to nukes on there, which, for all B.M. knew, might have been the case.)
He is a young gay guy sorting through identity issues–nothing wrong with that. However there is a time and a place for everything.
Military intelligence is NOT the place for that!!
Manning is not a spook on assignment–Snowden is.
Mannning is not Underground Reich. Snowden is.
Manning stayed in the U.S.–Snowden took off for points distant as his information was coming to light, courtesy of an overt Nazi fellow traveler (Glenn Greenwald.)
Snowden is most likely BND and/or some Fifth Column Underground Reich element in U.S. intel.
He was not “allowed” to go free–he had sensitive info and a support structure to transport him to China, then Russia.
He also had a doomsday scenario in place–IF something happened to him, the pillars of the temple would be collapsed around him.
Read the posts I’ve put up at length and in detail.
Best,
Dave
@Shibusa: Back in 2010, when Merkel was first pushing the hard austerity policy prescriptions, I shared your surprise because, as the article you cite points out, that Germany would risk a developing a reputation for dictating to its neighbors. But that doesn’t change the fact that the policies coming out of Berlin have been nuts ever since the financial crisis hit. It didn’t make sense given the boldness of the cries for austerity back then. But it’s less shocking now, when you look at just what has been gained in the last three years: it’s basically been a variant on the Reagan Revolution for Europe: The ordoliberal far-right economic philosophy — with its unhealthy fixation on debt and supply-side ordoliberal economic theories — is now enshrined as permanent policies for all member nations. The Fiscal Compact caps debt and there are going to be new economic policy oversight bodies that are going to enforce and “coordinate” economic policy. When you take all that into account, the price paid in terms of national image doesn’t seem so high. After all, the price is merely the opinion of today’s populace. That’s potentially just a temporary thing. But the fundamental changes to how the EU/eurozone governs itself that are being discussed could end up being in place for decades to come. There’s a lot at stake.
Also note that the official public stance that Germany’s political establishment has taken is that of depicting the Southern European populaces as being ‘lazy spendthrifts are trying to steal all our hard-earned money’. This is a reflection of the tensions you cite because the German public really does need to think that Germany is being victimized and sucked dry in order to rationalize the economic devastation being caused by the austerity. It’s the same rhetoric across EU in the nations pushing for austerity policy and it’s very analogous to the way the GOP focuses in the US public’s attention on “illegal aliens” and people on public assistants as being the source of all economic and social ills. Similarly, we see nearly the entire German economic establishment pushing ordoliberal nonsense argument to make the case that Germany simply has no choice but to demand austerity policies. They’re bullshit arguments, in terms of the underlying economics, but they’re emotionally appealing bullshit arguments and great for mimicking populist sentiments.
In terms of strategic objectives, getting the European populace to accept ordoliberal dogma as some sort of metaphysical truth would be a HUGE prize. Once a populace start take its money TOO seriously, with the kind of religious fervor that you find amongst the various strains of far-right economic thought, that populace is going to be at the mercy of the ruling oligarchs that actually run the economy. It’s an elegantly brutal way to take control over people’s lives under a decentralized coalition of the corporate entities that run the economy and dominate the government. And it’s been ordoliberal nonsense enshrined in the kind of intellectual dishonesty one expects from a Grover Norquist or David Koch that is making it happen. Don’t forget that the overarching goals of the ordoliberal economists are closely shared with their international neo-liberal counterparts of the Austrian School/Koch/Norquist variety.
Just take a moment, and think about the fact that the following article was published a couple of weeks ago, without any guffawing but in an entirely self-serious manner. It’s about an idea about has to find a long-term solution to Europe’s ongoing financial woes getting floated in policy-making circles by Oliver Garnier, the chief economist at Societe Generale, one of biggest, most leveraged banks in Europe and a major recipient of the 2008 AIG bailout. The underlying problem is that no one can come up with a viable long-term debt reduction solution for the ailing eurozone economies since the austerity-alone solution has been such a disaster. Mr Garnier’s idea? Set up a “European Treuhand (Trust) Agency”, modeled after the state-privatization Treuhandanstalt agencies used after German reunification to privatize East German assets. The new agency would be capitalized by German savers and be used to “invest in” the state assets of the ailing eurozone economies. THAT’s the big solution getting peddled at this point in the crisis. And it’s supposed to be an improvement over the ol’ “let’s privatize state assets at firesale prices”-model that kept getting pushed even after it fails. So instead of outright privatizations, we’ll get some sort of weird public-private partnership arrangement where German savers are now directly owning the state-assets of their neighbors. Somehow no one sees any long-term problems with this approach. This is where we are:
Notice Mr. Garnier’s final argument comes down to ‘yeah, there are serious problems with this plan, but just look at the status quo and the prospect of the abandonment of budget sovereignty with the proposed European fiscal union.’ That’s how bad the options are right now because bad options are the only options available due to Bundesbank-derived economic BS. Now Mr. Garnier’s idea is the kind of idea that ends up in publications like the Financial Times as a real, serious proposal to sell one nation to another as part of a long-term debt-solution. Nation-state usury is now apparently the solution to ‘mal-integration’.
Since one of the fundamental problems with the privatization schemes has been the lack of interested buyers and the extremely low bids, notice that for Mr. Garnier’s scheme to work the new European investment agency is going to have to pay substantially more for state assets than what countries like Greece have been able to fetch in the markets. So somehow nations will have to “sweeten the deal” enough to garner those higher prices. Or the scheme could unfold, but at much lower prices than Mr. Garnier is predicting, thus not solving the underlying debt problem.
Also note that it appears that Mr. Garnier is imaging that this agency will invest in, and take control of, state assets, and then spend the next 10–15 years “restructuring” those assets with the long-term plan of eventual full privatization. So, basically, we’re looking at a scheme where German public funds get invested in a giant account that forms public-private partnerships with the state-assets of ailing economies, then makes the investments over the next 10–15 years required to turn them into profitable enterprises, and then sells them off to private investors. In other words, this is the privatization DREAM for Europes oligarchs: Instead of outright privaization, where investors buy the state-assets, warts and all, and pay the costs of new investments and restructuring, the European is going to pay the price instead and only eventually sell off the assets after all the expensive investments have been made. By putting the Germany public’s saving directly at risk, it guarantees a hyper-austerity attitude will be taken during any restructuring because now the Germans can be told “these are your companies and assets that you have at risk and therefore [insert pro-austerity argument]”. And once the companies have been “restructured”, they get sold off, hopefully for a profit. At best, the German public might make an ok return on its investments under this scheme, but the eventual owners of the privatized assets could end up making WAY more in the long run by dodging the initial “restructuring costs”. Pretty sweet.
Continuing...
This is the new “hot” idea getting bandied about in the latest phase of the eurozone crisis. And the “fiscal untion” Mr. Garnier warns is worse than his proposal just might be worse because it would almost certainly involve some sort of “economy czar” that will have sweeping powers over national governments. And those powers will be used to enforce an ordoliberal, anti-populist vision. Part of the reason there’s been such unwavering support of austerity policies by Europe’s leadership is that there’s a general consensus amongst Europe’s elite (and the global elite generally) that harsh austerity measures tied to economic performance is the only acceptable model going forward. That’s the consensus. Both the Grover Norquist/David Koch-style of economics AND the Jens Weidmann/Bundesbank-style of economic fit very well in that kind of economic paradigm because they both have the properties of fetishizing low-inflation and market-place supremacy for determining life outcomes (it’s just less exreme under ordoliberalism). It’s horrendously stupid unless you want to ensure madness. But it’s a great mindset for turning the economy into a giant debtor’s prison. And Europe’s elites are really determined to implement some sort of economic death trap where unelected officials get vast powers to “coordinate policy” in a way that enforces a far-right-lite (one-hopes) policy-framework:
There isn’t much more information publicly available so far about what these new Eurogroup Presidential powers will entail, but it looks like that vision vaguely discussed by Merkel and Hollande that “would mark a fundamental overhaul of how the currency bloc is managed” has sort of already been adopted by the larger eurozone policy-making community:
Notice how Merkel and Hollande (someone who is supposedly sort of opposed to the permanent austerity-regime) first talk about the need to coordinate policies across a broad array of areas: labour markets; unemployment and social inclusion; but also pension policies; product markets; common taxation; efficiency of the public sector; education systems. And then there’s vague discussion about agreement over the need for a permanent Eurogroup president and building separate structures within the eurozone to ensure “adequate democratic control and legitimacy” of the decision-making process. That’s a pretty strong indication that the vague plans Merkel and Hollande are talking about for the expansion of powers of the Eurogroup president to are probably going to further threaten “adequate democratic control and legitimacy” of the decision-making process. This is where we are, and it’s only been a few years since these over-the-topic power-play antics have begun.
Continuing...
There will be plenty of ongoing attempts to implement some form of far-right nuttiness in the US but it will take a Tea Party-ish form. In Europe, where the US far-right’s brand of economic Libertarianism isn’t nearly as palatable, it’s going to be Bundesbank-brand nuttiness. But it’s no longer long a question of whether or not we can feasibly see fascist-natured leadership coming from Berlin and Frankfurt over the future of Europe. It’s what we’ve been seeing for several years now. Fascist/far-right leadership emanates from tons of governments around the world all the time. And that includes plenty of other nations inside and outside the EU. The austerity/union-busting/“structural reform” phenomena is transnational. The EU/eurozone leadership entered The Twighlight Zone soon after the financial crisis and The Twighlight Zone is not exited easily. And they were led by the ordoliberalist ideals so at this point it’s just a matter of trying to understand how it is that Germany’s dominant economic position is being used to create a strange far-right tomorrow for Europe. Psy-op-ing the German populace with far-right economic dogma that mandates austerity as the only viable solution has been one of the tools used by Merkel & Friends from the beginning. It’s the similar to the far-right dogma peddled by the GOP in the US and elsewhere.
Sorry for the long rant! Got carried away there.
Thank you so much for all the tips and pointers. I will check them out. I know at a visceral and intuitive level (not to mention the personal experience I had with some of the people and institutions you’ve mentioned) that everything you say is true. Understanding it at an intellectual level is not that easy. As you said, I need time to process all the info. I listen to 4 or 5 of your programs every day but the material is so vast I didn’t know where to start.
You’re absolutely right when you said one needs an open mind to understand all of this. Before I came across your web site I was convinced the problem was Israel and Zionism until I listened to one of your shows where you said the US was openly supporting Israel while secretly sustaining a true allegiance with Saudi Arabia. It was like a bucket of cold water had fallen on my head and all of a sudden many things made sense. It should have been obvious since 911 considering all the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia but that just goes to show how the media can make anyone think a dog is a cat when one can clearly see it is not!
“The Muslim Brotherhood” was precisely the keyword search which led me to your web site. After the Boston marathon bombing Glenn Beck created a HUGE media sensation by saying he would reveal something within the next few days that would “bring down the US government”. (God! He’s such a drama queen!)…. Well, his big revelation was the connection between the Obama administration and the “Muslim Brotherhood”. And of course, his disclosure didn’t bring down the US government (Surprise! Surprise!) but it did make me curious about this organization of which I knew nothing about. Have you noticed increased traffic to your web site since the Boston Marathon bombing? If you have, this could very well be the reason. In his effort to “shock the nation” Beck may have inadvertently sent many people your way.
Bless your heart and thank you for so selflessly sharing your work with everyone. If I can ever be of service please do not hesitate to contact me.
And once again the American public gets a friendly reminder that declaring a “War on Drugs” against their fellow citizens wasn’t just a callous example of collective cruelty, it was also a really stupid self-inflicted injury to the fabric of the civil society:
@Dave: Well, yeah.
In any case, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to re-read some of this stuff, especially thanks to recent developments.
@Shibusa–
My comment is NOT an indictment or attack.
The fact that you had been so thoroughly and easily mislead about Jews/Israel/Zionism is as good an indication as any about The Underground Reich’s success in its efforts.
Jews and Israel are completely irrelevant to any substantive discussion of world affairs.
(Analysis of Israel/Arab conflict generally ignores the important considerations–the tripartite clan control used by the Ottoman Empire and then the British Empire to maintain control in that part of the world–Nashashibis and Hamshemites subsumed to the Husseini clan. It also ignores other key considerations such as the Treaty of Sam Remo of 1920 and the Mizrahi–the Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab countries following Israel’s founding and the 1948 war of independence. More than twice the number of Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab lands [over a roughly 30-year period] as “Palestinians” were ethnically cleansed in Israel. The land deeded to the Mizrahi was more than FIVE times the territory of modern Israel. Many of those Jews settled in Israel and they are the foundation of the electoral base of the Israeli right wing and very, very right wing they are.)
The Jews are 0.2% of the world’s population with 0.0% of the world’s oil.
Despite manifesting a largely medieval culture, the Arabs, who DO control the world’s oil supply and have been aligned with the Reich in both its above-ground and Underground phases, have manipulated world opinion very successfully.
As discussed in the Dorothy Thompson article and excerpt I have referenced so often, economic control automatically leads to political control.
Note, also, my emphasis on “Serpent’s Walk,” a manifesto and far more than the “novel” it purports to be.
Published by the National Alliance–one of Glenn Greenwald’s Nazi clients–it refers to controlling the opinion-forming media.
The reason I discuss the Bormann capital network so often is derivative of the fact that it is–as one banker called it–“the greatest concentration of money power under a single control in all of world history”–(see FTR #152).
In FTR #99, the Bormann network is discussed in the context of the tides of 20th century capital flow.
An important analysis, that.
Best,
Dave
It’s interesting that the comments coming from officials on all sides are that the cancellation of treaty was completely irrelevant because the treaty hadn’t invoked in years. It raises the obvious question “Ok, so if it’s irrelevant, is that because there are newer treaties in place that also ensure the same level of extensive intelligence-sharing?” And if there ARE other treaties or policies still in place, doesn’t that mean Merkel just blatantly tried to deceive the German electorate into thinking some meaningful change took place just months before the election? It’s a curious political move:
You have to wonder if France’s government is like “WTF? Us too?” or if this was all expected.
@Dave: Well said concerning Israel. About now the Snowden Affair covered in this series of posts, I agree with everything that has been said so far but I have one interrogation remaining. What about inter-agency competition/rivalry/jealousy in all this? We know that since 9/11 the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security have been taking more and more space and pieces of the action in the intelligence matters of the country. Is that conceivable that some people in the older agencies feel that somehow they are the losers in that context? That they have lost, in their estimation, “the edge”, have been put aside, downgraded, etc? It is just a thought but maybe there is something there.
Keep going.
Via zerohedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013–08-07/nsa-pricked-%E2%80%9Ccloud%E2%80%9D-bubble-us-tech-companies
NSA Pricked The “Cloud” Bubble For US Tech Companies
(Excerpts)
Wolf Richter http://www.testosteronepit.com http://www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
The cloud is a growth industry. And a religion in Silicon Valley: you’re better off with all your data and software stored in a data center somewhere on the planet. It’s at the core of Big Data. It’s a beacon of growth that revenue-challenged tech giants like Oracle and IBM wave in the faces of antsy investors.
***
What we thought had been encrypted and secured on US servers, protected by trustworthy American corporations, has been made accessible, as we now know from the Snowden leaks, not only to companies that are willing to pay for it, but also to the NSA, other members of the Intelligence Community, government agencies in the US, state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as allied foreign governments. Made possible by formerly secret provisions in the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
***
But there is a price to pay. Tens of billions of dollars, it turns out. The reactions by foreign companies and governments to these revelations have “an immediate and lasting impact” on the US cloud computing industry, determined the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
***
In a survey conducted after the Snowden leaks, 10% of the foreign companies using cloud computing services said they’d already cancelled a project with a US cloud provider and 56% said they’d be less likely to use US-based providers. Conversely, among US stakeholders in the cloud sector, 36% said that the NSA leaks would make it more difficult doing business outside the US. The report estimated that if US cloud companies lose between 10% and 20% of their foreign business over three years, it will cost them between $21.5 billion to $35 billion.
But the report cautions it could get much more expensive “if foreign governments enact protectionist trade barriers that effectively cut out US providers.” In Europe, momentum in that direction is growing.
German Federal Data Protection commissioners threatened with new bureaucratic hurdles. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich announced that “whoever fears their communication is being intercepted in any way should use services that don’t go through American servers.” And Justice Minister Jörg-Uwe Hahn called for an outright boycott of US companies.
———
More at link
Glenn Greenwald recently confirmed that that he was given 15–20,000 classified documuents by Snowden and what he’s released so far is a tiny portion of what he’s planning on releasing. He also claims that WikiLeaks probably doesn’t have the full set of documents but that only he and Laura Poitras have them (presumably this doesn’t include the mystery individuals with the encrypted documents). Outside experts have also been hired to help interpret the documents. In another week or so, according to Greenwald, there should be another major revelation about US spying in Latin America:
The GOP is being predictably ‘helpful’ with the task of defusing growing tensions in US international relations:
It looks like the grand plan by the NSA to improve security is to announce a 90% reduction in the number of System Administrators. They’ll be replaced with more computers?
It’s looks like Skynet Jr. or one of its siblings is going to be responsible for an increasing number of decisions in how this sensitive data is interpreted and handled. This also means Skynet Jr’s is going to get ‘aquainted’ with humanity via tasks like parsing Chatroulette sessions for signs of terrorism. And now you know the rest of the story...
Taking a page from Russia’s recent rumblings about US electronics, it looks like China might be moving away from US IT technology:
Ditto Europe:
One would think that Silicon Valley would be a wee bit more concerned about the global plummet in trust in US business. But, if you think about it, there’s no reason today’s Silicon Valley firms can’t simply move out of Silicon Valley and then participate in what could be a global boom in investment in new IT security technologies:
It would indeed be an ultimate iron if Huawei becomes a globally trusted provider of IT infrastructure for handling sensitive data. It also seems kind of unlikely, but who knows.
Presumably there must be something on Mr. Miranda’s laptop that someone REALLY REALLY REALLY wants to get their hands on, because it’s really hard to see how detaining Glenn Greenwald’s partner for nine hours as part of an “anti-terrorism” inquiry was deemed to be a good idea. When Greenwald says “I don’t understand why they don’t realise that all it’s going to accomplish is the exact opposite effect,” he’s probably right. Acting like some weird police-state towards Greenwald’s partner is kind of exactly the opposite of what one would have thought the UK would want to be doing right now:
@Pterrafractyl–
Actually, the Miranda incident doesn’t surprise me, for all its superficial clumsiness.
Miranda was transferring documentation from Poitras to Greenwald. That’s why they confiscated his electronic equipment.
Why is Poitras in Germany?
There are plenty of other places for her to be.
Same place as Peter Sunde–founder of Pirate Bay and joined at the hip with far-right, Nazi-linked spook network WikiLeaks.
Sunde began PB while working for Siemens, itself inextricably linked with BND at one level and the Bormann network/Underground Reich at another.
The more time passes, the more this is looking like a BND penetration and psy-op, using the powerful “deep fifth column” in U.S. and probably U.K.
Also: I counsel you pay some serious attention to Gruppenfuhrer Greenwald.
https://spitfirelist.com/news/snowdens-ride-part-6-why-did-glenn-greenwald-represent-neo-nazis-pro-buono/
https://spitfirelist.com/news/snowdens-ride-part-7-citizen-greenwald-the-national-alliance-and-the-underground-reich/
This scumbag is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what he is made out to be.
I have noted G‑wald’s 11-year relationship with Austrian-born lawyer Achatz.
He was vacationing in Brazil to get over his broken heart–or so we’re told–when he met Miranda, with whom it was love at first sight.
I wonder if Achatz MIGHT have been a case officer of sorts for G‑wald.
They were partners and practiced law together. Maybe that was all there was to it–practicing law together by day and buttering each other’s buns by night.
Perhaps there was more to it, however.
I do have a suggestion for Poitras, Greenwald and Miranda. Why don’t they move to Russia, that way they can be closer to their icon/guru Snowden.
Russia is a world renowned bastion of civil liberties, freedom of expression and internet freedom, in particular. (I don’t pass judgement here–like Egypt, Russia is facing a destabilization program, using Islamist combatants of the Underground Reich directed by the Underground Reich/GOP faction of U.S. intel. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t want to live there.)
And they just LOVE gay people in Russia! Hey what’s not to like Laura, Glenn and David?! Off to Moscow with you!
Best,
Dave
@Dave: You have to wonder if this is part of what prompted the UK’s Heathrow freakout: Wikileaks published a ~400GB encrypted “insurance file” Saturday morning, similar to Snowden’s “dead man’s swich”. No one knows what’s in the file. Just that there’s 400GB of something in it:
There’s an interesting admission in Greenwald’s response to the UK detainment: Greenwald says Britain will be “sorry” for the act, stating “I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now. I am going to publish many more documents. I am going to publish things on England too. I have many documents on England’s spy system. I think they will be sorry for what they did”. So Greenwald was holding back, for whatever reason, info on the UK’s spying that he now deems newsworthy after his partner’s arrest. Are there other countries that Greenwald has lots of “in case you piss me off”-info on that we have yet to learn about?
In the latest Snowden leak, we’re learning that the NSA was spying on the presidents of Brazil and Mexico, leading to the expected outrage from both governments. Brazil is also calling for international regulations on cyber espionage:
So we seem to be heading towards a fascinating possibility that there will be calls for international regulations on spying. It could actually be a wonderful turn of events if such a debate unfolds because part of what’s made the global response to the Snowden Affair such a missed opportunity is the general attitude in the reports and commentary that only the NSA and GSHQ are the only one’s doing the spying. If we were, instead, discussing the global phenomena of mass surveillance by virtually every government that can afford to do it coupled with ubiquitous corporate spying that takes place by corporations all over the globe, well now THAT would be really a useful global discussion. Because even if the NSA and the rest of the “Five Eyes” disappeared tomorrow it’s hard to see how there still wouldn’t be mass spying still taking place all over. So could we actually see countries like France, for instance, voluntarily call for aggressive international enforcement of anti-corporate espionage rules? And will China agree to never ever spy in the UN again with some expected international penalty if they get caught?
And what about domestic mass spying? Can we can governments around the world to agree to international sanctions if they’re ever found to be engaging in widespread surveillance? Because while NSA spying certainly isn’t helpful for the people of Russia, China, Brazil, the EU, or anywhere else, it’s still domestic spying by one’s own government that puts individuals in the greatest danger. For example, as we also learned today, the US Drug Enforcement Agency and other law enforcement agencies have been paying AT&T for access to a secret phone-record database for use in criminal prosecutions since 2007. And the database contains records going back to 1987. This is in addition to theother secret mass-surveillance database established in 1994 for use by US law enforcement. Could we see a call for every UN member to end domestic spying by all their law enforcement agencies too? Because that would be pretty neat.
And then there are some really interesting questions that could arise from this kind of discourse: For instance, let’s say...
1. There exists a horribly pointless and destructive global set of laws that should have never existed in the first place and only fuels police-state trends but somehow became the status quo largely though the efforts of a hypothetical Country A.
2. And let’s say this horrible set of laws inevitably leads the emergence of power organized criminal syndicates across the globe including in Country A’s neighbor, Country B.
3. And let’s say Country A has also been spying on Country B’s president.
4. And let’s say Country B’s president turns out to be deeply tied to those same organized criminal forces that probably never would have existed if it wasn’t for Country A’s insistence on the international adoption of the aforementioned horrible laws.
What should Country A do after finding out that Country B’s president is friends with organized criminals in this, uh, hypothetical situation?
Another interesting question that might arise: If the new envisioned global rules are going to involve things like expectations that governments that are officially allies shouldn’t ever spy on each other, what does the global community do about the fact that virtually every government, society, and major institution is generally run by people that are utterly untrustworthy? Because a “no spying” pact has a major trust factor involved. That’s one of the big open questions that has yet to be answered although it’s been an open question since the dawn of civilization so it probably shouldn’t be surprising.
@Pterrafractyl–
This one is genuinely funny. An international treaty/agreement/regulatory document or body to “regulate” cyberespionage?! Or any other kind of espionage?
Really? How funny. Does anyone really think that any major intelligence service would abide by such a thing?
Another hilarious element to L’Affaire Snowden concerns the shocking, shocking “revelation” that NSA spied on EU, the U.N. and other individuals and institutions that EVERY MAJOR INTELLIGENCE SERVICE ON EARTH SPIED ON, as a matter of course.
A substantive point of contemplation concerns the obsession of journalists and politicos with NSA.
Since Germany, France and other NATO countries do the same thing, WHY do you suppose they aren’t focal points of criticism?
That’s one of the indications that BND/Underground Reich is probably the executive authority here.
You would think that someone genuinely concerned about such things would be equally concerned with German abuses, as well.
Yet Laura Poitras, Peter Sunde (founder of Pirate Bay and a big supporter of WikiLeaks)live in Germany.
Another point: Snowden leaked 58,000 pages of documents on NSA, et al.
Do you think he actually read those 58,000 pages?
That’s the equivalent of 100 books of 580 pages each.
I seriously doubt it.
Note the story I mentioned in a response to GK, which I will include in an upcoming post.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100233498/david-miranda-accused-of-carrying-secrets-that-threatened-spies-lives-this-look-bad-for-glenn/
If what Oliver Robbins is saying is true, then what’s going on here is something fundamentally different.
Best,
Dave
Heh, just in time for Obama’s trip to Sweden Julian Assange made a request to Sweden to investigate new allegations of US spying on Wikileaks going back to 2009. It includes a previously reported theft of three laptops at an airport in September 2010 while Assange was traveling from Stockholm to Berlin. Assange’s 186 page includes claims that “an intelligence source” told him that an Australian intelligence organization responded to a Swedish Security Service request for information about himself in August 2010. Assange is said to be planning on making similar requests for investiations into US spying in Germany and Australia:
While it wouldn’t be surprising if the US was somehow involved it’s worth pointing out that the content of those laptops would have been of interest to just about anyone. It’s also a reminder of a wave of laptop thefts from government employeees back in 2007–2010-ish. Do an news search for “stolen laptop” from those years, and you’ll see article after article kind of like this one:
There’s the standard espionage/identity-theft motives for stealing laptops and hacking into government and institutional system. But another interesting potential motive for stealing large datasets of personal data linked to things like email addresses, telephone numbers, social security numbers, etc, is for connecting the dots in the large metadata set that are now collected as a routine legal and commercial activity. So you have to wonder just how many entities all over the world have legal access to large volumes of anonymized metadata and how much of that data could be deanonymized using the kind of data that might be on one of those many stolen government laptops or just legally purchased. Google and Microsoft are teaming up to sue the US government for permission to publicly disclose more information about the rules they have to abide by in sharing information with governments. So it would be nice if this lawsuit could shed more light on the extent of non-NSA entities that also have access to large volumes of metadata:
The point made at the end of the article — that there still exists a large difference in the intelligence capabilities of US and its European counterparts because the major internet companies and telecoms are all based in the US — is a valid point. But that’s only true for now because it’s looking like one of the biggest consequences likely to result from the Snowden Affair is the development of a much larger EU IT industry and that means a lot more people around the world are going to have to be concerned about which EU spy agencies are going to have access to that data. The push to overhaul the EU’s data privacy laws is expected to be completed next year and there’s no shortage of happy-talk about all the great new protections that could be put in place. But as we saw above, there’s also no shortage of EU intelligence services that would love to get their digital hands on all that data. Folks concerned about the future of data privacy need to keep an eye on the debate over those new rules. Good luck with that!
The governments of France and Mexico are once again pissed off about spying:
One of the interesting memes that appears to have formed in the global response to the NSA spying is that domestic spying by non-NSA governments appears to by pretty ok based on the subdued global response to all of the news about non-NSA/GSHQ domestic spying. But since “we have to make sure, very quickly, that this no longer happens”, it seems rather important that governments start a global dialogue on what, exactly, government s are going to be allowed to do in the future? After all, if “this sort of practice between partners that invades privacy is totally unacceptable”, then this kind of calls for a massive GLOBAL reduction in all spy agencies everywhere since spying between governments is rampant. Especially with more and more global free trade agreements on the horizon...everyone is a trade partner with everyone else now and any spying between trade partners is now a possible act of industrial espionage. So, according to these new rules, the US is probably allowed to spy on North Korea, maybe Iran, and...anywhere else?
But the question of just how much spying activity is allowable in the future we’re all going to create in global partnership with each other really needs to become part of the global conversation. Because if the trend in growing global spying capacities continues, but the targets for that spying keep shrinking down to just domestic audiences, there’s going to be a lot more domestic spying in the future due, in part, to an incredible capacity to spy and nothing but domestic targets. So if international spying by governments is no longer going to be part of the world order (except on North Korea...that country will be everyone’s spying freebie), we had better alert governments about this development pretty soon so they can start dismantling the growing global Intelligence Industrial Complex right away.
Here’s a preview of what’s coming up from Greenwald & Friends: separate reports on NSA spying for every Latin American nation:
Greenwald also stated that “the majority of stories that are significant remain to be reported” so, at the current pace, we’ll maybe see the bulk of the “significant” stories for the NSA treasure trove exhausted some time around the middle of 2014? Maybe?