FTR #938 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 12: Settling In, Part 2 (The Underground Reich Comes Into Plain View, Part 5)

In FTR #‘s 891 and 895, we high­light­ed the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, a Con­gres­sion­al fig leaf insti­tut­ed to dilute CIA con­trol over Amer­i­can for­eign broad­cast out­lets such as Radio Free Europe, Voice of Amer­i­ca and Radio Free Asia. In addi­tion to the broad­cast out­lets dis­cussed in the sto­ry that fol­lows, we note that the change from a “board of gov­er­nors” to a “CEO” to be appoint­ed by Trump also gives the nom­i­nee pow­er over Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, devel­op­er of numer­ous apps and oth­er tech­no­log­i­cal method­olo­gies favored by the so-called “pri­va­cy advo­cates.”

The replace­ment of the gov­er­nors is seen as a poten­tial boon to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. “ . . . . ‘There’s some fear among the folks here, that the fire­wall will get dimin­ished and attacked and this could fall vic­tim to pro­pa­gan­da,’ the Repub­li­can offi­cial said. ‘They will hire the per­son they want, the cur­rent CEO does not stand a chance. This will pop up on Steve Bannon’s radar quick­ly. They are going to put a friend­ly per­son in that job.’ . . . . ”

The change will affect domes­tic broad­cast media as well. ” . . . . Because of the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Smith-Mundt Act in 2013, the BBG can now broad­cast in the U.S., too. But the influ­ence on the domes­tic mar­ket could be even more sub­tle, the Repub­li­can offi­cial warned. A BBG CEO influ­enced by the admin­is­tra­tion could pen­e­trate estab­lished media out­lets with pack­ages, series or oth­er news prod­ucts pro­duced by the BBG’s net­works but picked up and aired by tra­di­tion­al media like Fox News or Bre­it­bart. Many U.S. out­lets cur­rent­ly use con­tent from VOA. ‘No mon­ey would even change hands, you’ve had no effect on the bud­get,’ the offi­cial said. ‘But it will den­i­grate the prod­uct. . . . ’ ”

In the con­text of the changes made to the BBG, we review the polit­i­cal incli­na­tions of Ban­non: ” . . . The late Andrew Bre­it­bart, founder of the web­site Ban­non went on to lead, called Ban­non the “Leni Riefen­stahl of the Tea Par­ty movement”—a ref­er­ence to the infa­mous cre­ator of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da films. While insist­ing to a Wall Street Jour­nal reporter in 2011 that his work isn’t pro­pa­gan­da, Ban­non went on to cite Riefen­stahl among his main influ­ences . . . ”

Next, we turn to the sub­ject of free trade, on which Trump has had much to say, bash­ing Chi­na and Mex­i­co as coun­tries the U.S. should “put right” in their trade rela­tions with the U.S. It’s worth not­ing we haven’t heard Trump men­tion a trade war with Ger­many despite all his tirades against Chi­na and Mex­i­co. It rais­es the ques­tion of why, since Germany’s unprece­dent­ed and dam­ag­ing sur­plus­es make it such an obvi­ous trade war tar­get.

” . . . . There is one poten­tial trade war, how­ev­er, that few peo­ple have so far noticed — but which could soon be his eas­i­est tar­get. Ger­many. Giv­en the size of its pop­u­la­tion, it runs a far larg­er trade sur­plus than Chi­na — and a mas­sive sur­plus with the U.S. in par­tic­u­lar. Even bet­ter, the indus­tries to pick off are rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple to iden­ti­fy, and would actu­al­ly have a chance of cre­at­ing well-paid Amer­i­can jobs. . . .

“. . . . Germany’s trade sur­plus is absolute­ly mas­sive, and unprece­dent­ed in mod­ern indus­tri­al his­to­ry. Last year it hit 8.9% of gross domes­tic prod­uct, and it is like­ly to break through 9% before the end of 2016. Glob­al­ly, it is sec­ond in size only to China’s, but giv­en that Ger­many is a far small­er coun­try, it is only fair to mea­sure it on a per capi­ta basis — and when you look at it that way, Germany’s sur­plus is sev­en times big­ger than China’s. . . . Much of Germany’s trade sur­plus is clear­ly the result of cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion. The euro has depressed the real val­ue of the country’s exports, allow­ing it rack up those huge exports. You can argue about whether China’s cur­ren­cy is real­ly at its fair val­ue or not — but no one can real­ly dis­pute that Germany’s cur­ren­cy is way, way below what it would be if it still had the deutschemark. . . .”

Obvi­ous­ly, part of the answer lies in the fact that Deutsche Bank–a key ele­ment of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work and the Under­ground Reich–is owed hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars by Trump. Trump’s oth­er con­nec­tions run in the direc­tion of the Under­ground Reich as well. (The Trump/Deutsche Bank con­nec­tion is dis­cussed, in among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 920, 921, 922 and 927.)

We note in pass­ing that Ger­many is prepar­ing for a trade war with the U.S.–we don’t think one will real­ly take place, but we may be treat­ed to Trumpian “fake news” and/or pro­pa­gan­da. Ger­many is assert­ing that the fac­tors behind its enor­mous trade sur­plus can not be altered, because it is due to nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring cir­cum­stances like a rapid­ly aging pop­u­la­tion.

” . . . There are plen­ty of rea­sons for that. Germany’s cur­rent account sur­plus has nev­er been as high as it is this year and nev­er before has that sur­plus rep­re­sent­ed such a sig­nif­i­cant share of the country’s gross domes­tic prod­uct. Mak­ing mat­ters worse is the fact that the US is the largest con­sumer of Ger­man exports. . . .

“. . . . As high as it is, though, the cur­rent sur­plus is like­ly to con­tin­ue grow­ing. The recent fall in the euro’s val­ue rel­a­tive to the dol­lar fol­low­ing Trump’s elec­tion makes Ger­man prod­ucts and ser­vices even more com­pet­i­tive. And many econ­o­mists believe that the val­ue of the dol­lar will con­tin­ue to climb, which means that the val­ue of the euro against the dol­lar will shrink cor­re­spond­ing­ly. Their pre­dic­tions are based on recent indi­ca­tions that Trump’s announced eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus poli­cies will push up both America’s sov­er­eign debt load and its inter­est rates. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with analy­sis of how Trump’s con­tin­ued involve­ment in his busi­ness empire (through his chil­dren) leaves him open to manip­u­la­tion. The Philip­pines is a good exam­ple: “ . . . . So, under the deal, Trump’s chil­dren will be paid mil­lions of dol­lars through­out their father’s pres­i­den­cy by Jose E.B. Anto­nio, the head of Cen­tu­ry Prop­er­ties.

“Duterte recent­ly named Anto­nio the spe­cial gov­ern­ment envoy to the Unit­ed States. The con­flicts here could not be more trou­bling or more bla­tant: Pres­i­dent Trump will be dis­cussing U.S. pol­i­cy in South­east Asia with one of his (or his children’s) busi­ness part­ners, a man who is the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a for­eign leader who likens him­self to Hitler. Also note that the Trump fam­i­ly has an enor­mous finan­cial inter­est in Duterte’s dead­ly cam­paign: Root­ing out crime in the Philip­pines is good for the real estate val­ues. . . . Duterte recent­ly named Anto­nio the spe­cial gov­ern­ment envoy to the Unit­ed States. The con­flicts here could not be more trou­bling or more bla­tant: Pres­i­dent Trump will be dis­cussing U.S. pol­i­cy in South­east Asia with one of his (or his children’s) busi­ness part­ners, a man who is the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a for­eign leader who likens him­self to Hitler. Also note that the Trump fam­i­ly has an enor­mous finan­cial inter­est in Duterte’s dead­ly cam­paign: Root­ing out crime in the Philip­pines is good for the real estate val­ues. . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Trump’s busi­ness deal­ings in India, where mem­bers of the BJP par­ty fig­ure in the dis­po­si­tion of the oper­a­tions in that coun­try; Trump’s con­sid­er­a­tion of Bernie Sanders sup­port­er Tul­si Gab­bard for a cab­i­net posi­tion; “Alt-Right” king­pin Steve Ban­non’s high regard for Gab­bard; Gab­bard’s strong sup­port for Modi and net­work­ing with the BJP; Gab­bard’s net­work­ing with the RSS, the Indi­an fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion for which the BJP serves as a front.

John Perry Barlow (Grateful Dead Lyricist, Dick Cheney Campaign Manager, George Wallace Voter), the CIA, and the Genesis of Social Media

In FTR #854, we not­ed John Per­ry Bar­low’s back­ground as Dick Cheney’s cam­paign man­ag­er and George Wal­lace sup­port­er in 1968. In FTR #895, we dis­cussed the fact that the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion embraced tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by CIA-linked insti­tu­tions. Bar­low found­ed the EFF. It turns out that Bar­low was invit­ed to CIA head­quar­ters in 1992 and advanced con­cepts that may well have lead to the devel­op­ment of social media–”. . . Let’s cre­ate a process of infor­ma­tion diges­tion in which inex­pen­sive data are gath­ered from large­ly open sources and con­densed, through an open process . . . The enti­ty I envi­sion would be small, high­ly net­worked, and gen­er­al­ly vis­i­ble. It would be open to infor­ma­tion from all avail­able sources . . . It would rely heav­i­ly on the Inter­net, pub­lic media, the aca­d­e­m­ic press, and an infor­mal world­wide net­work of volunteers–a kind of glob­al Neigh­bor­hood Watch–that would sub­mit on-the-ground reports. . . . It would use off-the-shelf tech­nol­o­gy, and use it less for gath­er­ing data than for col­lat­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing them. Being off-the-shelf, it could deploy tools while they were still state-of-the-art. . . .”

FTR #924 Technocratic Fascism, the High-Profile Hacks and The Obverse Oswald: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Con­tin­u­ing our analy­sis of the high-pro­file hacks and “Team Snow­den,” we begin with analy­sis of some cryp­tic tweets that Snow­den issued, short­ly before the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” announced their pil­fer­ing of NSA cyber­weapons. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the tweets were a sig­nal to release the infor­ma­tion is one to be con­sid­ered.

Much of the pro­gram reviews key points of infor­ma­tion from FTR #923 and oth­er broad­casts: Rus­sia appears to have been wrong­ly fin­gered for the DNC hack released by Wik­iLeaks; the Shad­ow Bro­kers’ sup­posed hack of the NSA’s servers does not appear to have been a hack at all but the work of an insid­er who down­loaded the files onto a USB dri­ve; the files offered up by the Shad­ow Bro­kers were from 2013, when Snow­den under­took his oper­a­tion.

Snow­den has sup­port­ed the cov­er sto­ry for the NSA non-hack–that it was, indeed, a hack (it prob­a­bly was­n’t) and that Rus­sia was behind it, which was prob­a­bly not the case.

A chief sus­pect in the release of the NSA files is Jacob Apple­baum, the Wik­iLeak­er who appears to have facil­i­tat­ed Snow­den’s jour­ney from Hawaii to Hong Kong. The pro­gram reviews Apple­baum’s hos­til­i­ty to Hillary Clin­ton, com­par­ing it to the so-called “Shad­ow Bro­kers’ ” hos­til­i­ty to Clin­ton, echo­ing the views of Trump, Assange and Apple­baum. The broad­cast reviews the fact that the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” used an e‑mail account in Ger­many that has been recal­ci­trant to attempts at pen­e­trat­ing its users’ infor­ma­tion.

The pro­gram reviews Apple­baum’s pres­ence in Ger­many, along with oth­er key mem­bers of the WikiLeaks/Team Snow­den cadre.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of the fact that Snow­den (at the time he set out to sub­vert the NSA), Apple­baum and oth­er high-pro­file “pri­va­cy activists” have doc­u­ment­ed links to the CIA; a look at Don­ald Trump, Jr. who has been active in tweet­ing and re-tweet­ing “Alt.right” racist and anti-Semit­ic memes; Trump, Jr.‘s expressed will­ing­ness to run for office.

FTR #923 The Obverse Oswald and the High Profile Hacks: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook (Weighing in for The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 2)

Sup­ple­ment­ing and sum­ming up the exhaus­tive “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” series, this pro­gram sets forth the Snow­den “psy-op” and the high-pro­file hacks 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, and being por­trayed as a hero.

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. (Snow­den’s jour­ney to Hawaii appears to have been facil­i­tat­ed by Jacob Apple­baum, who may be behind the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” alleged hack of NSA cyber­weapons.) It was Snow­den’s jour­ney to Moscow that threw Oba­ma’s “reboot” with Rus­sia under the bus.

In this pro­gram, we exam­ine infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Rus­sia has been framed for the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” alleged hack of the NSA, much as it appears to have been framed for the DNC hack. Indeed, with both the DNC hack and the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack of the NSA, the evi­dence points increas­ing­ly toward “Team Snow­den” and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook him­self.

In that con­text, we again point to “The Obverse Oswald.” We strong­ly sus­pect that “Team Snow­den” may have had some­thing to do with this. Snow­den is in Rus­sia and work­ing for a com­put­er firm. The (frankly lame) fram­ing of Rus­sia for the DNC hack and the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack of the NSA reminds us of the process of “paint­ing Oswald Red.” After review­ing infor­ma­tion about the polit­i­cal, ide­o­log­i­cal and rhetor­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity between Ron Paul (Snow­den’s and Julian Assange’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice), David Duke and Don­ald Trump and his “alt.right” asso­ciates, the pro­gram reviews the appar­ent­ly deep and ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between Julian Assange, Wik­iLeaks and Don­ald Trump’s dirty tricks spe­cial­ist Roger Stone.

The pro­gram reviews at length the over­whelm­ing prob­a­bil­i­ty that Rus­sia was framed for the DNC hacks. Tack­ling the “Shad­ow Bro­kers’ ” pen­e­tra­tion of NSA cyber­weapons tech­nol­o­gy, we note that the evi­dence that this was done by Rus­sia is very poor. The bit­coin auc­tion­ing of the cyber­weapons is extreme­ly unlike­ly, as is the pub­lic announce­ment of the so-called “hack.” In addi­tion, the announce­ment of the so-called “hack” is done in a com­i­cal bro­ken Eng­lish, rem­i­nis­cent of the Boris and Natasha car­toon char­ac­ters from the ear­ly 1960’s.

Next, the pro­gram sets forth the hypoth­e­sis that, rather than a “hack,” this was more like­ly an insid­er pen­e­tra­tion of NSA and down­load­ing of the files onto a USB stick. Long­time NSA observ­er James Bam­ford points a fin­ger of sus­pi­cion at Jacob Apple­baum, the Wik­iLeak­er who appears to have facil­i­tat­ed Snow­den’s flight from Hawaii to Hong Kong. Apple­baum is a res­olute oppo­nent of Hillary Clin­ton, and the Shad­ow Bro­kers’ bro­ken Eng­lish tar­get­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee as well.

It is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing that Edward Snow­den has gone on record say­ing that Rus­sia was behind this event and that it was a hack. The evi­dence of Rus­sia being behind the Shad­ow Bro­kers and this event being a “hack” is very poor. Nonethe­less, Snow­den is giv­ing cre­dence to the cov­er sto­ry for this event.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The use of a Ger­man e‑mail provider that has been resis­tant to gov­ern­ment attempts at trans­paren­cy; review of the pres­ence in Ger­many of Apple­baum, Sarah Har­ri­son (Assange’s for­mer girl­friend and the woman who assist­ed Snow­den’s flight from Hong Kong to Moscow), Lau­ra Poitras (close asso­ciate of Snow­den and Glenn Green­wald) and Peter Sunde (who found­ed the Pirate Bay site on which Wik­iLeaks ini­ti­tial­ly held forth); rumi­na­tion about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Snow­den and Apple­baum may have col­lab­o­rat­ed in the con­text of the “Shad­ow Bro­kers;” review of the links between the CIA-derived Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and Jacob Apple­baum; review of Eddie Snow­den’s work for the CIA at the time he chose to leak NSA doc­u­ments.

FTR #895 The CIA and the “Privacy” Advocates: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis and dis­cus­sion from FTR #891, we fur­ther explore the CIA-gen­er­at­ed back­ground and fund­ing of the “pri­va­cy” advo­cates who com­prise much of “Team Snow­den.” Recall that Snow­den him­self was with CIA when he chose to dou­ble on NSA. We begin by review­ing our scruti­ny of Edward Snow­den from the per­spec­tive of Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty, the Air Force “Focal Point Offi­cer” who devel­oped a CIA-con­trolled net­work inside of the branch­es of the mil­i­tary and oth­er agen­cies of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. This “focal point” net­work con­sti­tut­ed a “secret gov­ern­ment with­in a gov­ern­ment” that appears to exist to this day. Next, we set forth the evo­lu­tion of the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and Radio Free Asia, the par­ent orga­ni­za­tions of the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. The OTF has cap­i­tal­ized much of the encrypt­ed “anti-sur­veil­lance” tech­nol­o­gy that has been devel­oped. “Team Snow­den,” in turn, has evolved from this milieu. In our past dis­cus­sions of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, we have not­ed that the very same covert action net­works used to over­throw and elim­i­nate gov­ern­ments and indi­vid­u­als deemed hos­tile to U.S. inter­ests were ulti­mate­ly deployed against Amer­i­cans and even the Unit­ed States itself. “Regime change” and desta­bi­liza­tion came home. In a sim­i­lar fash­ion, it is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that a CIA-derived tech­nol­o­gy milieu devel­oped to assist and effect “ops” abroad was used to desta­bi­lize the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion through the Snow­den “op.” ” . . . Read­ers might find it odd that a US gov­ern­ment agency estab­lished as a way to laun­der the image of var­i­ous shady pro­pa­ganda out­fits (more on that soon) is now keen to fund tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­tect us from the US gov­ern­ment. More­over, it might seem curi­ous that its mon­ey would be so warm­ly wel­comed by some of the Internet’s fiercest antigov­ern­ment activists. . . . . You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tinue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ingly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­rity State they so adamant­ly oppose. . . .” Pro­gram High­lights Include: The con­tro­ver­sy over What­sAp­p’s encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy; the devel­op­ment of What­sAp­p’s encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy by the CIA-derived Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund; FBI Direc­tor James Comey’s sup­port for Mitt Rom­ney in 2012; the appar­ent role of Comey in desta­bi­liz­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and the Hillary Clin­ton cam­paign.

Is Comey Destabilizing the Democratic Party for the GOP?

A Mitt Rom­ney backer and for­mer George W. Bush Jus­tice Depart­ment staffer, James Comey is tak­ing actions that are desta­bi­liz­ing both the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and the Clin­ton can­di­da­cy. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

FTR #854 The Underground Reich and the Obverse Oswald: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Return­ing once again to “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” we note the reveal­ing­ly pro­found dis­con­ti­nu­ities in this event and the key char­ac­ters involved. We also revis­it some of the key fea­tures of what appears to have been an Under­ground Reich intel­li­gence oper­a­tion. Far from being “shocked, shocked” by the Snow­den mate­r­i­al, the Ger­man BND (suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion to the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit) HELPED the NSA spy on for­eign lead­ers. The Snow­den “op” also serves as a ratio­nal­iza­tion for Europe’s assault on Amer­i­can Big Tech and a push for cen­sor­ship of the Inter­net. As the New York Stock Exchange, Unit­ed Air­lines and the Wall Street Jour­nal simul­ta­ne­ous­ly expe­ri­enced what were described as tech­ni­cal glitch­es, we note that the “Anony­mous” hack­er group (who­ev­er they are) fore­shad­owed the event. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion John Per­ry Bar­low’s work as Dick Cheney’s cam­paign man­ag­er; the EFF’s links to Snow­den and the hack­er encharged with secur­ing Glenn Green­wald’s com­put­er; the EFF’s work shilling for Big Tobac­co; Glenn Green­wald’s work shilling for Big Tobac­co; alle­ga­tions that the Snow­den leak com­pro­mised Amer­i­can and British spies to Russ­ian and Chi­nese intel­li­gence; the fact that one of the peo­ple with “root access” to the OPM data base was in Argenti­na (an epi­cen­ter of the Under­ground Reich).

FTR #829 Fireside Chat about Eddie the Friendly Spook and the Ukraine Crisis

A con­tro­ver­sy ensued when it emerged that House major­i­ty whip Steve Scalise had attend­ed a meet­ing of David Duke’s Euro­pean-Amer­i­can Uni­ty Orga­ni­za­tion. The new­ly-seat­ed GOP-dom­i­nat­ed con­gress which Scalise will help to guide began attack­ing Social Secu­ri­ty on its very first day. Specif­i­cal­ly, the GOP began attack­ing the Social Secu­ri­ty dis­abil­i­ty pro­gram. These devel­op­ments serve as a point of entry into our dis­cus­sion. Snow­den is an advo­cate of elim­i­nat­ing Social Secu­ri­ty and the OUN/B fas­cists run­ning Ukraine are engag­ing in a sim­i­lar pro­gram to force those in East­ern Ukraine to stop their attempts at seces­sion. The ele­ments of the Snowden/WikiLeaks “op” are net­worked with Duke, as well. Snow­den’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice, Nazi fel­low-trav­el­er Glenn Green­wald, has been financed by Pierre Omid­yar of Ebay, who has also financed the Ukraine coup. The pro­gram notes many oth­er ele­ments of con­flu­ence between the Snowden/WikiLeaks “op” and the Ukrain­ian coup. The Snowden/WikiLeaks helped to deep-six Oba­ma’s “reboot with Rus­sia” and also alien­ate many of the young, ide­al­is­tic vot­ers who had sup­port­ed him in 2008, there­by help­ing to elect the 114th Con­gress.

Knock, Knock? Who’s There? Either a Strongbox or a Wall Safe. It’s Undecided.

In this post we’re going to take a look at the recent Supreme Court rul­ing on 4th amend­ment rights and smart­phones and how this rul­ing could impact the ongo­ing debate over NSA spy­ing. We’re also going to look at the oth­er side of the coin: the 5th Amend­ment right against self-incrim­i­na­tion dur­ing a time when encryp­tion tools strong enough to thwart law enforce­ment and the NSA are becom­ing increas­ing­ly main­stream. Is encryp­tion like a strong­box or a wall safe? You might be sur­prised by just how impor­tant that ques­tion has become.

Knock, Knock. Who’s there? The Clipper Chip and Four Horsemen.

Angela Merkel made an omi­nous announce­ment last week. She wants to move ahead with walling off the EU’s web traf­fic and begin a “mas­sive” counter-espi­onage cam­paign against the US and its Five Eyes part­ners. Brazil is mov­ing ahead with its plans to remake the inter­net, includ­ing local data stor­age require­ments and state-encrypt­ed web ser­vices sim­i­lar to Ger­many’s new anti-NSA state-backed email ser­vices. So domes­tic spy­ing could be on the rise, the inter­net itself is at risk, and state-encryp­tion ser­vices are now being offered as an anti-NSA panacea. Main­streamed unbreak­able encryp­tion is also com­ing with­out a debate. An old ene­my of pri­va­cy, the Clip­per Chip, has returned in a new form. And its own arch-neme­ses, the Four Horse­men of the Infopoca­lypse, are back too. And there are no obvi­ous ways to unin­vite these guests with­out a long talk