Edward Snowden, a private contractor working for the NSA (National Security Agency), an agency that for years has spied on every American, and on every citizen anywhere in the world, leaked documents to the press that proved it. Where’s the news there? We all knew it anyway.
Sure the government would say it’s only emails and no content, and no they weren’t spying on the content on people’s private computers, or accessing their phone conversations, they weren’t accessing hard drives and couldn’t see what you were writing offline, and no they weren’t listening to anybody in their homes or cars or the places they frequented, and they didn’t know anybody’s names and were only looking for trigger words that might lead the NSA to a terrorist with plans to blow up the USA, by searching for trigger words like United States, Obama, bomb, Jews…but we all knew they had that capability and we all knew they were using that capability. Where’s the news in that?
We, the people in the USA, knew it, so why did foreign countries not know it? Are they so naive, holding the important positions they hold, knowing the computer technology the USA possessed, or did they fall for the propaganda line the USA fed it’s own people? After all we stand for freedom rights for all peoples, even them, whoever they are, so why would the USA do it? Why would they spy on the United Nations, on private communications among world leaders and whomever they were communicating with as people do when they go to any meeting? Probably to gain an advantage; if they know what everybody is saying to their advisors on any issue, then that would give the USA a leg up on countering their positions. They’d know in essence the cards they were holding that nobody is supposed to see, their weaknesses, their strengths, their bargaining power.
Now comes the threat factor. Government officials in other countries are now succumbing to the prodding by USA officials not to accept Snowden’s requests for asylum, because every world leader is now thinking to themselves, what else do they know about me, what I said or did in private that could prove embarrassing, and being in public office it doesn’t take much, as shown by the current administrations going on a witch hunt for anybody who might have heard George Zimmerman say the trigger nigger word, so the Justice Department can bring hate crimes charges against him for the political purpose of securing the black community’s vote in upcoming elections.
The USA government is forever telling the American people that if they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to worry about. That’s not true, we’ve all seen how the government skews the facts, and often outright lies about the facts to get what they want. Criticize the policies of the USA or Israel and they’ll make stuff up if they have to, just to get you to shut up or to plain out ruin your reputation and life if you pursue along that path of criticism. Employers do it to, they’ll look at your private stuff and make determinations on whether to hire you or not. Somebody criticizes Israel and they get on the no hire list. Somebody criticizes a public figure and that somebody gives the name of the person and email address to the NSA and you’re essentially destroyed.
President Obama spoke to the nation after Snowden released his article through the Guardian and said, if you can’t trust Federal judges, if you can’t trust Congress, if you can’t trust me, your President, if you can’t trust the FBI, then we’re going to have some problems here. Sounded like a threat, an ‘or else’ scenario. Or else what? In his early days he didn’t trust any of those institutions, now he wants ‘we the people’ to blindly trust all of them, just because he says so, after it was proven that not only the NSA, but other surveillance programs as well, were spying on all of us, that these intelligence gathering agencies were collecting the content of every communication any person has ever made via a text, a computer, a phone or in their private living spaces or their offices.
These communications will be saved forever. What for? To use as ammunition against any citizen for any reason they deem advantageous to them. Blackmail is what it used to be called. There are laws against that in the USA, but then the USA can break its own laws for whatever reason they want, all they have to cite is national security reasons. Or maybe not even that. The content is there forever, in case somebody at some point in time needs it to take a few words or sentences out of context to destroy you, or your future grandchildren.
Well, if we all have nothing to hide, thus nothing to worry about, then if the USA has nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about. Let the world see the extent to which you’ve spied and lied and let them decide. The world isn’t trusting you right now. If you do have something to hide, then you must have done something wrong is the underlying meaning of what the government tells ‘we the people’ in an effort to make everyone fearful of criticizing the surveillance. Well, now the government is in effect, for keeping all these files forever, falling into the same pit they pushed every world citizen into.
Even in the private, secret Fisa court, they have a bar set to keep over-zealous officials from procuring a spy warrant for anyone they don’t like or anyone who criticizes them. A signed affidavit, under penalty of perjury, requesting an invasive search, where authorities can surveil you even from your own body, requires probable cause and evidence that you’re connected to terrorism and that you are a national security threat with imminent plans to carry out an attack against America. That’s the test.
Eric Holder signs those affidavits often, knowing in advance that he’s signing a false document. Should we trust the Justice Department? No, not unless you trust someone who knowingly perjures himself, thereby lying to the court with the purpose of stripping someone of their civil privacy rights.
Eric Holder claims he has no choice. He claims he has to write that statement if he wants an invasive warrant. He wants to change that, so that the Justice Department can obtain warrants on people they get a gut feeling about. Well, we all know where leads, as evidenced by the witch hunt he is currently leading against George Zimmerman.
No one causes nor requires the Justice Department, nor any individual within the Justice Department, to commit perjury to obtain invasive search warrants. The law requiring that language is in place so that innocent people aren’t scrutinized unlawfully for political or otherwise frivolous reasons.
The Federal judges are fully aware of what the Justice Department is doing, but instead of asking for proof of allegations, they simply approve the warrant. Should you trust Federal judges? No. The judges in effect are also committing perjury, lying, knowing full well that’s there’s no evidence to support the claim, thus allowing the USA government, through their actions, to strip you of your civil privacy rights.
I’ve been the recipient of invasive searches for years. In order to get a warrant they had to claim there was probable cause that I was a terrorist and had imminent plans to attack America. What judge, federal or otherwise, would believe that? Because the Justice Department told them. What President, member of Congress, Justice Department could believe that? Or maybe they didn’t get a warrant. I continue to be invasively searched/surveilled and everyone, from the President on down supports those actions. And when does the search begin to disrupt a person’s life. The minute they decide to do it.
Does the CIA ask for warrants? They do everything in secret. I get a kick out of the CIA for wearing kerchiefs and disguises over their faces so no one can identify them–but ‘we the people’ shouldn’t have anything to hide from a bunch of bandits with killing privileges.
Citizens of any group or nation should not be in the trusting business when others are determining their degree of freedom, and making decisions regarding their well-being or status as an individual within a group or nation. For Obama or any leader to think and expect the people to trust them on blind faith in matters that concern their lives is tantamount to a master/slave relationship, a dictator/subject relationship.
That tone in that last phrase, ” then we’re going to have some problems here” was a threat by any standard. He can’t wash it away like he tried to do with Trayvon Martin looking like his son, which he changed to, “that could have been me“. That tone, those words, were an ultimatum, not to himself, Congress, Federal judges and the Justice Department, it was an ultimatum to the American people. Back off or else I’ll make problems for you. That’s a typical response from someone who got caught spying and lying.
Congress has between a nine to fourteen percent approval rating on any given day. Should you trust Congress? The low rating speaks for itself.
‘We the people’ don’t want nor need to be threatened by the President or any other government agency. What are you going to do to us if we don’t trust all whom you tell us to trust? Get back at us, hurt us, arrest us, go on a witch hunt, target us for invasive content surveillance?
Stand down Mr. President. We don’t need your anger, we as a people need to be respected through your actions, not your threatening words. We demand our civil liberties, whether you think we deserve them or not. Seems you’re not thinking too objectively these days, maybe you never did. Does the Mosad request a court ordered surveillance warrant before they spy on USA citizens? Didn’t think so. If you give them one, what does that say about you? It says that you sell like slaves every American the Mosad holds up on the auction block as being a threat to Israel, exempting of course members of Congress and the executive branch. Anyone else exempted Mr. President?
Does Obama or the Justice Department or the CIA or the Mosad or Steven Speilberg or whoever’s responsible get a court issued warrant before the content of your private communications are released to Hollywood to use in their sit-coms, movies, T.V. series, news talk shows? Obama said himself that and Speilberg are best friends. How so and why? Are ‘we the people’ to trust Obama, Congress, Federal judges, FBI, CIA and Hollywood with our private content material– all whom know about it and support that Hollywood Connection? Years ago, Diane Feinstein said they were supposed to destroy the tapes after they use them. Do they? The greater question is why do they have them in the first place? These aren’t emails, they’re actual content of voices, what you say in your private living spaces. They can even see you on your own T.V. or computer screen if they want to.
Stealing, that’s what it’s called. The USA government is stealing our written and vocal words–words that only we should own. They’re doing it without your knowledge or permission. They’re not doing it to protect us, they’re doing it to oppress us. When they steal our written and vocal words they steal our thoughts, again an act of oppression. What they’re saying is, “we own you”. The FBI even said, and there’s probably even a law that supports it, that the FBI owns everybody’s intellectual material. How repugnant is that?
If the FBI is interested in you for whatever reason they can hear whatever you say, whenever you say it, to whomever you say it to. All you have to do is open your mouth to speak or use an electronic devise to write.
I know because it’s done to me. It’s no way to live. You can trust that.
Maybe the government should read and listen to the content of elected or appointed officials. Yeah, wire tap their offices, homes, cars, electronic devices, follow them around using GPS capability and keep tabs on where they go, who they meet and what they say, to see who they’re making private deals with wielding the power of their public official status that adversely affects the American people. Bet they’d find a lot there.
Government officials should not be exempt from the net that’s cast on the rest of ‘we the people’.
WHISTLE BLOWERS. Law enforcement loves whistle blowers, snitches they call them on the Street. Just recently in Cleveland, Ohio after Ariel Castro was arrested for enslaving three women in his home for more than a decade law enforcement went to that same street, the American Street, to plead with ‘we the people’ to be law enforcement’s eyes and ears in order to solve crimes that they can’t solve. But when it comes to snitching on law enforcement or government officials that’s a different matter, then you become demonized, deranged, trouble, disgruntled.
Law enforcement wants ‘we the people’ to trust them, their good judgment and pure motives. After all, it’s for us they do all that they do. Serve and protect. What history and current on the ground scenarios keep telling us, showing us, is that that type of trust in absolute control, absolute power leads to corruption at every level. Try bringing to justice, their kind of justice, a corrupt cop, FBI agent, Congressperson, spy or President. It’s next to impossible no matter how many eyes and ears on the Street, or in the office, or within a company witness that corruption.
Nobody scrutinizes the background or motive of a snitch helping law enforcement, but when the tables turn and law enforcement is under fire the snitch becomes the criminal. How dare anybody question the authority, motives and actions of those whose job it is to keep you safe? Law enforcement doesn’t keep anybody safe, they show up after the crime is committed. They can take criminals off the street to prevent them from committing more crimes, but that’s about it.
Loads of laws that facilitate corruption are passed unbeknownst to ‘we the people’–laws used to undermine the Street’s ability to protest what they consider oppressive or just plain wrong. Provisions are slipped into a bill going to Congress in the middle of the night when no one can read them unbeknownst even to other Congress members for the purpose of aiding a special class of citizens, usually the rich.
Corruption abounds at every level in every facet of life, including and especially at those levels that wield the greatest power over ‘we the people’.
In a democracy we appoint and elect a few people to serve ‘we the people’, not ‘we the few’ or ‘we the majority’. The majority only applies to the voting process. Since when does banning law suits against GMO (genetically modified organisms) companies, or banning occupy wall street or banning protests in front of slaughterhouses fulfill the right to peaceful assembly or the right to fight in court what ‘we the people’ deem is in the interest of ‘we the people’?
When ‘we the people’ lose our right to protest and our right to take to court an offending party we are no longer a people who decide what’s best for us, we’re a people ruled with an iron fist by the few. That’s called a dictatorship.
Oversight committees are comprised of the few, the privileged, the powerful who wield their power by supporting the corruption policies of their own, thus they become meaningless. Agencies that police their own are the same. One or two offenders may be used as examples to make the other criminals toe the line, but no effort is made to prosecute the many offenders within the ranks. We see that in the way the military handles sexual assaults. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Snitch and you’re ostracized. No promotion for you. Checks and balances are a myth.
Trust? Whoa Mr. President. Slow down with your threatening demand of trust or else. You sound like the police. Snitch on us and guess who won’t show up when you make that 9-11 call?
Basically with this multi-billion dollar tax payer spy program in every state in the Union, Obama and his co-conspirators (dictators always have them) are doing what amounts to a lot of guess work. They claim not to know your name, address or anything about you, but they can go to a secret court in front of secret judges claiming to have probable cause that you’re involved in terrorism, pose a national security threat with imminent plans to carry out an attack against America, under penalty of perjury and get that invasive warrant. Sounds like a witch hunt to me, based on nothing but somebody’s gut that has a gripe against you.
Edward Snowden saw gross corruption within the NSA and CIA. He went through all the channels available to address an egregious wrong against every American citizen and every citizen of the world. The USA government gave Snowden no other option than to release the proof of these sweeps and illegally obtained warrants through perjury for invasive searches.
Don’t repeatedly lie to the American people, then force us by the power of your office to trust you or anybody else. I trust the whistle blower. We need more Edward Snowdens.
WORD WARRIOR DAVIES-TIGHT™ 