china: this chess, not checkers...,

NYTimes |  In Beijing, people with knowledge of how China handled Mr. Snowden’s exit from Hong Kong were claiming a tactical victory for China, saying that the government had acted in China’s best interests, and in the long-term interests of its relationship with the United States.

“What did the United States expect China to do? Hand him over? That would be very stupid,” said Sun Zhe, director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University. “This was the best China could do.”

According to a Chinese journalist who often talks with Hong Kong government and mainland Chinese officials in Hong Kong, the Chinese authorities organized an ad hoc group, led by Yang Jiechi, a former foreign minister and now a state councilor, to handle the Snowden matter. The group answered to President Xi Jinping, the journalist said.

The Chinese mainland authorities decided to keep a distance from Mr. Snowden personally to ensure that if Mr. Snowden eventually ended up in American hands he would not be able to disclose what Chinese officials said to him, the journalist said.

Beijing determined early on that Mr. Snowden would have to leave Hong Kong, and should not be allowed to stay to go through a protracted legal battle in the Hong Kong courts to resist the United States extradition demand, the journalist said. “That would have lasted years, and then the United States would also wonder what he was telling China,” the journalist said. “What would the United States prefer?”

The Hong Kong government also hit back at American criticisms, saying that the United States had received ample warning that its request for Mr. Snowden’s detention was incomplete.

black folks who favor panoptic surveillance have forgotten who the deep state targets with these tools...,

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

breakingbrown | A recent Pew Research poll shows that blacks are more willing to accept curbs to privacy than others polled.

According to the poll, 45 percent of Americans say the government should be able to “go further than it is” to increases security, while 55 percent of blacks are accepting of additional curbs to privacy. In all, 52 percent of those polled said broad based monitoring of Americans should not occur.  Among blacks, only 44 percent of those polled found the extra measures unacceptable.

Among all adults, 62 percent said investigating possible threats was more important. The figure was 60 percent among whites, 67 percent among nonwhites and 75 percent among African Americans.

Overall, 56 percent of Americans consider the NSA’s accessing of telephone call records of millions of Americans through secret court orders “acceptable”, according to the poll.

But this posture among blacks is curious given the impact of the surveillance state on the civil rights movement. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes brought up this point during his Tuesday show, describing how Martin Luther King was harassed by the FBI.

“They stalked his every move, broke into and bugged his office, they bugged his hotel rooms and they wiretapped his phones,” Hayes said.

“But there’s a pretty major sticking point, and that is the as long as it’s not abused part, because history tells us that is not actually a thing. A nonabused massive government surveillance apparatus. That is not what Dr. Martin Luther King tells us.”

“When you construct a massive surveillance apparatus, history tells us that it will be brought to bear not just on ‘the enemy,’ but on the people who threaten society’s power structure,” he added, “on whoever exists at the political margins, whether it’s Martin Luther King Jr. or some Occupy Boston protesters. It’s not some Orwellian abstraction. It’s America’s history and America’s recent history.”

a fine and flaming rant on strange partisan pairings in the wake of deep state disclosures...,

1. 'Remember That Time the NSA Listened to U.S. Troops Have Phone Sex With Loved Ones Back Home?'
http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/10/rem...

2. 'Whistleblowers Are Not Protected, Mr. Goss' by Sibel Edmonds
http://www.antiwar.com/edmonds/?artic...

3. 3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/po...

4. 'Whistleblower Coming In Cold From the F.B.I.'
http://observer.com/2004/01/whistlebl...

5. 'Edward Snowden's Exposure Of Our State Secrets Should Warrant His Death -- Plain And Simple...'
http://www.teapartytribune.com/2013/0...

6. 'Fox News' Ralph Peters: 'Bring Back The Death Penalty' For Edward Snowden (VIDEO)'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06...

7. 'Glenn Beck, Michael Moore call NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a hero'
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2...

nsa whistleblowers roundtable on snowden...,

usatoday | When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief.

Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way.

For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens. They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data-collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced that fundamental constitutional rights were being violated, they complained first to their superiors, then to federal investigators, congressional oversight committees and, finally, to the news media.

To the intelligence community, the trio are villains who compromised what the government classifies as some of its most secret, crucial and successful initiatives. They have been investigated as criminals and forced to give up careers, reputations and friendships built over a lifetime.

Today, they feel vindicated.

did michael hastings get whacked?

HuffPo | The peculiar circumstances of journalist Michael Hastings' death in Los Angeles last week have unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories.

Now there's another theory to contribute to the paranoia: According to a prominent security analyst, technology exists that could've allowed someone to hack his car. Former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke told The Huffington Post that what is known about the single-vehicle crash is "consistent with a car cyber attack."

Clarke said, "There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers" -- including the United States -- know how to remotely seize control of a car.

"What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it's relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn't want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn't want the brakes on, to launch an air bag," Clarke told The Huffington Post. "You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it's not that hard."

"So if there were a cyber attack on the car -- and I'm not saying there was," Clarke added, "I think whoever did it would probably get away with it."

Authorities have said that it may take weeks to determine a cause of death for Hastings, but that no foul play is suspected.

Hastings was driving a 2013 Mercedes C250 coupe when he crashed into a tree on Highland Ave. in Los Angeles at approximately 4:30 am on June 18. Video posted online showed the car in flames, and one neighbor told a local news crew she heard a sound like an explosion. Another eyewitness said the car's engine had been thrown 50 to 60 yards from the car. There were no other vehicles involved in the accident.

michael hastings panicked final email...,

rsn | ournalist Michael Hastings wrote an email to his colleagues hours before he died last week in which he said his "close friends and associates" were being interviewed by the FBI and he was going to "go off the radar for a bit." The 33-year-old journalist said he was "onto a big story," according to KTLA that publishes a copy of the email that Hastings sent at around 1 p.m. Monday June 17. Hastings died at around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday morning in a fiery one-vehicle car crash. Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, who knew Hastings from Afghanistan, supplied a copy of the email to the network.

"It alarmed me very much," Biggs, who was blind-copied on the email, said. "I just said it doesn't seem like him. I don't know, I just had this gut feeling and it just really bothered me." The FBI has denied Hastings was under investigation. But WikiLeaks published a message on Twitter last week that said Hastings contacted the organization's lawyers hours before he died, "saying the FBI was investigating him."

The email with the subject "FBI Investigation, re: NSA" reads:

Hey [redacted] the Feds are interviewing my "close friends and associates." Perhaps if the authorities arrive "BuzzFeed GQ," er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.

Also: I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the radat for a bit.

All the best, and hope to see you all soon.

Michael

healthy and safe, whereabouts unknown...,

aljazeera | Edward Snowden has been reported to be "healthy and safe" by Julian Assange but his whereabouts remain a mystery as the US hunted the architect of one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history.

The WikiLeaks founder on Monday said Snowden and a WikiLeaks staff member travelling with him, Sarah Harrison, were "healthy and safe and in contact with their legal team".

However, he added that he could not give information on their whereabouts. Snowden reportedly left Hong Kong for Moscow on Sunday, and was said on Monday to have exited on a flight to Cuba. However, journalists travelling on the same plane said his seat was empty.

Strong objections

The White House later said it believed Snowden was still in Russia, said it expected the Russian government to send him back to the US and lodged "strong objections" to Hong Kong and China for letting him go.

A spokesman said on Monday evening that Snowden's exit from Hong Kong "unquestionably'' damaged US-China relations, and that officials believed he was still in Russia and should be handed over.

Snowden has been charged by the US of espionage and spying after revealing to Western newspapers how the US's National Security Agency spies on the internet and phone activities of millions of people. The programme, named Prism, is authorised by a secret court.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said during a visit to India that it would be "deeply troubling" if Moscow defied the US over Snowden, and said the fugitive "places himself above the law, having betrayed his country".

The nsa's metastasised intelligence-industrial complex is ripe for abuse

By September 2013, the NSA's new data centre will employ around 200 technicians, occupying 1m sq ft and use 65 megawatts of power.

guardian | Let's be absolutely clear about the news that the NSA collects massive amounts of information on US citizens – from emails, to telephone calls, to videos, under the Prism program and other Fisa court orders: this story has nothing to do with Edward Snowden. As interesting as his flight to Hong Kong might be, the pole-dancing girlfriend, and interviews from undisclosed locations, his fate is just a sideshow to the essential issues of national security versus constitutional guarantees of privacy, which his disclosures have surfaced in sharp relief.

Snowden will be hunted relentlessly and, when finally found, with glee, brought back to the US in handcuffs and severely punished. (If Private Bradley Manning's obscene conditions while incarcerated are any indication, it won't be pleasant for Snowden either, even while awaiting trial.) Snowden has already been the object of scorn and derision from the Washington establishment and mainstream media, but, once again, the focus is misplaced on the transiently shiny object. The relevant issue should be: what exactly is the US government doing in the people's name to "keep us safe" from terrorists?

Prism and other NSA data-mining programs might indeed be very effective in hunting and capturing actual terrorists, but we don't have enough information as a society to make that decision. Despite laudable efforts led by Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall to bring this to the public's attention that were continually thwarted by the administration because everything about this program was deemed "too secret", Congress could not even exercise its oversight responsibilities. The intelligence community and their friends on the Hill do not have a right to interpret our rights absent such a discussion.

The shock and surprise that Snowden exposed these secrets is hard to understand when over 1.4 million Americans hold "top secret" security clearances. When that many have access to sensitive information, is it really so difficult to envision a leak?

We are now dealing with a vast intelligence-industrial complex that is largely unaccountable to its citizens. This alarming, unchecked growth of the intelligence sector and the increasingly heavy reliance on subcontractors to carry out core intelligence tasks – now estimated to account for approximately 60% of the intelligence budget – have intensified since the 9/11 attacks and what was, arguably, our regrettable over-reaction to them.

The roots of this trend go back at least as far as the Reagan era, when the political right became obsessed with limiting government and denigrating those who worked for the public sector. It began a wave of privatization – because everything was held to be more "cost-efficient" when done by the private sector – and that only deepened with the political polarization following the election of 2000. As it turns out, the promises of cheaper, more efficient services were hollow, but inertia carried the day.

Today, the intelligence sector is so immense that no one person can manage, or even comprehend, its reach

old crusty nsa whistleblower goes on record talking out of school....,

boilingfrogspost | NSA whistleblower Russel Tice told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog Post News (the website of high-level FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds): Complete podcast of interview available at this link.

[excerpt]

Tice: Okay. They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. international–U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don't tell me that there's no abuse, because I've had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff. And you know, when I said to [former MSNBC show host Keith] Olbermann, I said, my particular thing is high tech and you know, what's going on is the other thing, which is the dragnet. The dragnet is what Mark Klein is talking about, the terrestrial dragnet. Well my specialty is outer space. I deal with satellites, and everything that goes in and out of space. I did my spying via space. So that's how I found out about this.

Collins: Now Russ, the targeting of the people that you just mentioned, top military leaders, members of Congress, intelligence community leaders and the–oh, I'm sorry, it was intelligence committees, let me correct that–not intelligence community, and then executive branch appointees. This creates the basis, and the potential for massive blackmail.

Tice: Absolutely! And remember we talked about that before, that I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on. Now here's the big one. I haven't given you any names. This was is summer of 2004. One of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with, with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator from Illinois. You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now, would you? It's a big white house in Washington, DC. That's who they went after. And that's the president of the United States now.

u.s. seemingly unwaware of the irony of accusing snowden of spying...,

newyorker | The United States government charged former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden with spying on Friday, apparently unaware that in doing so it had created a situation dripping with irony.

At a press conference to discuss the accusations, an N.S.A. spokesman surprised observers by announcing the spying charges against Mr. Snowden with a totally straight face.

“These charges send a clear message,” the spokesman said. “In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”

Seemingly not kidding, the spokesman went on to discuss another charge against Mr. Snowden—the theft of government documents: “The American people have the right to assume that their private documents will remain private and won’t be collected by someone in the government for his own purposes.”

“Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy,” added the spokesman, apparently serious.

Double-0 has charged more under espionage act than all other preznits combined...,

slate | The U.S. government charged former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden with three felonies, including two under the Espionage Act. He now becomes the eighth person to be charged under the Espionage Act under Obama, according to Firedoglake. That is more than double all previous presidents combined. Prior to Obama’s administration only three people who leaked information had been charged under the 1917 statute that was never really intended for leakers. The arguments that Obama uses now to use that statute to go after those who reveal information were first brought up by Ronald Reagan’s administration when it went after a Navy civilian analyst who leaked photographs to a British military magazine. But now the practice has become widespread.

The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald wonders how these prosecutions are even “remotely defensible” coming from a president who vowed to usher in an era of transparency in Washington. Sure, Snowden may have broken the law, writes Greenwald, but he hardly committed “espionage.” He didn’t sell secrets to foreign governments, or try to profit from them in any way. Snowden simply blew the whistle on something he saw. “The irony is obvious,” writes Greenwald, “the same people who are building a ubiquitous surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of ‘espionage.’”

david gregory needs to be shot with hot pee...,

dailycaller | “I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies,” Greenwald said. “The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence — the idea I’ve aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism by going through the emails and records of AP reporters, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory you just embraced — being a co-conspirator in felonies for working with sources. If you want to embrace that theory, it means every investigative journalist in the United States who works with their sources [and] receives classified information is a criminal. And it’s precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has become so menacing in the United States. It’s why the New Yorker’s Jean Mayer said investigative reporting has come to a ‘standstill,’ her word, as a result of the theories you just referenced.”

Gregory reacted to Greenwald’s reply by questioning whether or not what Greenwald was engaging in was journalism and that he was only asking a question.

“Well, the question of who’s a journalist may be up to a debate with regard to what you are doing and of course anybody who was watching this understands what I was doing,” Gregory said. “And that question has been raised by lawmakers, as well. I’m not embracing anything. But obviously, I take your point.”

clare daly not slobbering over barry o'bama...,

memory hole: does anybody else remember a purported dormitory killer with a hard x-ray emitter?

guardian | Crawford, an industrial mechanic for General Electric, met Feight, an outside GE contractor with mechanical and engineering skills, through work, authorities said. Feight designed, built and tested the remote control, which they planned to use to operate an industrial X-ray system mounted on a truck.

According to the indictment, the investigators had a confidential undercover source in place within weeks after learning of Crawford's attempts to solicit money and later an undercover investigator introduced by the source. They recorded meetings and conversations, and in December investigators got court authorisation to tap Crawford's phones, the indictment said.

In June 2012 the undercover investigator brought Crawford X-ray tubes to examine for possible use in the weapon, followed by their technical specifications a month later. At a November meeting with undercover investigators, Crawford brought Feight. Both said they were committed to building the device and named the group "the guild", the indictment said.

Investigators gave Feight $1,000 to build the control device and showed the men pictures of industrial X-ray machines they said they could obtain.

They planned to provide him access to an actual X-ray system to assembly with the remote control. According to court documents, the sealed indictment was filed the same day and both men were arrested.

A GE spokesman, Shaun Wiggins, said the company was informed on Tuesday of Crawford's arrest and he was suspended from his job. The company had no information that any employees' safety was compromised or that alleged illegal acts were committed at his workplace.

the story of the ringworm children...,

scribd | In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim Sheba flew to America and returned with 7 x-ray machines, supplied to him by the American army. They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year.The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today. To fool the parents of the victims, the children were taken away on "school trips" and their  parents were later told the x-rays were a treatment for the scourge of scalpal ringworm. 6,000 of the children died shortly after their doses were given, while many of the rest developed cancers that killed them over time and are still killing them now. While living, the victims suffered from disorders such as epilepsy, amnesia, Alzheimer's disease, chronic headaches and psychosis.

Yes, that is the subject of the documentary in cold terms. It is another matter to see the victims on the screen.To watch the Moroccan lady describe what getting 35,000 times the dose of allowable x-rays in her head feels like: "I screamed make the headache go away. Make the headache go away. Make the headache go away. But it never went away."

14 prinicples of an elite boarding school curriculum

containment, contamination, classification, compliance, conformity - the purpose of schooling

top lives off the yield of the bottom: tax havens and the men who stole the world...,

resilience | In his influential book Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole The World Nicholas Shaxson tells us that if you thought the open face of global capitalism was bad enough, the murky and secret world of tax havens is even worse. If this comes as an introduction to the offshore industry the book lets us know that we should have started worrying, no less been doing something about tax avoidance for a long time now.

Jonny Gordon-Farleigh: Your book Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World was first published in 2010 and has since been an extremely important contribution to our understanding of a secret, hidden and misrepresented part of our global economy: tax havens. What has happened since then in terms of the scale and complexity of tax avoidance schemes and how have governments responded?

Nicholas Shaxson: That’s a big question. I would say that different things have happened in different countries but what has been a common factor in most has been that public deficits and austerity measures have focused minds on tax revenues. There has been a real change in the public mood and receptiveness to the issue of tax avoidance and that it’s a problem more serious than we thought. In the Go-Go years before the boom, in places such as the UK, the attitude was “I’m alright, Jack,” and people didn’t seem to worry about it. Now, the general public are also realising that tax havens are much more central to the global economy than anyone had previously imagined. They had previously been seen as an exotic sideshow to the main event but, increasingly, the public is realising that tax havens are at the heart of the mainstream global economy. On some measures half of all cross-border trade is conducted on paper through tax havens. Tax havens are not so much about Mafiosi and drug dealers, even though there is plenty of that still about, but most fundamentally about banks and financial intermediaries. That’s the context.

Now politicians, if we take the example of the UK, are being led by the public mood. It’s remarkable to see a Conservative prime minister making such statements about tax avoidance, which had previously been considered legal and therefore little wrong with the practice. The shift in public mood means politicians are being forced to condemn tax avoidance and are certainly making the right noises. Also, the OECD — a club of rich countries that had previously jealously protected this awful system of secret information exchange that is very favourable to tax havens and corporate taxation that is very favourable to tax avoiders — now suddenly seem much more open to looking for real alternatives. A closed door is now open, at least a bit. This has not yet translated into any serious policies but there are some incremental changes that have been made such as openings into Swiss bank secrecy, even though there’s still a long way to go there.

On the other side of the equation, though, the offshore system has been growing under its own momentum for decades. It is a self-reinforcing process where countries compete with each other to offer the best tax loopholes or secrecy facilities. This race-to-the-bottom dynamic is still firmly in place. So there are two opposing forces: one is the offshore system pushing ahead through its own momentum, and then the public mood pushing in the other direction. I wouldn’t say anything more than that things are beginning to change. A true rollback of offshore abuses needs much more sustained public pressure.

the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data

agnotology

skepticalscience | Agnotology is the study of ignorance and how it's produced. For example, examining how misinformation can generate misconceptions about climate change. An interesting (and influential, at least in my case) paper on this topic is Agnotology as a teaching tool: Learning climate science by studying misinformation by Daniel Bedford, a professor at Weber State University, Utah. Bedford suggests how how examining and refuting misinformation is actually a powerful way to teach climate science, sharpen critical thinking skills and raise awareness of the scientific method. He then illustrates this with case studies applied in his own college classroom. This paper opened my eyes to the educational opportunities in addressing misinformation - an approach I adopted in the chapters "Understanding Climate Change Denial" and "Rebuttals to Climate Myths" in the textbook Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis.

Recently, David Legates, Willie Soon and William Briggs published a paper in the journal Science & Education, Learning and Teaching Climate Science: The Perils of Consensus Knowledge Using Agnotology. The paper comments extensively on Bedford's agnotology paper. Unfortunately, it comprehensively misrepresents Bedford's arguments. Consequently, Daniel Bedford and I have co-authored a response to Legates' paper that was just published in Science & Education: Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change: A Response to Legates, Soon and Briggs. For those without library access, our paper is unfortunately behind a pay-wall. However, the full pre-press version of our paper is available here.

In our response, we examine the scientific consensus on climate change and briefly look at the results from our recent Consensus Project paper. We explore the consensus gap - the large discrepancy between public perception of consensus and the 97% reality. We also clarify that while there is a scientific consensus on the basic fact of human-caused global warming, this doesn't mean there is overwhelming agreement of every aspect of climate science. Legates misrepresents this point by misquoting Bedford's paper. We examine one of the reasons for the consensus gap - two decades of a persistent misinformation campaign focused on casting doubt about the consensus.

Next, we get to the real meat of agnotology-based learning - exploring the educational opportunities in addressing misinformation in the classroom. Correcting misperceptions are an important part of education - it's not all about downloading new information into students' brains. Over two decades of research have found that refutational style lectures are one of the most effective ways of correcting misperceptions.

you holding out for something better?

HBR | I was 10 years old when the Berlin Wall came down — old enough to grasp that something important was happening, but not really old enough to understand exactly what was happening. Like a lot of kids born around that age, the specter of communism has never seemed like that much of a threat. We would hear stories about how horrific life was living under conditions such as these; but only in the context of something that had already failed. It's only through history and books or films that my generation has a grasp of what life must have been like.

Just recently, I had the chance to watch the German film, The Lives of Others, which won the 2007 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Not only is it a remarkable story, but it gave me the best glimpse I've had yet of what day-to-day life must have been like in a state like East Germany. The infamous East German secret police, the Stasi, managed to infiltrate every pay of German life, from factories, to schools, to apartment blocks — the Stasi had eyes and ears everywhere. When East Germany collapsed in 1989, it was reported to have over 90,000 employees and over 170,000 informants. Including the part-time informants, that made for about one in every 63 East Germans collaborating to collect intelligence on their fellow citizens.

You can imagine what that must have meant: people had to live with the fact that every time they said something, there was a very real chance that it was being listened to by someone other than for whom they intended. No secret police force in history has ever spied on its own people on a scale like the Stasi did in East Germany. In large part because of that, those two words — "East Germany" — are indelibly imprinted on the psyche of the West as an example of how important the principles of liberal democracy are in protecting us from such things happening again. And indeed, the idea that it would happen seems anathema to most people in the western world today — almost unthinkable.

And yet, here we are. In terms of the capability to listen to, watch and keep tabs on what its citizens are doing, the East German government could not possibly have dreamed of achieving what the United States government has managed to put in place today.

The execution of these systems is, as you'd expect, very different. The Germans relied upon people, which, even if not entirely effective, must have been absolutely terrifying: if for no other reason than you weren't sure who you could and could not trust. There was always that chance someone was reporting back on you. It might have been a colleague. A neighbor. A shop keeper. A school teacher. Not knowing whether someone you couldn't see was listening to what you had to say, or whether those that you could see might be passing it back to the authorities — that must have taken an incredibly heavy toll on people.

But as any internet entrepreneur will tell you, relying entirely on people makes scaling difficult. Technology, on the other hand, makes it much easier. And that means that in many respects, what has emerged today is almost more pernicious; because that same technology has effectively turned not just some, but every single person you communicate with using technology — your acquaintances, your colleagues, your family and your friends — into those equivalent informants.