Friday, February 21, 2014

the face of the watcher that was never to be seen...,

browsing zerohedge from behind the watchers' firewall...,

tomsdispatch | Here, at least, is a place to start: intelligence officials have weighed in with an estimate of just how many secret files National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden took with him when he headed for Hong Kong last June. Brace yourself: 1.7 million.  At least they claim that as the number he or his web crawler accessed before he left town.  Let’s assume for a moment that it’s accurate and add a caveat.  Whatever he had with him on those thumb drives when he left the agency, Edward Snowden did not take all the NSA’s classified documents.  Not by a long shot.  He only downloaded a portion of them.  We don’t have any idea what percentage, but assumedly millions of NSA secret documents did not get the Snowden treatment.

Such figures should stagger us and what he did take will undoubtedly occupy journalists for months or years more (and historians long after that).  Keep this in mind, however: the NSA is only one of 17 intelligence outfits in what is called the U.S. Intelligence Community.  Some of the others are as large and well funded, and all of them generate their own troves of secret documents, undoubtedly stretching into the many millions.

And keep something else in mind: that’s just intelligence agencies.  If you’re thinking about the full sweep of our national security state (NSS), you also have to include places like the Department of Homeland Security, the Energy Department (responsible for the U.S. nuclear arsenal), and the Pentagon.  In other words, we’re talking about the kind of secret documentation that an army of journalists, researchers, and historians wouldn’t have a hope of getting through, not in a century.

We do know that, in 2011, the whole government reportedly classified 92,064,862 documents. If accurate and reasonably typical, that means, in the twenty-first century, the NSS has already generated hundreds of millions of documents that could not be read by an American without a security clearance.  Of those, thanks to one man (via various journalists), we have had access to a tiny percentage of perhaps 1.7 million of them.  Or put another way, you, the voter, the taxpayer, the citizen -- in what we still like to think of as a democracy -- are automatically excluded from knowing or learning about most of what the national security state does in your name.  That’s unless, of course, its officials decide to selectively cherry-pick information they feel you are capable of safely and securely absorbing, or an Edward Snowden releases documents to the world over the bitter protests, death threats, and teeth gnashing of Washington officialdom and retired versions of the same.

16 comments:

John Kurman said...

And then there's Venezuela, home to the world's largest proven oil reserves, and people pissed due to lack of necessities, so when will the US catch up?

https://mninews.marketnews.com/index.php/reality-check-us-food-prices-seen-rebounding-2014?q=content/reality-check-us-food-prices-seen-rebounding-2014

http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodprices/update/

CNu said...

Is Venezuela a hunger games scenario? http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2014/0221/Venezuela-s-protests-The-who-what-and-why

John Kurman said...

I don't think so. Both nations have a competence problem at the top, but Maduro seems to have a better situation than Yanuovych, like no regionalism problems to speak of. But if you think the Ukraine has regionalism problems, oh my!, best get that weed into circulation!

CNu said...

Too bad there haven't been any Nuland discussions leaked about Venezuela. Hell if we've got $5 Billion plowed into the Ukrainian insurgency, with all blowers on full-stoke about now to slap Putin back in retribution for Syria, one wonders how much we've got plowed into the Venezuelan establishment's opposition to Chavismo with all that easily recovered sour, heavy tar hanging in the balance...,

Vic78 said...

He might have hypochondria.

http://youtu.be/M6hB9NTYD0E

CNu said...

lol, bofe'a'y'all jes jealous cause you ain't have one!

CNu said...

say night-night BD...., fellas, bring out the yellow tape - been a long time, but we're all now witnesses to a blog homicide!

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YMoeRbxco1A/S5nIFJrae4I/AAAAAAAAAuc/xVVkrOCgixI/s400/crime+scene.jpg

Tom said...

lol, suddenly environment goes from being irrelevant to being the whole story!

Tom said...

You just shot an [intellectually] unarmed man.

BigDonOne said...

@Vic -- Even the First Fuzzlim POTUS plays with the turdz....Washington Post, 2-11-14:

"President Obama will launch a significant new effort Thursday to bolster the lives of young minority men, seeking to use the power of the presidency to help a group of Americans whose lives are disproportionately affected by poverty and prison.

The 'My Brother’s Keeper' initiative will bring foundations and companies together to test a range of strategies to support such young men, taking steps to keep them in school and out of the criminal justice system, a White House official said.

Obama will also announce a more vigorous program to evaluate policies and publicize results to school systems around the country. The effort will seek 'to make sure that every young man of color who is willing to work hard and lift himself up has an opportunity to get ahead and reach his full potential,' the White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

“The initiative will be focused on implementing strategies that are proven to get results.” Obama had promised to launch a new project focused on young minority men during his State of the Union address last month.

His focus on a relatively narrow demographic group is unusual for a president who usually stresses how his policies affect large swaths of the American public. It also comes after the first African American president has faced repeated criticism from those who say he is failing to pay enough attention to blacks and other minorities.

The initiative is the latest sign that Obama plans to address such issues more directly in his second term. "

Last month, Obama and the first lady hosted a forum at the White House to persuade colleges to recruit more low-income Americans. And last year, the Justice Department overhauled drug-sentencing guidelines so that low-level and nonviolent offenders do not face stiff minimum sentences.

An administration official said the 'My Brother’s Keeper' effort will consist of two main parts.

First, the official said, businesses and foundations will join together to test strategies aimed at 'making sure children arrive at school ready to learn and reducing negative interactions with the criminal justice system.”

Second, Obama will launch an internal administration effort to more rigorously evaluate what programs work best at helping young minority males.

The Education and Justice departments, for example, recently updated guidelines provided to school districts on the most effective disciplinary policies. The administration official said the new measures will not cost more money and will include Republicans working on criminal justice reform, religious leaders and corporate executives."

makheru bradley said...

Long live Africanity, and long live Brother Nulan!

“The freedom that matters most is how we feel inside about ourselves. Prisons, ghettos, concentration camps, barrios, favelas, colonies, can restrict the mind and body, kill both, but until the spirit is extinguished, the possibility of freedom lives.” – John Edgar Wideman (Introduction to “Ready for Revolution”)

To Be Afrikan

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/084.html

CNu said...

Stuff jumped off after food prices hit an 18 year high. Welp, as "the" causal factor - food availability is acquiring the force of natural law. Killer-ape ethology in full effect.

Dale Asberry said...

What's really funny is he can't see past the scatalogical humor to see the multiple levels of hilarious irony above...

Dale Asberry said...

Nah, this was all 'natural' law - an intellectual beat down on a man not showing the proper respect to his superiors.

BigDonOne said...

Sorry----> http://www.azcentral.com/opinions/free/20140222genetics-dictate-were-not-equal.html

Dale Asberry said...

Sorry for...? Posting someone else's verbal diarrhea (rather than fact/research) in the comments here rather than putting on your bubigg boy pants and posting on your own blog?

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

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