Fait accompli?

..... an accomplished thing already done: The enemy's defeat was a fait accompli long before the formal surrender. 

Well, we have not surrendered quite yet, but a lot of people are beginning to believe efforts are futile if they want to continue believing in privacy and even democracy at all. PRISM seems to defeat any efforts toward privacy in communications. And so far it looks like democracy on the web is over. Using the simplest software from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, AOL and Facebook betrays everything you do, say, type, phone, send, record, talk, email, message, what else is there? 
 
PRISM is collecting data on all of us. We know that, and many in the know suggested this a long time before Edward Snowden revealed anything. Bush and Cheney were running the US government when it came into being, of course we suspected foul play. Bush secretly okayed the NSA to do whatever it wanted to do! Using FISA, (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and then the secret court of FISC. (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court)
Barack Obama has continued and expanded that nefarious role of the POTUS.

So you could have been surveilled, been to court, and convicted of something dreadful already! We said democracy was dead, didn't we? 

As of April 2013, PRISM is said to allow the organisation to "receive" emails, video clips, photos, voice and video calls, social networking details, logins and other data held by a range of US internet firms, namely companies as: Microsoft and its Skype division; Google and its YouTube division; Yahoo; Facebook, AOL, Apple and PalTalk.

So what still isn't known?

Security researcher Ashkan Soltani has posted a blog saying there are still five key unanswered questions about Prism:

• How effective is the "51% test" at preventing US citizens' records being swept up by the NSA?
• Are the tech companies trusted with knowing who the potential targets of the NSA investigations are?
• What systems are in place to ensure NSA officials do not overstep their boundaries?
• Bearing in mind Skype has previously denied making changes to its system to "provide law officers greater access", how are its voice calls being intercepted if indeed they are?
• What steps have been taken to ensure third parties cannot intercept the information? 

Then we are being asked to trust that the info we have already, CAN be trusted. What they are forgetting or at least not acknowledging, is that we NEVER have trusted the US agencies to tell any truths since 9-11.

 

pretty picture, ugly data

One more unanswered question: Whose side is PRISM on?

 

What exactly is PRISM?   -  explained

pgp software download  -  Pretty Good Privacy

conspiracy-theory-microsoft  -  I told you so



 

Conspiracy? No no NSA!

Here's the way some people think. 

The US uses Seal Team VI to go into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden. They fly in with stealth helicopters, storm the compound and find Osama watching TV and kill him. That's their story and they're sticking to it.
There are pictures of some guy with his back to you placidly watching TV, probably American Idol. The guy in the pic seems to be the same photo double they used a couple of years ago to impersonate bin Laden. Not many people believe the picture was of him then and don't now.
And many believe that if they did get bin Laden in a sneaky raid there would be hundreds of pictures to document the operation. Pictures of the dead terrorist, the house, other rooms with communications tech from what is said to be a Command Center. Maybe even a pic of some of the medical equipment he needed to enable his regular dialysis. 

bin Laden or been wrong again?

Then the stealth team buries the body at sea in another secret operation, to prevent martyrism of the burial site of course. Again no pictures. 

Seal Team VI is celebrated, along with President Obama, for getting the world's most wanted terrorist. Mission accomplished, to use a familiar Presidential line.
Except, that a lot of folks believe President Clinton had already killed Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora several years ago when he sent cruise missiles into the caves the Saudi Prince was supposedly hiding in! 
No one heard or saw a reliable sign of bin Laden since that targeted raid. In spite of the picture of that fat-head guy posing as Osama a few years later when the need to keep the bogey man alive became evident and they tried to make a credible video.  

So now come the revelations about NSA snooping. And we have one family who had a son on Seal Team VI. This family says they criticized the military for the loss of 38 lives and Seal Team VI soldiers (including their son) in a very suspicious helicopter crash in Afghanistan. That criticism resulted in them being targeted and surveilled by NSA. So they are suing the US Government.

The alleged surveillance violated the plaintiffs' right of freedom of association by making them and others weary and fearful of contacting other persons and entities via cell phone out of fear of the misuse of government power and retaliation against these persons and entities who challenge the misuse of government power. To paraphrase the reasons for their lawsuit.

Remember that only your telephone communications need a court order, the Patriot Act already covers your email and other internet activities, without a court order, and in its wisdom, forbids your ISP to even TELL you you have been scrutinized by the NSA, under penalty of law. So Verizon, for instance, HAS to give out information about you while keeping the very inquiry secret from you. 

So haven't we seen this scenario in TV gangster movies hundreds of times? The bad guys get other bad guys to kill someone, then we learn they never trusted the perpetrator bad guys not to eventually talk and so they engineer their deaths too. 
Neat and tidy, dead men don't talk. Or point fingers. Or write books. Or whistleblow. Or testify.

The trouble is they're all supposed to be the good guys!