Head of the National Security Agency, General Keith Alexander, goes in front of a closed doors congressional panel today. They will quiz him about what data the NSA and other intelligence agencies can collect, have been collecting, and plan to collect on Americans. He will tell them about the threats thwarted through the nation’s intelligence collecting systems operated by the NSA. This is all a part of the show of concern for balancing individual privacy and the nation’s security needs that Congress is putting on for our benefit after NSA contractor Edward Snowden outlined how intelligence is developed and named Prism as one such long-running program that snoops on us.
I have no idea what all Snowden gave to Britain’s Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers that would have been news to our enemies, whether they be terrorist organizations or sovereign nation-states. The information freely available in the public domain allows anyone who understands boxes and arrows to draw the above diagram that is one version of a high level representation of our intelligence gathering schema (click on figure for better resolution).
This level of openness is not shared by everyone in Washington. Last Sunday on Fox News former VP Dick Cheney told Chris Wallace that even understanding what I’ve put together in the figure should not be public knowledge and would compromise our security. I totally disagree, and feel we have little to fear from people who don’t already know that we operate such an intelligence gathering scheme – they simply aren’t smart enough to harm us.
My druthers are that Americans understand, to the level indicated in the figure, how our government collects and connects the dots on potential bad guys who mean the country harm. With such a basic understanding we can talk reasonably about what government branches and agencies do and how they interlink. We don’t have to know the details about what stuff passes through all the arrows. But some of the details are important to us.
Continue reading "Collecting and Connecting the Dots (Addended)(updated 19jun13)" »
Ruminations - 14jun13 (Addended)
George Rebane
A new democultural milestone has been passed. More whites now die than are being born in America. Analyzing Census Bureau data, the Brookings Institution and others report that white women are now bearing 1.9 children on average, and as we all know, population stability occurs somewhere around 2.1 children to account for the death demographic that covers the range from infant mortality to old age. This so-called “natural decrease” was previously predicted to start in 2020. No big deal, all my life I have been in the minority in more categories than I care to count. This just places all whites into one more minority group as our population is “browning up from the bottom.” (more here) Thermodynamics at work.
And another majority is firming up in this new age. Given the multiple and growing IRS and DOJ scandals, the Pew Research Center reports that a majority of Americans – 53% - now believe that “the federal government threatens your own personal rights and freedoms.” (more here) This, of course, is contrary to the opinion held by the hunky-dory segment of our political spectrum.
AmeriCorps is a bust. That conclusion, long suspected, is now pretty much accepted by both sides of the aisle. Author James Bovard writes, “After nearly 20 years and billions of taxpayer dollars, AmeriCorps has little to show.” (more here) The program has been another part of our feelgood government that has been kept alive by “Soviet style accounting” where effort is confused with accomplishment. IMHO, soviet style accounting keeps most extra-constitutional government programs going.
Mental illness is incurable. I conclude that from looking at how we selectively discriminate against people with any kind of mental malady in their history, ranging from being institutionalized to just seeing some kind of shrink with any one of a dozen sets of initials behind their name. And the category of things a person with such a taint on the record is no longer qualified or permitted to do grows daily. No proof beyond someone having accused you of being this or that, and the authorities investigating it is enough to condemn you for life – that stigma is indelible. The latest proscription that government now seeks is to put such an item into the coming national gun database. Today states have various thresholds for denying their residents the ability to buy/own firearms. (more here) But in whichever database, if that ‘mental history’ box is checked, your Second Amendment rights are history – you are incurable.
[Addendum] Nevada County’s marijuana code wars are ramping up again. After posting the above, I received an email from Ms Patricia Smith, chariman of Americans for Safe Access – Nevada County, that contained a press release (Download Marijuana - PR Inititive Filing) which states that “on Monday, June 17, Americans for Safe Access - NC will be filing a Request for a Special Election to replace Ordinance 2349 with the Safe Cultivation Act of Nevada County.” Also appended was a draft copy of the proposed Safe Cultivation Act (Download Marijuana - Patti's Initiative). The conflicting and confusing laws and codes which define legal marijuana cultivation and use in America, California, and individual counties are fueling an unnecessary discontent that contributes more heat than light to the existing ideological incoherence already rampant in the land. Another example of our inept politicians at work.
Posted at 09:05 AM in Culture Comments, Nevada County, Our Country, We the iSheeple | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBack (0)