U.S. Government's Favorite Lie About Spying: Mass Surveillance Has Been Successful in Stopping Threats Yet Has Been Ineffective in Stopping Real Attacks Because of Privacy Advocates and Whistleblowers

MUST READ: ISIS : A CIA Creation to Justify War Abroad and Repression at Home

I have little doubt that ISIS is used as a tool to further the occult elite’s agenda, including invading Syria and justifying police state surveillance in the West. After guilting Western countries into accepting thousands of Syrian refugees, an Islamist attack causes fear, hatred and distrust towards Muslims in those very countries. Things are about to get complicated. Let’s look back at the concrete effects of ISIS this year.

1. Justified the invasion of Syria, finally destroying its status as a regional force;
2. Accelerated the mass exodus of Syrians towards the West;
3. Opened the floodgates of Syrian refugees around the Western world (boosted by the picture of a dead boy);
4. Caused widespread panic in the Western world with Paris terror attack, justifying tighter monitoring and police state tactics. [Source]

Typical "progressive" response: "The government has to spy on us to prevent anarchy."

The US government is already lying like crazy about surveillance after the Paris attacks

November 16, 2015

The Verge - At a Center for Strategic & International Studies talk today, CIA director John Brennan renewed one of the government's favorite lies about spying: that mass surveillance has been successful in stopping a bunch of mysterious threats while it is simultaneously too ineffective to stop real attacks, because of privacy advocates and whistleblowers.

Here's what Brennan said:

In the past several years because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of hand wringing over the government's role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists there have been some policy and legal and other actions taken that make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging. I do hope that this is going to be a wake up call, particularly in areas of Europe where I think there has been a misrepresentation of what the intelligence and security service is doing...

You're probably going to hear this lie furiously repeated in the coming weeks and months as security hawks in the US and Europe march toward another ground war in Asia, and renew their calls for a radically strengthened surveillance state.

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept has thoroughly documented the genesis of this lie, but here's the short version: the government can't have it both ways on security. It can't ask that companies and individuals strengthen their defenses against attacks while at the same time demanding companies like Apple and Google to sabotage their users by giving the government the means to break encryption.

None of the NSA's capabilities have been diminished yet

The truth is that we've only begun to reform a small part of the mass surveillance apparatus in the United States; only telephone spying has been limited so far, and the NSA still has a broad reach across most forms of electronic communications. As Marcy Wheeler pointed out earlier today in response to Brennan's remarks, the US hasn't even shut down any of the NSA's controversial programs yet! And other countries are stepping up electronic surveillance authority, so it's not clear what Brennan is talking about when he says that "policy and legal actions" have made surveillance of terrorists more challenging. Is he talking about the sweeping law France passed in July that dramatically expanded the country's surveillance powers?

The US government has not provided a credible story about the effectiveness of mass surveillance. As Greenwald notes, officials have been clamoring about the threat of encryption for more than 20 years, so the idea that terrorists aren't already aware of surveillance countermeasures is preposterous.

We've also known since the 9/11 Commission submitted its report that the government's inability to foil the largest and most sophisticated terrorist attack in history was based on its failure to share and analyze information, not because it was unable to scoop up everything that happens on the internet in real-time.

Terrorism's greatest threat is its ability to provoke us into harming ourselves through fear and haste. Don't fall for lazy horror stories from people who want to destroy privacy on the internet for everyone.

Authorities Are Using Paris Attacks To Rush New Mass Surveillance Laws

November 18, 2015

Vigilant Citizen - While democratic systems usually take months (if not years) to pass new laws and legislation, it only took a few days after the Paris attacks to slap honest citizens with more surveillance laws. Several organizations are indeed capitalizing on the fear and panic caused by the attacks to bring forth a brand new agenda that takes a bold new step towards total government surveillance. What’s worse: Leaked information proves that authorities were waiting on a terror attack to go forward with their plan.

In a leaked e-mail written by Robert S. Litt, the intelligence community’s top lawyer during the month August, the plan is clearly outlined: There is a lack of support for the banning of encrypted communications but a terror attack could quickly turn the tide.

“Although the legislative environment is very hostile today, it could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.

There is value keeping our options open for such a situation.” – Washington Post, Obama faces growing momentum to support widespread encryption

Only a few months after this e-mail, a terror attack occurs in Paris. Only a few hours after the attacks, news  strangely blamed “encrypted communications”. Only days after the attacks, officials are calling for…the banning of encrypted communications.

The New York police commissioner, Bill Bratton, called it a “game changer” and, insinuated new legislation that would outlaw encryption was necessary by adding: “[Encryption] is something that is going to need to be debated very quickly because we cannot continue operating where we are blind. – The Guardian, Intelligence agencies pounce on Paris attacks to pursue spy agenda

CIA Director John Brennan is also using the terror attacks to plead for unrestricted government surveillance of all communications, blaming “privacy groups” for hindering their job.

Then on Monday, in an epic episode of blame shifting, the CIA director, John Brennan, reportedly said privacy advocates have undermined the ability of spies to monitor terrorists. He explained:

“Because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that are taken that make our ability collectively, internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging”, adding that there is a “misrepresentation of what the intelligence security services are doing”.

Read Brennan’s comments carefully because they are very revealing. When he says “legal actions”, he’s referring to the fact that multiplefederal courts have ruled that the government’s secret mass surveillance on millions of Americans is illegal. So it sounds like the CIA director is saying it’s a shame that intelligence agencies can’t operate completely above the law any more, and is scapegoating any failings on his agency’s part on accountability that is the hallmark of any democracy. (Though he still can apparently operate above the law.)

More importantly, Brennan’s comments are incredibly dishonest. The post-Snowden USA Freedom Act passed by Congress reformed exactly one of the countless mass spying programs the US runs. It was the one that sucked up the phone calls of Americans only, and here’s the thing: it has been active this whole time and isn’t scheduled to shut down until the end of the month. – Ibid.

Government officials in the UK are also capitalizing on fear to rush sweeping new laws.

On the other side of the Atlantic, politicians in the United Kingdom, which already has the most expansive surveillance laws in the western world, are using the tragedy to attempt to rush through their even more invasive, new mass-spying bill that aims at allowing police to see the websites every citizen visits and to force companies like Apple to backdoor their encrypted tools.
– Ibid.

Not Effective

None of these laws have proven effective in preventing terror attacks. In fact, the Paris attacks took place six months after the enactment of a massive (and controversial) surveillance law in France.

Passed by the French Parliament in May in response to the attacks on the Paris-based magazine Charlie Hebdo, the law allows the government to monitor phone calls and emails of people suspected of connections to terrorism without the authorization of a judge.
But it goes further than that. The law requires Internet service providers to install “black boxes” that are designed to vacuum up and analyze metadata on the Web-browsing and general Internet use habits of millions of people using the Web and to make that data available to intelligence agencies.

In exceptional cases, the law allows the government to deploy what are called “ISMI catchers” to track all mobile phone communications in a given area. These catchers are basically designed to impersonate cell towers, but they intercept and record communications data from phones within its range, and can also track the movements of people carrying the phones.

Finally, the law allows government agents to break into the homes of suspected terrorists for the purpose of planting microphone bugs and surveillance cameras and installing keyloggers on their computers, devices that capture data on every keystroke and mouse click.

– Recode, France Has a Powerful and Controversial New Surveillance Law

In short, after each traumatic event in the Western world (manufactured or not), attention is turned towards a very specific and targeted item that “needs to be addressed as soon as possible”. This item is, in fact, part of controversial law that is sitting on shelves until in can be passed insidiously, while the masses are struck with horror. It happened with the Patriot Act and, almost 15 years later, it is happening again. Their formula is “Order Out of Chaos” and it keeps working.