Eroding Privacy and Soft Totalitarianism

At the Mises Blog, "the Donald Sterling affair", observed regular contributor Ben O’Neill, “is the latest step in the eroding of any sense of personal privacy in American society”.  

More from Mr. O’Neill

Whatever Sterling’s just-deserts, if the American public, or the wider world public, continue to make a habit of gorging themselves on the private conversations of others, made in intimate moments, and taped without their knowledge or consent, then they are priming themselves for the already-occurring descent into soft-totalitarian rule.  The apparatus for this is essentially already constructed, and social attitudes are also shifting to allow this to occur.

Mr. O’Neill’s worries echoes on my own. But this reflects on the Philippine setting. From my latest stock market outlook…

…certain media programs sell Orwellian themes as entertainment, collectivist slogans have been part of daily rituals for certain variety shows, and worst, people’s personal lives have become part of reality programs where personal relationships are now subject to audience lynching…

And such protectionist response seem as being signalled by media in terms of instilling and conditioning the acceptability of draconian political and economic repression.

Which dystopian world are we headed for, George Orwell’s “1984” or Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World” or a cross between the two?

From Visual News.

War on the Internet: Meshnet activists Rebuilds the Net from Scratch

In anticipation that the US government will require the surrendering of customer’s data, two small email providers including Lavabit, a Texas-based service that was reportedly used by whistleblower Edward J. Snowden, decided to preempt them by shutting down and destroying their servers.

Such are examples of how government has used the web not only to expand their power but to mount repressive policies on their constituents. 

At the same time these are examples how government policies rob economic opportunities of small businesses (favoring the big ones).

However markets aren’t taking this slippery slope of privacy invasion sitting down. Some entities has taken into their own hands the rebuilding of the internet from scratch.

From the New Scientist 

Across the US, from Maryland to Seattle, work is underway to construct user-owned wireless networks that will permit secure communication without surveillance or any centralised organisation. They are known as meshnets and ultimately, if their designers get their way, they will span the country.

Dan Ryan is one of the leaders of the Seattle Meshnet project, where sparse coverage already exists thanks to radio links set up by fellow hackers. Those links mean that instead of communicating through commercial internet connections, meshnetters can talk to each other through a channel that they themselves control.

Each node in the mesh, consisting of a radio transceiver and a computer, relays messages from other parts of the network. If the data can't be passed by one route, the meshnet finds an alternative way through to its destination. Ryan says the plan is for the Seattle meshnet to extend its coverage by linking up two wireless nodes across Lake Union in downtown Seattle. And over the country at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, student Alexander Bauer is hoping to build a campus meshnet later this year. That will give his fellow students an alternative communications infrastructure to the internet.

While these projects are just getting off the ground, a mesh network in Catalonia, Spain, is going from strength to strength. Guifi was started in the early 2000s by Ramon Roca, an Oracle employee who wanted broadband at his rural home. The local network now has more than 21,000 wireless nodes, spanning much of Catalonia. As well as allowing users to communicate with each other, Guifi also hosts web servers, videoconferencing services and internet radio broadcasts, all of which would work if the internet went down for the rest of the country.

So successful is the community model that Guifi is now building physical fibre-optic links to places like hospitals and town halls where it can help carry the heaviest traffic.

The development of the “new” guerilla internet doesn’t totally bypass the current system.

Again from the same article:

Hyperboria, the virtual layer that underpins meshnet efforts in the US. Hyperboria is a virtual meshnet because it runs through the existing internet, but is purely peer-to-peer. This means people who use it exchange information with others directly over a completely encrypted connection, with nothing readable by any centralised servers.

When physical meshnet nodes like those in Maryland and Seattle are set up, existing Hyperboria connections can simply be routed through them. At the moment, Hyperboria offers a blogging platform, email services, and even forums similar to reddit.

Unlike sheep or automatons, the above shows how people respond to incentives. The war on the internet will signify a cat and mouse relationship in the deepening age of decentralization.

On Internet Searches: Big Brother is Watching You

George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 looks increasingly prescient as evidenced by the slippery slope transformation of the US into a police state.

From Simon Black of the Sovereign Man:

In any discussion about privacy, there’s invariably someone who says, “Well, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

What a bunch of baloney. This may be one of the most ignorant statements ever uttered yet it’s held by a wide majority of people who still trust their governments.

Yesterday the Guardian newspaper published yet another example of why this thinking is completely fallacious.

On Wednesday of this week, Michele Catalano and her husband, both residents of Long Island, were greeted by a knock at the door by a counter-terrorism task force.

Apparently their Google searches had aroused intense suspicion. She was looking for pressure cookers online. Her husband was searching for backpacks.

Ordinarily those two items would seem completely harmless. But in such an absurd, security-conscious world where finger-nail clippers are considered deadly weapons, a pressure cooker and a backpack are viewed as vital tools in a terrorist’s toolkit… practically WMDs.

And so, Big Brother’s crew of six government agents arrived to the family’s home with weapons in holster, and their vehicles tactically positioned to block any exit from the premises.

The husband was questioned, and the agents searched the house looking for any other terrorist clues.

And in their conversation, the agents proclaimed that they do this “about 100 times a week.”

Apparently this is what passes as a free society these days, where even the most harmless online interactions end up being scrutinized by armed agents.

And thanks to a never-ending and expanding apparatus of online surveillance, governments have the means to monitor… almost everyone.

Of course, they want us to think that we have nothing to fear as long as we have nothing to hide. But a rational, thinking person has got to see the writing on the wall at this point and realize how out of control the police state has become.

Remember, there are a number of ways to safeguard your web browsing, search experience, email, and phone calls. And we’ve put a lot of great resources together for you in this free guide, something that we call ‘How to give the NSA the finger.’

In the 1984 novel, when asked by a skeptical Outer Party member (Winston Smith) to a Inner Party official (O'Brien) on how Power is used to control others, the latter's reply: (bold mine)  (quote from Thirdworldtraveler.com)

By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy- everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always-do not forget this, Winston-always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-forever." 

Big Brother is Watching You

Quote of the Day: We need whistle-blowers

The U.S. government is on a secrecy binge. It overclassifies more information than ever. And we learn, again and again, that our government regularly classifies things not because they need to be secret, but because their release would be embarrassing.

Knowing how the government spies on us is important. Not only because so much of it is illegal -- or, to be as charitable as possible, based on novel interpretations of the law -- but because we have a right to know. Democracy requires an informed citizenry in order to function properly, and transparency and accountability are essential parts of that. That means knowing what our government is doing to us, in our name. That means knowing that the government is operating within the constraints of the law. Otherwise, we're living in a police state.

We need whistle-blowers.

This is from renowned security technologist expert Bruce Schneier  writing at the Atlantic

Video: In 1984 The Prescient Ron Paul Warned of US Government Computer Surveillance

Something special with 1984? 1984 was the title of George Orwell's classic book about big brother dystopia.

In 1984, a video of Ron Paul's speech at the US house of representatives admonished of the use of computer or electronic surveillance by US government to attack on civil liberties. 

The latest whistleblowing of former insider Edward Snowden on the massive NSA spying serves as a validation of Ron Paul (hat tip Zero Hedge)

Ron Paul on Government Spying: Should We Be Shocked?

Given the furor over the NSA spying exposé by whistleblower Edward Snowden, former US congressman Ron Paul says that spying is supposed to be expected from an increasingly desperate government. 

From the great Ron Paul (Ron Paul Institute)

Last week we saw dramatic new evidence of illegal government surveillance of our telephone calls, and of the National Security Agency’s deep penetration into American companies such as Facebook and Microsoft to spy on us. The media seemed shocked.

Many of us are not so surprised.

Some of us were arguing back in 2001 with the introduction of the so-called PATRIOT Act that it would pave the way for massive US government surveillance—not targeting terrorists but rather aimed against American citizens. We were told we must accept this temporary measure to provide government the tools to catch those responsible for 9/11. That was nearly twelve years and at least four wars ago.

We should know by now that when it comes to government power-grabs, we never go back to the status quo even when the “crisis” has passed. That part of our freedom and civil liberties once lost is never regained. How many times did the PATRIOT Act need renewed? How many times did FISA authority need expanded? Why did we have to pass a law to grant immunity to companies who hand over our personal information to the government?

It was all a build-up of the government’s capacity to monitor us.

The reaction of some in Congress and the Administration to last week’s leak was predictable. Knee-jerk defenders of the police state such as Senator Lindsey Graham declared that he was “glad” the government was collecting Verizon phone records—including his own—because the government needs to know what the enemy is up to. Those who take an oath to defend the Constitution from its enemies both foreign and domestic should worry about such statements.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers tells us of the tremendous benefits of this Big Brother-like program. He promises us that domestic terrorism plots were thwarted, but he cannot tell us about them because they are classified. I am a bit skeptical, however. In April, the New York Times reported that most of these domestic plots were actually elaborate sting operations developed and pushed by the FBI. According to the Times report, “of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks since 9/11 on American soil, 14 were developed in sting operations.”

Even if Chairman Rogers is right, though, and the program caught someone up to no good, we have to ask ourselves whether even such a result justifies trashing the Constitution. Here is what I said on the floor of the House when the PATRIOT Act was up for renewal back in 2011:

“If you want to be perfectly safe from child abuse and wife beating, the government could put a camera in every one of our houses and our bedrooms, and maybe there would be somebody made safer this way, but what would you be giving up? Perfect safety is not the purpose of government. What we want from government is to enforce the law to protect our liberties.”

What most undermines the claims of the Administration and its defenders about this surveillance program is the process itself. First the government listens in on all of our telephone calls without a warrant and then if it finds something it goes to a FISA court and get an illegal approval for what it has already done! This turns the rule of law and due process on its head.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We need to turn the cameras on the police and on the government, not the other way around. We should be thankful for writers like Glenn Greenwald, who broke last week’s story, for taking risks to let us know what the government is doing. There are calls for the persecution of Greenwald and the other whistle-blowers and reporters. They should be defended, as their work defends our freedom.

Shades of George Orwell’s 1984?

Video: Ron Paul: NSA Seizing Phone Records Symptom of Failure of The State

Former Congressman Ron Paul interviewed by Fox's Neil Cavuto on the intensifying spying by the US government on her constituencies.

Austrian economist Gary North on the public's backlash from the fast expanding Orwellian Big Brother state (hat tip Bob Wenzel) (bold original)

This will in no way reverse the process. The cost of monitoring everyone continues to fall. Economics teaches that when the price of anything falls, more is demanded.

Only one thing can reverse this: budget cuts for the offending agencies. Congress never imposes budget cuts, especially on the NSA (No Such Agency).

Most voters know that this invasion of their privacy is illegitimate. They also know that Congress will do nothing about it. It will hold hearings — maybe even closed-door hearings. But nothing will change.

Nevertheless, headlines like these are always positive. They help lower the public’s assessment of the federal government’s legitimacy. Ultimately, civil government is about power, but legitimacy increases voluntary compliance by the public. Every time the government loses a little legitimacy, it’s positive.

The Myth of the Surveillance Cameras

Mainstream media continues to inculcate upon the public of the supposed public safety expediencies from surveillance cameras.

Steve Chapman at the Reason.org puts into perspective its efficacies.

One cherry picking of instances doesn’t imply effectiveness

There is no doubt that the cameras were a big help this time. But that doesn't mean they are generally a good idea -- much less a crucial tool in fighting terrorism and crime.

Surveillance cameras were originally touted as a strong deterrent, scaring away bad guys fearful of being caught on tape. But these devices have a disappointing record in action. In some places, they noticeably reduce crime. In others, they have the same effect as a potted plant.

In the Boston bombings, the cameras utterly failed in their preventive function. Not only did the bombings occur; they occurred in perhaps the most heavily photographed spot in America that day. Besides the permanent video cameras in operation, hundreds of spectators with cellphones were eagerly capturing the scene.

I’d say that mainstream media has been engaged in deceitful framing or applying selective influence or manipulation of the public through survivorship bias or through selective reporting. In other words, the positive effects from the use of surveillance cameras are being broadcasted, but its negative effects have not been shown. 

The implied goal seems designed to reduce people’s resistance from being monitored.

Security expert Bruce Schneier also shares this view stating that “Pervasive security cameras don't substantially reduce crime”

Next, since cameras are economic goods, they are subject to diminishing returns.

Again Mr. Chapman

Putting video gear in areas that are obvious potential terrorist targets is one thing. Putting them on every corner of an entire city is another. Some places are enviably safe without surveillance, which means any cameras installed there should be color-coordinated, since they will be primarily decorative.

They will fall victim to the law of diminishing returns. If you put out a couple of mousetraps, you may catch some mice. If you put out dozens, you may not catch many more. The second 10,000 cameras won't add nearly as much crime-fighting value as the first 10,000 -- or possibly even the first 1,000.

Of course, once aware, fugitives are likely to move activities away from where these cameras are located, or that they may use various forms of concealment. 

In short, surveillance cameras works from an element of surprise. Take the surprise away, the camera losses its effectiveness. Again human action.

The next is opportunity costs or tradeoff from use of scarce resources.

One drawback is that taxpayers are not composed of cash. Buying a camera costs money; so does maintaining it and monitoring the images it generates. A dollar spent on surveillance video is a dollar that can't be spent on foot patrols, police training, DNA tests or streetlights.

Then there is the issue of the invasion of privacy.

Another is that cameras contribute greatly to the steady erosion of personal privacy. Americans are generally oblivious to this phenomenon because they are oblivious to the multitude of unblinking eyes watching them in the course of a day. If each of us had a little alarm that went off every time we came into camera range, we might be less agreeable to the monitoring.

This is not really just an American thing, but also applies elsewhere as it does the Philippines.

 

Finally promoting surveillance cameras as furtive ploys to establish the Orwellian “big brother’ state that destroys civil liberties.

Cameras may also soften us up for even deeper intrusions. If video feeds are so great, why not add audio? If you can stand being watched whenever you leave home, surely you won't mind if every word is heard as well. And how about a tiny drone hovering over your front door, round the clock -- for the rest of your life?

Enthusiasts for electronic surveillance may say: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. But there's a reason people don't live in glass houses.

There is really nothing wrong with the private sector’s use of surveillance cameras, what is wrong is having to politicize them and use these as tools to advance despotism in the name of public safety.

Free Market’s Response to Government Drone Spying: The Drone Shield

The US government has been foisting the legitimization of the use of drones (as many as 30,000) to patrol the skies to allegedly to maintain ‘public safety’. 

While there may be emergent anti-drone technology such as the laser weapon system, the free markets seems to have a cheaper response to the threat of UAV government surveillance or of the intrusion to privacy: the Drone Shield 

From the USNews.com (hat tip EPJ)

Worried about drones spying on you? Soon, a device might be able to send you text and email alerts that let you know when a drone is nearby.

A Washington, D.C.-based engineer is working on the "Drone Shield," a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that uses a microphone to detect a drone's "acoustic signatures" (sound frequency and spectrum) when it's within range.

The company's founder, John Franklin, who has been working in aerospace engineering for seven years, says he hopes to start selling the device sometime this year. He is using the Kickstarter-like Indiegogo to finance the project.

The device will cost $69 and will be about the size of a USB thumb drive. It will use Raspberry Pi – a tiny, $25 computer – and commercially available microphones to detect drones. He says he imagines that people will attach the Drone Shield to their fences or roofs to protect their home from surveillance.

"People will get the alert and then close their blinds," Franklin says.

Every attempt by governments to establish a police state through technology will eventually be met by a pushback from the markets.

In the future, drones will likely be used more by the markets.

On the Boston Bombing and the US Police State

Mainstream media has been projecting that the Boston bombing incident has been a triumph of government over terrorism.

But there has been more than meets the eye. Many of things has been occurring beyond the surface.

There was supposedly a police drill that happened “complete with bomb squads and rooftop snipers” at the start of the race. A mere coincidence?

Suspected terrorists have reportedly been “manipulated and harassed” by US authorities for years even before the atrocious act.

Here is Daniel McAdams at the Lew Rockwell Blog:

As Infowars reports, the Boston Bomber the Younger had been manipulated and harassed by the FBI for years. How many of the post-9/11 wannabe terrorists have been actually developed, nurtured, and supported by the FBI and other US intelligence agencies? All of them? These guys too? Will no one but LRC and Alex Jones ask the question?

Hemingway was a paranoid who killed himself over his delusions that he was being followed and manipulated by the US intelligence agencies. What a kook! Until it came out that he was in fact being followed and manipulated by US intelligence agencies.

How much more power and money do they have now, sixty years and many convenient terrorist attacks later? How many of these terrorists are the creation of the FBI and homeland security and the shadow government? Sure, it's kooky to even ask the question. But evidence shows this is a very kooky time. Maybe we can ask the Black and Tans what they think about it... Whoa, I sound like a kook.

UPDATE: In answer to my questions above, it turns out even the establishment New York Times reports that "Of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks since 9/11 on American soil, 14 were developed in sting operations." In other words, two-thirds of the planned terrorist attacks against us were hatched by our own government!

TV personality Glenn Beck points to a supposed cover up by the White House on an alleged involvement of a Saudi national. Conspiracy theory?

The manhunt against 2 bombers turned part of Boston into a virtual police state. People homes had been raided even without search warrants. More photos here. And such martial law tactics used to happen only in banana republics. Not anymore. 

Yet the martial law in Boston didn’t lead to the arrest of the second suspect, the community did.

From Boston.com (hat tip Professor David Henderson)

By 6 p.m., frustrated officials relaxed the rule and allowed residents to leave their homes. The people of Watertown began to venture outside.

But within an hour, the crack of gunshots again blasted through the neighborhood. ­Sirens blared, and officers on foot scrambled down Franklin Street.

Police found Dzhokhar ­Tsarnaev hiding on a boat stored in a backyard on ­Franklin Street. Police ­exchanged gunfire with him before capturing him alive. Spontaneous celebrations erupted across the region, from the ­Boston Common to the Back Bay streets near the bombing.

The boat’s owners, a couple, spent Friday hunkered down under the stay-at-home order. When it was lifted early in the evening, they ventured outside for some fresh air and the man noticed the tarp on his boat blowing in the wind, according to their his son, Robert Duffy.

The cords securing it had been cut and there was blood near the straps. Duffy’s father called police, who swarmed the yard and had the couple evacuated, Duffy said.

Residents, who had barricaded themselves in their homes for nearly 20 hours, were still deeply shaken.

Shaken by whom, the terrorists or by police action?
 
And in spite of the community lockdown, authorities “requested” or "chose" Dunkin Donuts to remain open, from another Boston.com article

On block after block of the Boston’s Financial District and Downtown Crossing, Starbucks shops went dark as the city locked down, spurred by a manhunt for the second marathon bombing suspect. Dunkin’ Donuts stayed open.

Law enforcement asked the chain to keep some restaurants open in locked-down communities to provide hot coffee and food to police and other emergency workers, including in Watertown, the focus of the search for the bombing suspect. Dunkin’ is providing its products to them for free.

Cronyism amidst the police state? Think of free lunches for authorities. No wonder the allure of the police state. 

Meanwhile while media blares about the virtues of capturing suspects of the Boston bombing, the US Senate passed a Cyber 'privacy-infringement' law without much ado from the public.

Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul writes,

While it did not receive nearly as much attention as the debate on gun control, the House of Representatives passed legislation with significant implications for individual liberty: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). CISPA proponents claim that the legislation is necessary to protect Americans from foreign “cyber terrorists,” but the real effect of this bill will be to further erode Americans’ online privacy.

Boston bombing as a diversion tactic?

And the Boston incident had also been used as justification for a clampdown on people’s civil liberties. More from Mr. Paul

Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48 hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”

If there is any clue which the unfortunate Boston Incident tell us, it is that the US seems headed towards a police state.

For instance, 1.6 billion rounds of ammo have been recently purchased by the Department of Homeland Security.

From the Forbes.com

The Denver Post, on February 15^th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice.  It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition.  As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month.  Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years.  In America.

For what? Has the DHS been preparing for foreign invasion or the Red dawn? Or alien invasion?

The Boston incident adds to many more signs of America’s transition towards a police state or the "Road to serfdom".

Meanwhile a suicide bombing in Iraq claimed 32 lives and wounded 65 more. Yet such incident hardly gets into the headlines. Why?

Also a US Senator estimates death toll from US drones at 4,700 which included civilians. The senator says because of war, collateral damage is legit. Notice the self-contradiction?  In war, any American civilian fatalities are considered immoral, but foreign civilian deaths are justified. Could such kind of cavalier thinking and actions prompted for the growth of terrorism?

Yet along with the fast expanding police state is the widening dragnet of financial repression via QE, negative interest rates, more taxes, more regulations, FACTA and etc..

Americans seem to have forgotten the admonitions of Benjamin Franklin on sacrificing liberty for safety 

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Has the US Government been Spying on All Americans?

The US government has reportedly been indiscriminately spying on their citizens according to whistleblowers

From the RT.com (hat tip Sovereign Man) [italics original]

In an interview broadcast on Current TV’s “Viewpoint” program on Monday, former NSA Technical Director William Binney commented on the government’s policy of blanket surveillance, alongside colleagues Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the agency's respective former Senior Official and Senior Analyst.

The interview comes on the heels of a series of speeches given by Binney, who has quickly become better known for his whistleblowing than his work with the NSA. In their latest appearance this week, though, the three former staffers suggested that America’s spy program is much more dangerous than it seems.

In an interview with “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer, Drake said there was a “key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.”

These powers have previously defended by claims of national security necessity, but Drake says that it doesn’t stop there. He warns that the government is giving itself the power to gather intel on every American that could be used in future prosecutions unrelated to terrorism.

“When you open up the Pandora’s Box of just getting access to incredible amounts of data, for people that have no reason to be put under suspicion, no reason to have done anything wrong, and just collect all that for potential future use or even current use, it opens up a real danger — and to what else what they could use that data for, particularly when it’s all being hidden behind the mantle of national security,” Drake said.

Although Drake’s accusations seem astounding, they corroborate allegations made by Binney only a week earlier. Speaking at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York City earlier this month, Binney addressed a room of thousands about the NSA’s domestic spying efforts. But in a candid interview with journalist Geoff Shively during HOPE, the ex-NSA official candidly revealed the full extent of the surveillance program.

“Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very dangerous process,” Binney said.

Drake and Binney’s statements follow the revelation that law enforcement officers collected cell phone records on 1.3 million Americans in 2011. More news articles are emerging every day suggesting that the surveillance of Americans — off-the-radar and under wraps — is growing at an exponential rate.

If true, then the US has progressively been marching into a police state.

Students Hack US Drone

From RT.com, (hat tip Bastiat Institute) [Italics original]

There are a lot of cool things you can do with $1,000, but scientists at an Austin, Texas college have come across one that is often overlooked: for less than a grand, how’d you like to hijack a US government drone?

A group of researchers led by Professor Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas at Austin Radionavigation Laboratory recently succeeded in raising the eyebrows of the US government. With just around $1,000 in parts, Humphreys’ team took control of an unmanned aerial vehicle operated by the US Department of Homeland Security.

After being challenged by his lab, the DHS dared Humphreys’ crew to hack into their drone and take command. Much to their chagrin, they did exactly that.

Humphrey tells Fox News that for a few hundreds dollar his team was able to “spoof” the GPS system on board the DHS drone, a technique that involves mimicking the actual signals sent to the global positioning device and then eventually tricking the target into following a new set of commands. And, for just $1,000, Humphreys says the spoofer his team assembled was the most advanced one ever built.

“Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a plane,” Humphreys tells Fox. The real danger here, however, is that the government is currently considering plans that will allow local law enforcement agencies and other organizations from coast-to-coast to control drones of their own in America’s airspace.

“In five or ten years you have 30,000 drones in the airspace,” he tells Fox News. “Each one of these could be a potential missile used against us.”

I guess that with “30,000 drones in the airspace” encroaching on people’s privacy, drone hackers will be in big demand.

Quote of the Day: Your Identity Properly Belongs to you

Everyone has areas of utter privacy to protect. Some people wear lockets containing photos of deceased relatives; others daydream about a forbidden love; still other people lock the door while luxuriating in a hot bubble bath; or, perhaps, they write a love letter that is meant for one other set of eyes only. These acts are a line drawn between the private and public sphere; they constitute a boundary over which no other human being can rightfully cross without invitation.

If a neighbor reads takes it upon himself to read letters in your mailbox or copies down the details of deposits in a bankbook he has ‘encountered’ in your desk drawer, you would feel violated and enraged by the invasion. What is wrong for your neighbor to do is also wrong for a government agent to do because there is only one standard of morality. Theft is theft, invasion is invasion. You have the right to slam the door on the face of anyone who says differently. A peaceful human being owes no debt to any other person.

Hold the state up to the same standard as your neighbors…because there are no double standards of right and wrong. Privacy is a right, not an admission of guilt. Your identity properly belongs to you…not to the state.

This is from author Wendy McElroy at the Laissez Faire Books