News sites are filled with stories of secret spying by the U.S. government on its people and by the U.S. NSA on “foreigners.” Unfortunately, every article gets to the same bullshit conclusion – simply accepting the government line – big brother is protecting us from terrorists, so all is well. Are most Americans really such ignorant sheep?
Anyone who does the least bit of research will see that these programs all about money and control…and that stopping the random terrorist is simply a byproduct of an inherently evil and deceptive system.
Let’s take a look at the numbers:
- Apple says it received 4,000 to 5,000 requests, covering between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices, from federal, state and local authorities over a six month period.
- Facebook said it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests in the last half of 2012, targeting between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts.
- Over the same period, Microsoft received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting as many as 32,000 customer accounts.
While there is no way to tell how many of these requests were related to terrorism or stopping an eminent threat, experts claim that very few met this criteria. It has also been said that many were from the IRS and related agencies looking to assess net worth and taxable income of those suspected of not paying up.
Fine…the government is out there snooping, but we Americans have protections, right? What about the shields against unreasonable search and seizure? What about the fact that a warrant must be issued by a judge? What about the high level of proof and need the government must show to get such a warrant? As a lawyer, I can tell you that these formalities are there to make the populous feel good and serve no practical purpose.
Most agencies do not need, or bother to obtain, a warrant. They can simply issue a written order to a bank or technology company (data aggregator) and grab anything and everything they want. For example, the IRS has been upfront in telling us that it can read your emails, texts or other forms of electronic correspondence, and access your Facebook account, without any oversight.
Beginning with the 2009 IRS employee handbook, and continuing today, the agency says the Fourth Amendment does not apply because users do not “have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.
In another example, any IRS agent can issue a levy to a U.S. bank, banks in France, England or Canada, or the U.S. branch of any foreign bank, and seize your money to pay back taxes. No court judgment or order, management approval, or supervision of any kind is required. Any collection agent can tap a few keys on his or her computer and empty your bank account.
- Yes, the IRS can levy your account at a foreign branch if that bank has an office in the U.S. For example, if you have money in HSBC Panama, the IRS can issue a levy to HSBC New York and get to your Panamanian account. If this is a concern, move to a smaller bank without a U.S. office.
But, what about those criminal investigations not related to the loss of tax revenues which still require a traditional warrant to tap your phones and search your private information? As a lawyer I can tell you this process is a joke and only exists in TV drama and in the media. Warrants are rubber stamped by judged and almost never returned or rejected. In talking with friends in the District Attorney’s office, I once asked how many were rejected…my friend just laughed and said she had never seen one in 10 years.
If you are still on the fence, and want to believe there is a higher purpose to these government intrusions, take a look back at the Patriot Act of 2001. Just like the cases of today, the Patriot Act was born of fear and promised to protect us poor lambs from big bad terrorists. All you need to do to understand the “intent” is to read the titles: Title I: Enhancing domestic security against terrorism, Title II: Surveillance procedures, Title III: Anti-money-laundering to prevent terrorism, Title IV: Border security, Title V: Removing obstacles to investigating terrorism, Title VI: Victims and families of victims of terrorism, Title VII: Increased information sharing for critical infrastructure protection, Title VIII: Terrorism criminal law, and Title IX: Improved Intelligence.
Obviously this act was meant to protect us from terrorists and anyone who claims to be a Patriot, must support it! Well, here’s the rest of the story:
Under the guise of anti-money-laundering, the U.S. IRS immediately began an attack, not in the Middle East, but on the Swiss Bank UBS and U.S. citizens with undeclared offshore accounts. While no terrorists were ferreted out, 30,000+ Americans have come forward, all paid big fines, a few had their lives torn asunder by the machine, and the IRS brought in over $5 billion in new taxes, interest and penalties. In addition, UBS has paid up over $1.1 billion in penalties to avoid prosecution.
As the “for profit criminal investigations” have made their way to the U.S. Treasury, data mining data mining (searching through your personal and private information without a warrant or other legal justification) became big business. For example, it is said that the NSA spent $8 to $10 billion last year in Silicon Valley on secret data collection and analysis projects, investing in start-ups in related fields, and hiring some of the best and brightest (though, maybe not most ethical) minds in data research.
For example, a recent NY Times article reported that the chief security officer for Facebook, Max Kelly, left the company back in 2010 and went to work for the NSA. Who better to hack your Facebook account than the security chief?
What I found most troubling in this article wasn’t the defection of Mr. Kelly to the dark side, it was the Time’s ignorant statement that: “The only difference is that the N.S.A. does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money.”
This couldn’t be further from the truth – both do it for profit…but Silicon Valley is honest in their motives while the government hides behind fear and lies. The tech company is like a hooker – she tells you the price in advance and you make a deal with all cards on the table. The government is not that honorable. They tell you all kinds of stories, get your hopes up, all the while fooling around and then take you for everything you got.
Privacy Tip: Skype and Apple are both part of the NSA Prism program and the government can trace and record all Skype phone calls. In fact, I know of one person the IRS tracked down using Skype and his internet address (known as an IP). However, Apple said there were certain categories of information it was unable to provide to law enforcement officials because it didn’t record them. Such data includes iMessage or FaceTime conversations, which Apple said were protected by end-to-end encryption so that no one but the sender or receiver can see or read them.
“Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form,” Apple said. Apple FaceTime may be one of the last bastions of private communications on the web.