Earlier this evening, I published a post here on the latest NSA-Snowden document leak concerning British and U.S. government infiltration of social media, and the related revelations published by The / / Intercept, titled: "How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations." The link to my post is HERE. (Kossack Richard Lyons also published a piece on the story, and that's linked HERE.) At the time of publication, the ability to republish the NSA's original slideshow document wasn't available for posting on other blogs, but it is now. So, I'm republishing it (I believe this is the first time it's appeared at Daily Kos), below.
But, first I wanted to state that it's already a well-proven fact (based upon original U.S. government documents) that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have regularly-monitored Daily Kos in the past few years for intelligence purposes, and you may read about that in my post from April 4th, 2013, which is linked here: "2011 Gov’t Report Confirmation: DHS, Banks Gathered Key Intel On OWS From Daily Kos, Other Sites."
Furthermore, while I understand that it's difficult for some in this country (and certainly within this blogging community) to acknowledge these latest, taxpayer-funded, Orwellian travesties for the inconvenient truths that they are, I wanted to point out the facts that:
1.) This latest story originated over at Great Britain's version of America's National Security Agency (NSA), known as Government Communications Headquarters (a/k/a "GCHQ"), but that shouldn't belie the greater reality that somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 NSA employees work there, across the pond.
2.) Virtually all of GCHQ, including the 2,000+/- NSA employees that work at that agency's offices in Great Britain, maintains direct access to virtually all NSA databases, including "PRISM," "Boundless Informant," and everything in-between.
3.) For at least a decade, it's been a widely-know fact in the intelligence community that all five nations participating in the Five Eyes program do each others' "dirty work." But, don't take my word for it, here's a column from Great Britain's Independent, from 2004 (and per my post here on December 27, 2013), to explain this...
How Britain and the US Keep Watch on the World
By Phillip Knightley
Independent (via Global Policy Forum)
February 27, 2004
From the National Security Agency’s imposing headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, ringed by a double-chain fence topped by barbed wire with strands of electrified wire between them, America “bugs” the world. Nothing politically or militarily significant, whether mentioned in a telephone call, in a conversation in the office of the secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, or in a company fax or e-mail, escapes its attention.
Its computers – measured in acres occupied by them rather than simple figures – “vacuum the entire electromagnetic spectrum”, homing in on “key words” which may suggest something of interest to NSA customers is being conveyed. The NSA costs at least $3.5bn (£1.9bn) a year to run. It employs at least 20,000 officers (not counting the 100,000 servicemen and civilians around the world over whom it has control). Its shredders process 40 tons of paper a day.
Its junior partner is Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the eavesdropping organisation for which Katharine Gun worked. Like NSA, GCHQ is a highly secret operation. Until 1983, when one of its officers, Geoffrey Prime, was charged with spying for the Russians, the Government had refused to reveal what GCHQ’s real role was, no doubt because its operations in peacetime were without a legal basis. Its security is maintained by massive and deliberately intimidating security. Newspapers have been discouraged from mentioning it; a book by a former GCHQ officer, Jock Kane, was seized by Special Branch police officers and a still photograph of its headquarters was banned by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, leaving a blank screen during a World in Action programme. As with NSA, the size of GCHQ’s staff at Cheltenham, about 6,500, gives no real indication of its strength. It has monitoring stations in Cyprus, West Germany, and Australia and smaller ones elsewhere. Much of its overseas work is done by service personnel. Its budget is thought to be more than £300m a year. A large part of this is funded by the United States in return for the right to run NSA listening stations in Britain – Chicksands, Bedfordshire; Edzell, Scotland; Mentworth Hill, Harrogate; Brawdy, Wales – and on British territory around the world.
The collaboration between the two agencies offers many advantages to both. Not only does it make monitoring the globe easier, it solves tricky legal problems and is the basis of the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday that all Britain’s bugging is lawful. The two agencies simply swap each other’s dirty work. GCHQ eavesdrops on calls made by American citizens and the NSA monitors calls made by British citizens, thus allowing each government plausibly to deny it has tapped its own citizens’ calls, as they do. The NSA station at Menwith Hill intercepts all international telephone calls made from Britain and GCHQ has a list of American citizens whose phone conversations interest the NSA…
(Bold type is diarist's emphasis.)
4.) Last, but definitely not least, I'd like to point out that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of many hundreds of thousands of communications, social media and public relations firms and individual consultants that will gladly "manage" your brand or personal reputation and/or promote it. Or, on the other hand, these same firms will trash competing brands or individuals (to accomplish same); and, in so doing, many of them will gladly infiltrate social media platforms throughout the world for a price. You may find many of these hundreds of thousands (if you do a Google search, you'll receive more than 43 million returns on the search) of services firms and individuals by clicking RIGHT HERE.
So, for someone to incorrectly posit that our own government, resplendent with a military-industrial-surveillance complex that we already know is spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.7 billion per year of taxpayer funds to trumpet their propaganda to the public (and frequently engages in doing so in a covert manner), is not doing what everyone else is doing is, simply, foolhardy, or in deep denial.
With all of the above being stated, here's the original NSA slideshow document upon which this evening's latest NSA story's based. And, like every other document that has come from the NSA-Snowden document disclosure saga, to date, it is widely understood that these slides/Powerpoint screens are, indeed, the real deal...
http://www.scribd.com/...
The Art of Deception
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UPDATE 2/25/14, 4:00AM EST:
Adding insult to injury, I just read a comment from Kossack roseeriter in Ray Pensador’s latest post which informs us that, in 2007, the U.S. Army was spying on “leftist protestors,” right here in the U.S. of A. This breaking news and original source report is available at Raw Story: “New documents prove U.S. Army actively targeted leftist protesters, group says,” by Scott Kaufman.
Can you say Posse Comitatus Act? Sure you can!
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