Sunday, July 21, 2013

Homeland Security Threatens to Punish Staff for Reading Washington Post NSA Articles

This is right off the charts! I guess they are afraid of a whistleblower stampede.
I think they are too late.

The Washington Post recently obtained a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo that warned staff not to read articles — get this —printed in the Washington Post that covered whistleblower revelations about classified information.
Specifically, DHS — and we are not making this up — implied that there could be legal repercussions for employees who read WashingtonPost stories about whistleblowers and the information that they disclose.  In particular, a DHS memo prohibited reading of such articles from any computer outside of the DHS office:

The Department of Homeland Security has warned its employees that the government may penalize them for opening a Washington Post article containing a classified slide that shows how the National Security Agency eavesdrops on international communications.
An internal memo from DHS headquarters told workers on Friday that viewing the document from an “unclassified government workstation” could lead to administrative or legal action. “You may be violating your non-disclosure agreement in which you sign that you will protect classified national securityinformation,” the communication said.
The memo said workers who view the article through an unclassified workstation should report the incident as a “classified data spillage.”
“Classifed data spillage.”  This “data spillage” is in the press and on the web around the world — and DHS is implying that the NSA is monitoring employees use of computers outside the office to see if they are reading such media coverage, so much for not spying on Americans.
This is so retro totalitarian, so Soviet and Stasi Kafkaesque, that it’s hard to believe.  As a websiteTechDirt comments: “Got that? Working for the government and merely reading the news about things the government is doing might subject you to legal action.”
Of course, if a co-worker who is an “Insider Threat” informant sees you reading a whistleblower-related article in a print newspaper, he or she may report you as a potential danger to national security. This is not an exaggeration.
In case you managed to miss stories about operation “Insider Threat” (formally known as the National Insider Threat Policy), this is the Obama administration‘s program to turn the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the surveillance state apparatus into stool pigeons. Of course, as in any police state apparatus, anyone can report another person against whom they hold a personal grudge as an “enemy of the state.”  I wish that all this were hyperbolic fear mongering against some perfectly legitimage national concerns, but it is not.
According to the Federation of American Scientists blog on secrecy:
A national policy on “insider threats” was developed by the Obama Administration in order to protect against actions by government employees who would harm the security of the nation.  But under the rubric of insider threats, the policy subsumes the seemingly disparate acts of spies, terrorists, and those who leak classified information.
The insider threat is defined as “the threat that an insider will use his/her authorized access, wittingly or unwittingly, to do harm to the security of the United States.  This threat can include damage to the United States through espionage, terrorism, [or] unauthorized disclosure of national security information,” according to the newly disclosed National Insider Threat Policy, issued in November 2012.
One of the implications of aggregating spies, terrorists and leakers in a single category is that the nation’s spy-hunters and counterterrorism specialists can now be trained upon those who are suspected of leakingclassified information.
Subsequent articles on the “Insider Threat” program have revealed that it is shabbily constructed and sets up an environment of co-workers fearing each other.
A BuzzFlash at Truthout reader sent in a satirical song performed by the late Zero Mostel during the McCarthy era, when the FBI and Congress were looking for “Commies under every table.”  The refrain to Mostel’s parody (paraphased) was: “Who’s going to be the man (or woman) watching the man (or woman) who’s watching me?”
That’s a good question indeed in a surveillance state that has creeped across the threshold into a state of fear, one in which you are legally threatened for reading a public newspaper because of now public information in it about your government.
In such a nation, as happened in the nations of the former Soviet empire, we are all “insider threats.” We all have become targets for spying because the government has superceded the rights and legal protections of the individual.
The goal has become the protection of the state apparatus — and the contracting firms receiving billions of dollars for surveillance consultation — not the security of the people who live in the state — or in this case the United States.


Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Russian Forces to Provide “Security” At US Events

I posted this because this looks like the fulfilment of some of my prophecies of Russian soldiers on US soil. EJO



Russian Forces to Provide “Security” At US Events


FEMA signs deal with Russian Emergency Situations Ministry to “exchange experts”
Paul Joseph Watson
As part of a deal signed last week in WashingtonDC between the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and FEMA, Russian officials will provide “security at mass events” in the United States, a scenario that won’t sit well with Americans wary of foreign assets operating on US soil.

Russian troops. Image: Wikimedia Commons
According to a press release by the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense and Emergencies, US and Russian officials met on June 25 at the 17th Joint U.S.-Russia Cooperation Committee on Emergency Situations.
In addition to agreeing with FEMA to “exchange experts during joint rescue operations in major disasters,” the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry will also be providing “security at mass events” in the United States.
This suggests that events designated as “National Special Security Events” by the Department of Homeland Security, which include the Super Bowl, international summits such as the G8 and presidential inaugurations, will now rely partly on Russian authorities to provide security.
The meeting last week also agreed on the conclusion that US and Russian emergency authorities will increase their co-operation, “in order to respond efficiently to all kinds of disasters.”
The use of foreign troops or other officials in a law enforcement capacity providing “security” inside theUnited States is illegal under Posse Comitatus. Capt. William Geddes of the U.S. Army Reserveacknowledged last year that it is against federal law to use US troops to conduct police patrols, despite the fact that such occurrences are becoming increasingly common. The use of foreign troops is an even more clear cut violation of Posse Comitatus.
Last year we reported on how Russian troops were invited to the US as part of a Fort Carson, Colorado drill focused around anti-terror training. Aside from learning how to target terrorists in America, the Russian soldiers were also out in the local community attending a baseball game in Colorado Springs.
As Mac Slavo writes, “Rumors have circulated for years about the possibility of foreign troops being deployed on U.S. soil in the event of a widespread declaration of a national emergency. For quite some time there have been anecdotal reports to support the claim that the U.N., Russia and other nations would be used in a policing capacity should some critical event befall our nation.”
“The fear should such a scenario take place has been that these soldiers would act under the banner of their own flags, ignoring the fundamental protections afforded to our citizens, leaving Americans under the jurisdiction of people who don’t speak our language or respect our fundamental rights to self defense, to be secure in our homes, and to be presumed innocent in the eyes of the law.”
Concerns about foreign troops being used on US soil have lingered ever since the release of State Department Publication 7277, which is a blueprint for the harmonization of US and Russian forces under a framework of United Nations-led global government.
Back in 2008 it was also reported that US and Canadian authorities had signed an agreement that would pave the way to using each other’s militaries on both sides of the border “during an emergency”.
Alex Jones has documented foreign troops being trained on U.S. soil to deal with “insurgents” since the late 1990?s as part of “urban warfare drills”.
Back in July 2010, our reporters covered the Operation Vigilant Guard exercises in Chicago which involved Polish troops training alongside U.S. National Guard troops in drills focused around raiding terrorists and drug dealers.
According to SFC Mark Ballard of the Illinois National Guard, the Polish forces were “integrating into some of the civil military units that are participating in this exercise” as part of Illinois’ partnership with the Republic of Poland, a relationship based around “integrative training” and blending military and civilian forces in the event of a national emergency, as well as making this process of integration with foreign troops more “visible”.
*********************