Dark Reading punts at PRISM-Don’t know much about illegal hacking?

I just discovered this article at a “Dark Reading” web site. Funny how an author for a dark-side security information web site does not know much about the dark-side surveillance program the entire world just found out about, now weeks ago, even though there have been whistleblowers telling us about it many years ago now, including in a New York Times article in 2009.

But then again, maybe the title is just the author’s way of saying she wants to stay out of prison, and uses a rhyme to kind of get oblique about it. With what they probably know at Dark Reading, maybe they just want to keep their head attached to their bodies?

Getting Out Of PRISM :
http://www.darkreading.com/monitoring/getting-out-of-prism/240156391?cid=SBX_dr_related_commentary_default_compliance&itc=SBX_dr_related_commentary_default_compliance

…Multiply that by thousands of employees, and it’s pretty clear that nobody’s marching in perfect lockstep. (By the way, this is also why grand conspiracy theories are bunk: Nobody’s that good.)

So entities aren’t monolithic, and there is always something going on behind the scenes that you don’t know about — and that might change your opinion on what you do know. For anything that sounds wrong, there is generally a reason behind it that made good sense at the time. This is why I’m not going to opine about the topic of national surveillance: I don’t have enough background information (and I probably never will).

“Nobody’s that good”, they always say. If there was such a massive conspiracy, they couldn’t hide it.

And they roll right over the contradiction without thinking. Hey, guys! They DIDN’T hide it, because now we KNOW about it, and they’re EXPOSED. You think talking about tin-foil hats says anything about anything? You trust a stranger to follow your young girl’s whereabouts and teen parties?

It’s simple. Even for a geek. You’ve got “nothing to hide”, but do you open your bedroom curtains and put a web cam to broadcast your nightly dalliances? Why not? It’s all legal activity, isn’t it? Or is it? And how much of what you do every day is illegal? How do you know, there are 100s of 1000s of pages of laws in this here land now. How can you know you never do anything illegal?

That’s a copout, not that I blame you. I do my own cautionary behaviors. The title says “Getting out of PRISM”, a very clever title, because everybody wants to “get out of PRISM”. We all want a get-out-of-jail (prison) free card too. But pleading ignorance will not save us from guilt.

You don’t have to be an expert to know what is already publicly known.

#1. We know what PRISM is. You know what it is. Your write for a technical web site that purports to be a source for information on exactly this kind of security topic. Besides, by now maybe even your grandmother knows what it is.

[Insert note: With what I saw in a video clip of interviews with
college kids, maybe you don’t know]

You could at least say you’re against it. How hard is that? “I am against universal national surveillance”. See? Or do you know something we don’t? A national surveillance state easily becomes a national police state. This is not “rocket science”, and it’s not even technical. It’s easy.

You could even reference the Electronic Freedom Foundation. They do have plenty of experts that have plenty of background information about this program and its army of cousins, and maybe some that did not get the attention that Snowden did.

And keep in mind there were several whistle-blowers before this one. Back in the day, the Establishment Press could not contain itself enough in praising Elsberg for the Pentagon Papers. My, how things have changed. At this stage, we can tell who is “Establishment Media” by how much they support the official line of the government, or cover up its secrets, or spin an unfortunate spill of secrets. Yep, applies to this UBM web site too I guess.

But the future is not written in stone. There are reasons they did not want this publicized, and there are reasons they want to track each and every one of us. Note the questions the Intelligence Committee in the House did NOT ask the NSA guys in the hearing the other day.

Even the purported maverick Michelle Bachman showed her timidity in her questions and carefully avoiding the hard-hitting followups that should have been asked. Do you listen on calls, she asked. The answer was that they do not “routinely” blah blah. And as to listening in on phone calls, he said, they have to get court orders before they can use the content of phone calls or emails in the courts. Give it a name: The D.C. Two-Step. Dodge to the right, dodge to the left. Shimmy right, shimmy left. Enough to make you dizzy.

The Fourth.

www.trutherator.wordpress.com

Related articles

• Ted Rall PRISM Takeaway: Are We Citizens or Serfs? Should Obama Resign? commentary (anewdomain.net)
• Senators challenge NSA’s claim that PRISM doesn’t target Americans (dailydot.com)
• Prism: secret surveillance could destroy democracy rather than defend it (realnewsnow.com)
• PRISM: The US Government is mad at Bradley Manning for doing to it what it is Doing to All of us (juancole.com)
• Dark Side of the Prism – Firefox Add on – How to install Dark Side of the Prism (uwnthesis.wordpress.com)
• Do Millennials Give A Damn About PRISM? (dish.andrewsullivan.com)

Tags: Dodge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, National Security Agency, New York Times, NSA, Pentagon Papers, PRISM, Surveillance