Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

[Woodsman]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

Weirder by the day. We can see a copy of the black budget the first time in forever, courtesy of Sno. WaPo is keeping it under wraps 'cept for some excerpts. How responsible of them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...972_story.html

[reggie]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

while i don't believe that the snowden affair was contrived, i do believe that the brits destroying hard drives at the guardian was pure theater. surely they know that the information was backed up elsewhere on the globe, and if they didn't know they were told so, and it wasn't hard to figure out in any event. so the destruction at the guardian's office was partly bully-boy tactics aimed at the guardian's employees, and partly theater for a wider audience. the proof is that they destroyed them instead of confiscating them for analysis.

What reasons can you give for this belief? All you have is the media bombarding you with a story. What about that bombardment makes any of it "true"?

Here's some relevant introductory reading that delves into the system goals ...


Total Information Dominance.pdf

The Philosophy of Total Propaganda Control
http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.04/Essays.04/Miller.pdf

The concept of ‘information dominance’ is the key to under-
standing US and UK propaganda strategy and a central
component of the US aim of ‘total spectrum dominance’. It
redefines our notions of spin and propaganda and the role
of the media in capitalist society. To say that it is about total
propaganda control is to force the English language into contortions
that the term propaganda simply cannot handle. Information domi-
nance is not about the success of propaganda in the conventional sense
with which we are all familiar. It is not about all those phrases ‘winning
hearts and minds’, about truth being ‘the first casualty’ about ‘media
manipulation’ about ‘opinion control’ or about ‘information war’. Or, to
be more exact - it is about these things but none of them can quite
stretch to accommodate the integrated conception of media and com-
munication encapsulated in the phrase information dominance.

To the outsider, discussions about how ‘information dominance’ dif-
fers from ‘information superiority’ might seem arcane, but they are
revealing. For example, in a paper written back in 1997 Jim Winters and
John Giffin of the US Space and Information Operations Directorate
argued that information superiority was insufficient: ‘at some base
point “superiority” means an advantage of 51-49, on some arbitrary
metric scale. That is not enough of an advantage to give us the freedom
of action required to establish “Full Spectrum dominance”’.
Dominance implies ‘a mastery of the situation’ Superiority ‘only an
edge’. According to Winters and Giffin ‘We think of dominance in
terms of “having our way” – “Overmatch” over all operational possi-
bilities. This connotation is “qualitative” rather than “quantitative”.
When dominance occurs, nothing done, makes any difference. We have
sufficient knowledge to stop anything we don’t want to occur, or do any-
thing we want to do.’

There are two new elements to information dominance compared to traditional conceptions of propa-
ganda. The first is the integration of propaganda and psychological
operations into a much wider conception of information war. The sec-
ond is the integration of information war into the core of military stra-
tegy.

According to Lt Gen Keith B. Alexander, the US Army deputy chief
of staff for intelligence, the way forward for integrating intelligence and
information across the military is the creation of ‘Information
Dominance Centers’. There are already 15 of these in the US and in
Kuwait and Baghdad.5 Information dominance is not something
dreamt up by the Bush gang in the White House – or even by their ide-
ologues in the Project for a New American Century; it is mainstream
US military doctrine. In fact it is even used by the Democrats in pro-
nouncements on ‘progressive internationalism’.6 Although it originates
in the US, information dominance is also embraced in the UK.

[vt]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-concerns.html

[c1ue]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

What reasons can you give for this belief? All you have is the media bombarding you with a story. What about that bombardment makes any of it "true"?

Here's some relevant introductory reading that delves into the system goals ...


Total Information Dominance.pdf

Unfortunately, yet another example of ongoing Techno-Catharism.

Just because some US entity desires Total Information Dominance does not mean it is attainable.

I want to be rich, handsome, young, and happy.

Only one of these 4 goals is within my control.

[don]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

remember back in the daze when we all thought wire taps were relatively infrequent and in the hands of liberal judges . . .

US drug agency partners with AT&T for access to 'vast database' of call records

Hemisphere project, revealed by NYT, has AT&T employees sit alongside drug units to aid access to data in exchange for payment


US law enforcement officers working on anti-drugs operations have had access to a vast database of call records dating back to 1987, supplied by the phone company AT&T, the New York Times has revealed.

The project, known as Hemisphere, gives federal and local officers working on drug cases access to a database of phone metadata populated by more than four billion new call records each day.

Unlike the controversial call record accesses obtained by the NSA, the data is stored by AT&T, not the government, but officials can access individual's phone records within an hour of an administrative subpoena.

AT&T receives payment from the government in order to sit its employees alongside drug units to aid with access to the data.

The AT&T database includes every phone call which passes through the carrier's infrastructure, not just those made by AT&T customers.

Details of the program – which was marked as law enforcement sensitive, but not classified – were released in a series of slides to an activist, Drew Hendricks, in response to freedom of information requests, and then passed to reporters at the New York Times.

Officials were instructed to take elaborate steps to ensure the secrecy of the Hemisphere program, a task described as a "formidable challenge" in the slide deck, which detailed the steps agencies had taken to "try and keep the program under the radar".

The instructions added that the system should be used to generate leads towards new material, with call records obtained through standard subpoenas then used to provide evidence. The "protecting the program" section concluded that "all requestors are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document".



The document details a multi-million dollar program to prevent "insider threats" from intelligence officers, with plans to launch more than 4,000 investigations into unusual staff activity at the agencies, including downloading large numbers of documents or accessing material which they would not need in the normal course of their duties.

Such steps were in motion before Snowden disclosed any material to journalistic organisations, or the publication of such details in the Guardian and Washington Post. The NSA has yet to establish what material was taken by Snowden, according to press reports.

An NSA spokeswoman told the Post contractors were not included among the 4,000 planned investigations of security clearances. More than 500,000 US contractors hold top-secret clearances.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...records-access

[c1ue]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

More than 500,000 US contractors hold top-secret clearances.

Surprising there hasn't been a Snowden before now, given that huge number.

[reggie]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

drugs[/URL] operations have had access to a vast database of call records dating back to 1987, supplied by the phone company AT&T, the New York Times has revealed.

The importance of understanding the science of Cybernetics (the science of interactions between objects - in this case, people) now becomes more apparant, as it is clearly being revealed to the public that vast amounts of data - describing the interactions between people across telephone networks - has been available for quite some time. Understanding how the telephone system was architected, and how the data was analyze and leveraged, provides great insight into the far more complex network systems we all use today. Further, as this long term picture becomes more clear, Snowden's apparant revelations become less significant and far more questionable in their aim on the public mind.

[reggie]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

Unfortunately, yet another example of ongoing Techno-Catharism.

Just because some US entity desires Total Information Dominance does not mean it is attainable.

I want to be rich, handsome, young, and happy.

Only one of these 4 goals is within my control.

I absolutely despise responding to the indoctrinated minds of those with mid-level academic and corporate backgrounds, but I accidently saw this post (which I typically do not see because they are on permanent ignore).

The logic presented presumes that the goal is impossible to attain, and therefore we should discard any discussion of the techniques being employed to try to attain said goal. Further, discussion of said techniques are to be met with ridicule and name-calling in an effort to frame the entire realm of discussion as religious fanaticism. It's my sincere hope that Guest to this disucssion forum are not hindered by this transparent attempts to deflect.

By the way, if I'm thinking like a system architect of the social, and not just a peon member of society, then I will devise the metric by which individuals view themself as "rich, handsome, young, and happy" and then let these individuals chase these objectives. Now, that's control.

If the mods want to go after me (again) for my response, then so be it. But from where I sit, this poster has a long term pattern of abusive remarks.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

Unfortunately, yet another example of ongoing Techno-Catharism.

Just because some US entity desires Total Information Dominance does not mean it is attainable.

I want to be rich, handsome, young, and happy.

Only one of these 4 goals is within my control.

Is it happy? I hope it's happy. We have some control over our wealth. But less than we might imagine. Looks and youth are fleeting. Happy is one thing I hope we can choose to be.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

Reggie,

For what it's worth, I'm glad you post here. As I've said before, I'm quite the novice at understanding the application of complexity theory to social science. Particularly outside of empirical examination of previously collected data. Sometimes it is just hard to understand where you are coming from. It's easy to feel lost and stupid when one is linked to unfamiliar material and implications are left to be inferred. Yet sometimes I feel like I am understanding the thrust of your points. Social dominance theory is a long-standing facet of sociology. But when I asked you if you believed the internet was an experiment in social control, the question was genuine. And you answered me in the affirmative. But you did so in a manner that made it apparent that you thought this was obvious. It is not so obvious to all of us, least of all me. This was a completely novel idea in my world, although I had imagined the possibility of using the internet, big data, and complexity theory in the social sciences to sway populations that were close to a political tipping point towards a desired end. Perhaps, should you have the time, you could explain your view of the matter in the simplest terms possible to those of us less familiar with the body of work you study. Rant and rave might be the appropriate forum for this. But I'd be interested to read it either way.

-DC

[reggie]

Re: Surreal National Security: Brits smash Guardian storage media

Is it happy? I hope it's happy. We have some control over our wealth. But less than we might imagine. Looks and youth are fleeting. Happy is one thing I hope we can choose to be.

I would argue that we have no control over any of the above, actually. For we are not responsible for defining the goalposts. What is beauty? What is wealth? If I try to pursue goals that aren't within the realm of social normality, then will society accept me? And if society doesn't accept me, can I gain my idea of happiness?

We're so damn indoctrinated from the time that we enter this world that we don't even question the goal posts that are established for us. But that might be okay if it weren't for the fact that it's Madison Avenue, and not our parents or our family, that is establishing these perspectives for us.

Reggie,

For what it's worth, I'm glad you post here. As I've said before, I'm quite the novice at understanding the application of complexity theory to social science. Particularly outside of empirical examination of previously collected data. Sometimes it is just hard to understand where you are coming from. It's easy to feel lost and stupid when one is linked to unfamiliar material and implications are left to be inferred. Yet sometimes I feel like I am understanding the thrust of your points. Social dominance theory is a long-standing facet of sociology. But when I asked you if you believed the internet was an experiment in social control, the question was genuine. And you answered me in the affirmative. But you did so in a manner that made it apparent that you thought this was obvious. It is not so obvious to all of us, least of all me. This was a completely novel idea in my world, although I had imagined the possibility of using the internet, big data, and complexity theory in the social sciences to sway populations that were close to a political tipping point towards a desired end. Perhaps, should you have the time, you could explain your view of the matter in the simplest terms possible to those of us less familiar with the body of work you study. Rant and rave might be the appropriate forum for this. But I'd be interested to read it either way.

-DC

Thanks. Will do!