Do We Live in a Police State?

[Brian4Liberty]

Do We Live in a Police State? (http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/03/09/do-we-live-in-a-police-state/)
Written by Justin Raimondo - Friday March 10, 2017


WikiLeaks and Julian Assange would have gone down in history as the greatest enemies of government oppression of all kinds in any case, but their latest release – a comprehensive exposé of the US intelligence community’s cyberwar tools and techniques – is truly the capstone of their career. And given that this release – dubbed “Vault 7” – amounts to just one percent of the documents they intend to publish, one can only look forward to the coming days with a mixture of joyful anticipation and ominous fear.

Fear because the power of the Deep State is even more forbidding – and seemingly invincible – than anyone knew. Joyful anticipation because, for the first time, it is dawning on the most unlikely people that we are, for all intents and purposes, living in a police state. I was struck by this while watching Sean Hannity’s show last [Wednesday] night – yes, Fox is my go-to news channel – and listening to both Hannity and his guests, including the ultra-conservative Laura Ingraham, inveigh against the “Deep State.” For people like Hannity, Ingraham, and Newt Gingrich (of all people!) to be talking about the Surveillance State with fear – and outrage – in their voices says two things about our current predicament: 1) Due to the heroic efforts of Julian Assange in exposing the power and ruthlessness of the Deep State, the political landscape in this country is undergoing a major realignment, with conservatives returning to their historic role as the greatest defenders of civil liberties, and 2) American “liberalism” – which now champions the Deep State as the savior of the country – has become a toxic brew that is fundamentally totalitarian.
...
The material in “Vault 7” is extensive: it ranges from examining the ways in which a Samsung television set that is seemingly turned off can be – and no doubt has been – used to spy on the conversations and activities of a room’s occupants, to the various ways in which our spooks infiltrate and subvert common electronic devices, such as the iPhone, in order to gather information. “Infected phones,” we are told in the introduction to the material, “can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.” The CIA is even working on remotely controlling the electronic steering systems installed in cars – a perfect route to pulling off an assassination that looks like an “accident.” Not that the intelligence services of the “leader of the Free World” would ever consider such an act.

The massive infection of commonly used software and electronic devices leads to a major problem: proliferation. As these viruses and other invasive programs are unleashed on an unsuspecting public, they fall into the hands of a variety of bad actors: foreign governments, criminals, and teenagers on a lark (not necessarily in descending order of malevolence). This plague is being spread over the Internet by a veritable army of CIA hackers:
...
One aspect of the Vault 7 data dump that’s drawing particular attention is the CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s “Umbrage group,” which, we are told, “collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.” The idea is to mask the Agency’s cyberwar operations by attempting to hide the unique forensic attributes of its techniques. The process of attribution, WikiLeaks explains, is “analogous to finding the same distinctive knife wound on multiple separate murder victims. The unique wounding style creates suspicion that a single murderer is responsible. As soon one murder in the set is solved then the other murders also find likely attribution.”

So how does the CIA hide its “fingerprints”?

It simply draws on computer code used by its adversaries – and not only Russia – and inserts it into its own handcrafted malware and other invasive programs, thus leaving Russian (or Chinese, or North Korean) fingerprints on the handiwork of CIA hackers.

Now you’ll recall that the attribution of the DNC/Podesta email hacks was “proved” by the DNC’s hired hands on the basis of the supposedly unique characteristics of the programs used by the supposed Russian hackers. One of these alleged Russians even left behind the name of Felix Dzerzhinsky – founder of the Soviet KGB – embedded in the code, hardly the height of subtlety. So now we learn that the CIA has perfected the art of imitating its rivals, mimicking the Russians – or whomever – in a perfect setup for a “false flag” scenario.

After months of the nonstop campaign to demonize the Russians as “subverting our democracy” and supposedly throwing the election to Donald Trump by hacking the DNC and Podesta, a new possibility begins to emerge.
...
More: http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/march/10/do-we-live-in-a-police-state/

[pcosmar]

Do We Live in a Police State?

If you have to ask,, you don't understand the question.

and no one questions "police".

[osan]

Does the shit pope in the woods?

We live in the worst sort of police state; the kind the vast majority doesn't want to resist.

[timosman]

At least our system is not as bad as ....


Soviet
Stasi
Chinese

[pcosmar]

At least our system is not as bad as ....


Soviet
Stasi
Chinese


I don't know that.

[nikcers]

Just wait till the senate gets rid of the consent clause for ISPS to sell metadata. Right now AT&T already has a program where you can save 30 dollars a month if they have consent to sell your data. This is soon going to be something ISPS have to do to compete with ISPS who monetize your data to build their network.

[timosman]

Just wait till the senate gets rid of the consent clause for ISPS to sell metadata. Right now AT&T already has a program where you can save 30 dollars a month if they have consent to sell your data. This is soon going to be something ISPS have to do to compete with ISPS who monetize your data to build their network.

What's the likelihood the economically stressed populace will go for it?:confused:

[Ender]

Does the $#@! pope in the woods?

We live in the worst sort of police state; the kind the vast majority doesn't want to resist.

Or worse- don't even recognize.

[timosman]

Or worse- don't even recognize.

https://anexactinglife.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/monkeys.jpg

[Suzanimal]

That reminds me, I haven't bumped this thread in awhile...

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?450657-Lew-Rockwell-Interviews-Will-Grigg-The-US-Is-a-Soft-Totalitarian-State-(well-worth-the-watch)

[Anti Federalist]

You have to phrase it as a question?

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/oco.gif

[Chomp]

Yes, nowadays more police state.

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

One definition of police state:


a political unit characterized by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures



Yep.





https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/police%20state

[Anti Federalist]

Teaching Kids to Trust the Police is Child Abuse

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2017/02/teaching-kids-to-trust-police-is-child.html

Integral to the American concept of liberty is the right to hold the state at bay, which is why children are never too young to be taught to regard government employees with suspicion and defensive hostility. Some conscientious parents in Northampton, Massachusetts acted on that principle by demanding an end to a program intended to habituate public school inmates to the presence of police officers.

The local police department, acting on an initiative that originated with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, had dispatched officers to the local elementary school each week for an event called “High-Five Friday,” in which officers would exchange friendly greetings with cops who in practically any other context would treat such physical contact as a felonious assault on an officer. Police Chief Jody Kasper explains that she thought “it was a great way to start building relationships with young kids.”

That program was “paused” following complaints from a handful of parents who believe that it is the better part of wisdom to teach their children to avoid contact with the police, rather than seeking it out. In announcing the decision on his Facebook page, the department mentioned that “children of color, undocumented immigrant children or other children who may have had negative encounters with law enforcement” had expressed concerns about the program, which cued up the predictable reactions from the punitive populist faction.

“Why don’t you toughen up out there in Northampton, all right?” eructated Bill O’Reilly, offering the jocular suggestion – at least, I think he was kidding – that the principal and the school board should be arrested. Minor-league talk radio personality Charlie Brennan insisted that “this is why Donald Trump’s gonna get re-elected – stories like this.”

A contributor to The New American magazine who serves as that publication’s liaison to the white nationalist subculture snarked that “there’s no more `safe space’ for law-abiding citizens than when the police occupy part of it,” and insisted that no true American could possibly object to having an armed, costumed stranger clothed in “qualified immunity” breathing down his neck.

“It’s entirely understandable, for instance, that a child hailing from a Third World nation with corrupt police may feel apprehension at the sight of the men in blue,” he patriot-splained. “But not that long ago people would have understood the proper response: You take the student aside and gently explain that the police visiting his school are there as friends.”

“Some might also wonder about the parenting evident here,” he continued in the style of a Soviet commissar tutoring parents about their duty to raise children in the fear and admonition of the state and its human emissaries. “If your child has some irrational cop phobia, do you try and educate and change his mind? Or should you moan and groan and change all of society to accommodate irrationality?”

The “Caucasian leftists” and “minority” parents who complained about the police outreach program embody the “snowflake spirit of the age,” concludes the TNA contributor, whose otherwise barren rhetorical pantry is well-stocked with clichés. To be fair, this story does expose a rather shocking failure on the part of parents in the community – that is, those who accepted the program with bovine docility, rather than expressing skepticism about it.

If it is “irrational” for parents to teach their children to be leery of police officers, why do police officers and prosecutors cultivate that attitude within their own children?

Every parent whose children have been sentenced to attend the Regime’s mind-laundry should review the advice offered by Professor James Duane of Regent University Law School in his slender and indispensable book, You Have the Right to Remain Innocent.

(See my review here: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?506264-quot-You-Have-the-Right-to-Remain-Innocent-quot AF)

Over the past several years, Professor Duane has made hundreds of presentations, each of which begins with an invitation to any audience members whose parents were police officers or prosecutors to ask what advice they had been given by their parents.

“Every time this happens, without exception, [I’ve been told] the same thing: `Years ago, my parents explained to me that if I were ever approached by a law enforcement officer, I was to call them immediately, and they made sure that I would never agree to talk to the police.’ Not once have I ever met the child of a member of law enforcement who had been told anything different.”

Several news accounts mention the fact that among those who objected to the Northampton police outreach program included “children who may have had negative encounters with law enforcement.”

“Wow, only in grammar school, and they already have a sour relationship with police,” sneers the above-quoted commentator. “Their futures are bright.”

It is surpassingly easy for children to find themselves detained, shackled, or otherwise abused by police as a result of entirely trivial misconduct. Witness the case of Michael Davis, a five-year-old from California who was arrested, cuffed, and hauled away to jail for “battery on an officer” after he pushed away the hand of an officer who had touched him without consent and kicked the assailant in his knee in an act of righteous self-defense.

This was a case involving a delicate snowflake who filed a complaint after his feelings were hurt– none other than Lt. Frank Gordo, who lodged a complaint against the mother of his victim, accusing her of “discriminating” against him by taking the story to the media.

Incidents of this kind are becoming commonplace. Two years ago a misbehaving third-grader in Covington, Kentucky had his arms shackled behind his back at the elbows for fifteen minutes by a sheriff’s deputy. The eight-year-old supposedly attempted to elbow the deputy after going to the bathroom.

“You don’t get to swing at me like that,” the heroic tax-feeder lectured his captive. “You can do what we’ve asked you to do, or you can suffer the consequences.”

In 2014, deputies in Greene County, Virginia handcuffed a four-year-old who had been disruptive in class and briefly detained him at the sheriff’s office. The sheriff insists that the deputy “did what he had to do” and claims that the mother was “appreciative of the way he handled the situation,” which if true would be utterly horrifying.

Until recently, school resource officers in Texas would routinely treat student misbehavior as misdemeanor criminal offenses, issuing citations that could lead to fines and jail time. School officials in Syracuse, Utah have warned that students who are found at the high school during release-time religious instruction would be issued trespassing citations that, once again, can lead to fines and even jail time. The amalgamation of public education and law enforcement has created countless variations on the theme of criminalizing what had once been treated as minor disciplinary matters.

While police can cause problems for students who misbehave, their presence in schools can be even more dangerous to youngsters who are obedient and conscientious. Professor Duane urges parents to teach their school-age children that “you cannot listen to your conscience when faced by a police officer and think I have nothing to hide.”

Police are trained to lie as an investigative tactic, and rewarded when their lies prove to be instrumental in obtaining convictions. Innocent and well-intentioned children who somehow find themselves on the receiving end of police attention are “sometimes the most likely to be unfairly influenced by deceptive police interrogation tactics, because they tragically assume that, somehow, `truth and justice will prevail’ later even if they falsely admit their guilt,” Duane emphasizes. “You cannot safely trust a single thing police officers say when they are trying to get you to answer their questions…. Even if you are innocent, the police will do whatever it takes to get you to talk if they think you might be guilty.”

No better illustration of that reality can be found than the case of Idaho Falls resident Chris Tapp, who has spent twenty years in prison for a murder he did not commit. The only evidence against Tapp was a patently false confession extracted from him through the efforts of IFPD Sergeant (and future Idaho Falls mayor) Jared Fuhriman.

Fuhriman had been a DARE instructor and resource officer at Tapp’s junior high school. Desperate to clear the case, and left without any good leads after DNA evidence had cleared the three young men considered suspects – including Tapp – Fuhriman used his supposed friendship with his victim to lure him into lengthy interrogation sessions that mutated into something akin to psychological torture. Eventually Fuhriman convinced Tapp that unless he confessed to some role in the murder, he would inevitably be sent to the electric chair.

“Christopher would just keep saying, `Fuhriman is my friend, mom – he wouldn’t put my life in jeopardy, he wouldn’t lead me astray,” his mother, Vera Tapp, told me in a telephone interview. “He was just such a `good old boy’ with Christopher…. You can see it in the videos – `Oh, Christopher, we’re friends, we’re buddies,’ you know, laughing and joking around. And that’s just what he did when [Tapp] was in junior high. He [was] learning people’s trust and how to manipulate people. And that’s what he did – he manipulated Christopher.”

It is a screaming pity that Christopher Tapp wasn’t given the advice that police and prosecutors offer to their own children: Do not, under any circumstances, talk to a law enforcement officer, beyond demanding access to your parents and, if possible, an attorney.

Given that police and prosecutors tell their own children not to trust law enforcement officers, why shouldn’t parents employed in the productive sector do likewise?

[PierzStyx]

http://www.thelogofactory.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/hitler-mustache-smiley-face.png



Fascism,with a smile!

[Ender]

That reminds me, I haven't bumped this thread in awhile...

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?450657-Lew-Rockwell-Interviews-Will-Grigg-The-US-Is-a-Soft-Totalitarian-State-(well-worth-the-watch)

Love Grigg!

[Carlybee]

Yes. If you don't believe it, try doing something about it.

[osan]

Or worse- don't even recognize.

Yeah, because they think it is so much easier not to, and so tell themselves that everything is either OK or that there is nothing they can do about it. Any bullshit excuse for keeping their backsides planted in the Lay-Z-Boy.

[nikcers]

What's the likelihood the economically stressed populace will go for it?:confused:

What do you mean if I sign up for your internet service my internet bill will go down 30 bucks a month and I can now ask google to find my keys. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY
metadata

[Feeding the Abscess]

Just wait till the senate gets rid of the consent clause for ISPS to sell metadata. Right now AT&T already has a program where you can save 30 dollars a month if they have consent to sell your data. This is soon going to be something ISPS have to do to compete with ISPS who monetize your data to build their network.

Looks like I'm signing up for AT&T and sending pictures of my a s s h o l e to myself on an endless loop.

[nikcers]

Looks like I'm signing up for AT&T and sending pictures of my a s s h o l e to myself on an endless loop.
You're just going to get spammed with ads for hemorrhoid cream. You don't want endless ads for hemorrhoid cream do you?

[fisharmor]

You're just going to get spammed with ads for hemorrhoid cream. You don't want endless ads for hemorrhoid cream do you?

Save 30 bucks a month and potentially find a hemorrhoid cream that works?
It's not sounding that bad.

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Eating food that does not have the water cooked out of it will go a long way to fix hemorrhoids. Cream will not address the root problem. And f*ck AT&T.

[Jesse James]

time to pack up

[nikcers]

I'm sure people won't beg for it *cough* google fiber cough*. They are the ones that have the free search engine that knows everything I like right?

[Brian4Liberty]

I'm sure people won't beg for it *cough* google fiber cough*. They are the ones that have the free search engine that knows everything I like right?

Google "fiber", immediately get ads for "senior dating". :toady:

[DamianTV]

Just wait till the senate gets rid of the consent clause for ISPS to sell metadata. Right now AT&T already has a program where you can save 30 dollars a month if they have consent to sell your data. This is soon going to be something ISPS have to do to compete with ISPS who monetize your data to build their network.

Right now, the default is to "opt in", but there are schemes in the works to automatically opt you in (giving you no "opt"ion) and you must "opt out" as the proposed new default:

GOP Senators' New Bill Would Let ISPs Sell Your Web Browsing Data
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?508428-GOP-Senators-New-Bill-Would-Let-ISPs-Sell-Your-Web-Browsing-Data

https://politics.slashdot.org/story/17/03/08/2032228/gop-senators-new-bill-would-let-isps-sell-your-web-browsing-data

Yesterday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and 23 Republican co-sponsors introduced a resolution that would overturn new privacy rules for internet service providers. "If the Federal Communications Commission rules are eliminated, ISPs would not have to get consumers' explicit consent before selling or sharing web browsing data and other privacy information with advertisers and other third parties," reports Ars Technica. "The measure would use lawmakers' power under the Congressional Review Act to ensure that the FCC rulemaking 'shall have no force or effect.' The resolution would also prevent the FCC from issuing similar regulations in the future." From the report:

Flake's announcement said he's trying to "protect consumers from overreaching Internet regulation." Flake also said that the resolution "empowers consumers to make informed choices on if and how their data can be shared," but he did not explain how it will achieve that. The privacy order had several major components. The requirement to get the opt-in consent of consumers before sharing information covered geo-location data, financial and health information, children's information, Social Security numbers, Web browsing history, app usage history, and the content of communications. This requirement is supposed to take effect on December 4, 2017. The rulemaking had a data security component that required ISPs to take "reasonable" steps to protect customers' information from theft and data breaches. This was supposed to take effect on March 2, but the FCC under newly appointed Chairman Ajit Pai halted the rule's implementation. Another set of requirements related to data breach notifications is scheduled to take effect on June 2. Flake's resolution would prevent all of those requirements from being implemented. He said that this "is the first step toward restoring the [Federal Trade Commission's] light-touch, consumer-friendly approach." Giving the FTC authority over Internet service providers would require further FCC or Congressional action because the FTC is not allowed to regulate common carriers, a designation currently applied to ISPs.

The primary purpose of the elimination of privacy is to support an absolute Police State because the effect is to censor and suppress public dissent. That means that any meaningful change is nearly impossible.

Without the "Right to be Left Alone", everything about you is known and is for sale. But where does the money come from to pay for all these sales? Why, from YOU, of course. They have an incentive to "find something wrong" so they have a rationalization by which to take more money from you. Youre fat so we are gonna charge you more for bacon and ice cream. The cost of that increase seems trivial, but those small infringements are cumulative until you have nothing left.

Most importantly, without the ability to live your life as you see fit without observation, the elimination of individuality in inevitable. Accept the role to which you have been assigned, and they dont really care if there is no path to a positive self identity for you. Protest all you want, they will flag you but mostly leave you alone so long as you pay your taxes to them. That may not always remain true however. Try protesting the Government in China. Your life expectancy drops like a rock.

Police State = Population Enslavement

[nikcers]

Right now, the default is to "opt in", but there are schemes in the works to automatically opt you in (giving you no "opt"ion) and you must "opt out" as the proposed new default:

GOP Senators' New Bill Would Let ISPs Sell Your Web Browsing Data
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?508428-GOP-Senators-New-Bill-Would-Let-ISPs-Sell-Your-Web-Browsing-Data

https://politics.slashdot.org/story/17/03/08/2032228/gop-senators-new-bill-would-let-isps-sell-your-web-browsing-data


The primary purpose of the elimination of privacy is to support an absolute Police State because the effect is to censor and suppress public dissent. That means that any meaningful change is nearly impossible.


Police State = Population Enslavement

Thanks Obama!


The private sector receives comprehensive liability protection in any court of the United States—as long as the private sector complies with the to-be-issued federal guidelines for protection of personal information. H.R.2029 - Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2029/text)

[osan]

At least our system is not as bad as ....


Soviet
Stasi
Chinese



It is worse. By far, in the ways that matter most.

[timosman]

It is worse. By far, in the ways that matter most.

How can you be such a downer? Why don't you close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and repeat after me: USA! USA! USA!

[Ender]

How can you be such a downer? Why don't you close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and repeat after me: USA! USA! USA!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzrnZRslUiE

[Zippyjuan]

Trump is going to make it the best police state evar! More police. More DHS. More Homeland Security. More military.

Can you turn your head and cough for me now, please?

[timosman]

Trump is going to make it the best police state evar! More police. More DHS. More Homeland Security. More military.

Can you turn your head and cough for me now, please?

Sounds like your kind of guy.;)

[AZJoe]

"the power of the Deep State is even more forbidding – and seemingly invincible – than anyone knew. …

a Samsung television set that is seemingly turned off can be – and no doubt has been – used to spy on the conversations and activities of a room’s occupants, ... common electronic devices, such as the iPhone, ... “can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.” The CIA is even working on remotely controlling the electronic steering systems installed in cars – a perfect route to pulling off an assassination that looks like an “accident.” Not that the intelligence services of the “leader of the Free World” would ever consider such an act (https://wikispooks.com/wiki/US/Foreign_Assassinations_since_1945). ...

... This plague is being spread over the Internet by a veritable army of CIA hackers: “By the end of 2016 … the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (https://www.wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/files/org-chart.png) (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other ‘weaponized’ malware.” ...

[CIA/NSA False Flag Hacking and Spying] the CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s “Umbrage group,” ... “simply draws on computer code used by its adversaries ... and inserts it into its own handcrafted malware and other invasive programs, thus leaving Russian (or Chinese, or North Korean) fingerprints on the handiwork of CIA hackers. … the CIA has perfected the art of imitating its rivals, mimicking the Russians – or whomever – in a perfect setup for a “false flag” scenario. ...

We have created a monster, a Deep State with such unchecked power, armed with such Orwellian technology, that it represents a clear and present danger to our constitutional republic. … Accelerated by our foreign policy of perpetual war, the national security bureaucracy has accumulated immense power, and our elected leaders have neglected to provide any oversight. Indeed, they are at its mercy. ...

Either we slay the monster or it will enslave us."

[AZJoe]

One aspect of the Vault 7 data dump that’s drawing particular attention is the CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s “Umbrage group,” which, we are told, “collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.” The idea is to mask the Agency’s cyberwar operations by attempting to hide the unique forensic attributes of its techniques. ... It simply draws on computer code used by its adversaries – and not only Russia – and inserts it into its own handcrafted malware and other invasive programs, thus leaving Russian (or Chinese, or North Korean) fingerprints on the handiwork of CIA hackers. ... So now we learn that the CIA has perfected the art of imitating its rivals, mimicking the Russians – or whomever – in a perfect setup for a “false flag” scenario.


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/383133/medium/Vault7_Scooby_Do.jpg

[pcosmar]

[/COLOR]
Either we slay the monster or it will enslave us."


I have been pleased in the past to burn spooks operating on US soil.

I dislike dishonesty.

Whenever folks want,, I'll join in.
I've been waiting on ya'all.

[nikcers]

Right now, the default is to "opt in", but there are schemes in the works to automatically opt you in (giving you no "opt"ion) and you must "opt out" as the proposed new default:

The opt-in rules are scheduled to take effect on or after December 4, 2017 (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/isps-say-your-web-browsing-and-app-usage-history-isnt-sensitive/), but ISPs have petitioned the FCC (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/republican-led-fcc-will-quickly-get-chance-to-overturn-isp-privacy-rules/) to eliminate the rules before that happens. The latest CTIA filing was a reply to groups that opposed the petition to overturn the rules.CTIA is the main lobbyist group representing mobile broadband providers such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint.

[DamianTV]

The opt-in rules are scheduled to take effect on or after December 4, 2017 (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/isps-say-your-web-browsing-and-app-usage-history-isnt-sensitive/), but ISPs have petitioned the FCC (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/republican-led-fcc-will-quickly-get-chance-to-overturn-isp-privacy-rules/) to eliminate the rules before that happens. The latest CTIA filing was a reply to groups that opposed the petition to overturn the rules.CTIA is the main lobbyist group representing mobile broadband providers such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint.

Q: What do you call a thousand dead lobbyists at the bottom of the sea?
A: A good start!

---

Ok, heres something I rarely talk about.

For as much as I rant about ordinary people being susceptible to psychological manipulations of fear mongering, manufactured hatred, propaganda, etc, I dont talk quite as much about Lobbyists doing the very same things to politicians as I think many people, including myself, expecting they are the source of the phoney baloney that gets spewed all over the MSM like eating last nights leftovers after it went bad. Lobbyists use just as many mental perversions on those who have power to change the laws as they do on everyone else. The unique leaders like Ron Paul are easily able to see their BS for what it is and tend to call it out. But no one is perfect and those powerful manipulations still have an effect on every human being, but to varying degrees.

Lobbyists use Propaganda on politicians as much as MSM uses propaganda on the sheeple to get what they want, more money and more power, at the expense of the mundanes or those who they want to be powerless to resist their will. The Police State is the inevitable result of this because power and authority are granted to those who claim to protect you from whatever boogeyman is shown.

[AZJoe]

Big Brother Grows Bigger (https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/leviathan-indefatigable-shutterbug/)

“[s]oon, it may be hard for visa holders (http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/18/15332742/us-border-biometric-exit-facial-recognition-scanning-homeland-security) to board an international flight without submitting to a facial geometry scan.” Or any flight: “a new project is poised (http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/18/15332742/us-border-biometric-exit-facial-recognition-scanning-homeland-security) to bring those same systems to every international airport in America,” ...

a bureaucrat from US Customs and Border Protection spewed even scarier facts about this evisceration of privacy. For starters, he confessed that his agency"

“currently ha[s] everyone’s photo (http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/18/15332742/us-border-biometric-exit-facial-recognition-scanning-homeland-security), so we don’t need to do any sort of enrollment. We have access to the Department of State records so we have photos of US Citizens, we have visa photos, we have photos of people when they cross into the US and their biometrics are captured into [DHS biometric database] IDENT…”
… CBP already has visa holders’ faces on file (http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/18/15332742/us-border-biometric-exit-facial-recognition-scanning-homeland-security)…

[shakey1]

http://i67.tinypic.com/ojf0no.jpg

[AZJoe]

Who designed the malware worm that is now wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of computers internationally (https://theintercept.com/2017/05/12/the-nsas-lost-digital-weapon-is-helping-hijack-computers-around-the-world/) by hackers demanding a king’s ransom? The U.S. government.

Who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/10/4319278/us-government-hacking-threatens-cybersecurity-former-officials-say) (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The US government.

What country has one the deadliest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (http://theweek.com/articles/460030/americas-weapons-mass-destruction-by-numbers)? The US government.

Who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/tomdispatch-dc-congress-defense-international-arms-business) in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The US government.

Which is the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in wartime (http://www.icanw.org/the-facts/the-nuclear-age/)? The United States.

How did Saddam Hussein build Iraq’s massive arsenal (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/longroad/etc/arming.html) of tanks, planes, missiles, and chemical weapons during the 1980s? With help from the US government.

Who gave Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida “access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry” (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3340101/t/bin-laden-comes-home-roost/#.WRntIFUrK70)? The US government.

What country has a pattern and practice of entrapment (https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/) that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The US government.

Where did ISIS get many of their deadliest weapons (http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/08/politics/amnesty-international-isis-weapons-u-s-/), including assault rifles and tanks to antimissile defenses? From the US government.

Which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies (http://www.businessinsider.com/military-government-secret-experiments-biological-chemical-weapons-2016-9) on its own citizens? The US government.

Are you getting the picture yet?
The US government isn’t protecting us from terrorism. The US government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror. ...

More (https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/americas_bloody_reign_of_terror_a_nation_reaps_wha t_it_sows) from the John Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute.