MEDIA ROOTS – On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin calls out the corporate media for covering the elections while distracting us from what’s really important, interviews former NPR Reporter, Andrea Seabrook, who woke up to the L/R paradigm, highlights ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ as the Hero, and calls out Secretary of State Jon Husted as the Villain. RT Producer Ameera David talks about the death of Rachel Corrie and Abby exposes the truth about how much the government can know about you through your iPhone.
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Media Propaganda, Rachel Corrie, iPhone Spying | Breaking The Set
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MEDIA ROOTS — The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is the next looming threat to internet freedom, as the American government continues its relentless siege of the digital domain. Coming on the heels of SOPA, PIPA and ACTA, CISPA sounds more like the final name in a quartet of lovable Disney characters as opposed to draconian internet legislation. However, this latest incarnation appears to be the internet’s biggest foe to date. If CISPA becomes law, the risk to civil liberties is greater than all the previous bills combined.
U.S. Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) is the architect of CISPA, or H.R.3523. Prior to his political calling, Rogers served as a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent. Currently, he serves as the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. This latest effort to undermine the internet focuses less on intellectual property and does not burden private companies with policing their information flow. Rather, CISPA makes a broader and more sinister reach for power by simply forcing companies to comply with new government regulations, in the name of cyber security. As Andrew Couts of digitaltrends.com aptly points out, “Whereas SOPA and PIPA were bad for many companies that do business on the Internet, and burdened them with the unholy task of policing the Web (or face repercussions), this bill makes life easier for them; it removes regulations and the risk of getting sued for handing over our information to the law. Not to mention doing what the bill says it’s going to do: protecting them from cyber threats.”
CISPA aims to grant non-civilian agencies unrestricted access to all digital information. So, it stands, the National Security Agency will benefit the most from the legislation. If this initiative succeeds, the NSA will have access to emails, social media, library records, online banking and credit card information. In a letter sent by opposition groups and a number of Democratic lawmakers to CISPA sponsors Mike Rogers and C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersburger (D-MA) these alarming implications are made clear. The letter says, “Without specific limitations, CISPA would, for the first time, grant non-civilian federal agencies, such as the National Security Agency, unfettered access to information about Americans’ Internet activities and allow those agencies to use that information for virtually any purpose.”
Supporters of the bill say it will allow private companies to easily share customer communications related to “significant” cyber and national security threats with government agencies. As long as the information meets these two criteria, government agencies can use it on a wide scale. In turn, private companies would be shielded from lawsuits filed by customers. A number of Silicon Valley companies have already pledged their support for the bill including: Facebook, Microsoft, Symantec and IBM.
However, a vocal opposition has developed in an attempt to beat back CISPA. U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has been CISPA’s most notable opponent, calling it “Big Brother writ large.” RT (formerly known as Russia Today), a cable news station with an American audience of 50 million, was one of the first media outlets to decry CISPA and to use the phrase “worse than SOPA.” CISPA is particularly dangerous because it would void current privacy laws and create channels for companies to share digital information with government agencies without the need for court orders.
In addition to this attack on internet privacy, the bill contains numerous other disturbing implications. One is the erosion of barriers between the private sector, government and military. Also, like so many bills of the post 9/11 era, the language is ambiguous. The language describing what can be spied on and how that information can be used is extremely vague. Moreover, if a private company violates your privacy, the ensuing legal battle to prove liability is a Herculean task. A complete summary of CISPA’s threats to cyber privacy can be found at Time’s Techland section.
Despite widespread opposition to the legislation, the bill passed the House of Representatives on April 26, 2012. Whereas SOPA and PIPA squared off Hollywood and Silicon Valley against one another, in a fight over piracy, CISPA goes beyond that and zeroes in on privacy. As a result, there is much more widespread support for the bill in the tech-community. Whereas SOPA, PIPA and ACTA would have placed the burden of cyber-policing onto companies, CISPA relieves them of this duty and places the onus government. According to The Vigilant Citizen “Privacy and free speech are not exactly mutually exclusive. Loss of privacy threatens free speech, and the loss of free speech is inevitably a loss of privacy.”
As the American government becomes more authoritarian and American people more paranoid, the battles fought over the privacy of the public digital domain will intensify. Much like the government and the military-industrial complex dumping vast amounts of our America’s wealth into wars abroad, yielding questionable results, the government will continue its aim to control one of the last bastions of free speech. Only time will tell how successful their surge will be. Have the shut downs of SOPA, PIPA and ACTA taught Americans to remain vigilant and make their voices heard, or will CISPA prevail?
MEDIA ROOTS – While privacy is certainly the dominant concern surrounding the controversial use of drones in this country, the lack of technological barriers to entry is the grease on the slippery slope. However, despite privacy concerns, the defense industry will continue its voracious lobbying effort to make sure drone technology becomes increasingly accessible to corporate commercialization. Abby Martin of Media Roots and RT reports on the use of domestic drones in the US:
Abby Martin – Domestic Drones 101 for RT
4th Amendment to the United States Constitution
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It is reasonable to assert that in the course of your friendly local police department launching a drone over the neighborhood every chimney, window and blade of grass in the neighborhood becomes “the place to be searched.” Many court cases have discussed and ruled that privacy is not protected for incriminating activity that exists from a public vantage point. For the most part, these decisions were always considered with respect to the naked human eye. However, drones are electronic eyes that extend the reach of the human eye making the right to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects substantially more difficult by the day.
Kyllo v. United States
Federal agents from a public vantage point used a thermal-imaging device to search Danny Kyllo’s residence for heat emissions not visible to the naked eye. In 2001, the Supreme Court explained, “[to] explore the details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a search and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.” The decision asserted Americans have an expected privacy that cannot be violated even by technology that does not enter the home. This decision contrasted with the lower courts assertion that the device could not “penetrate walls or windows to reveal conversations or human activities.” This oxy-moronic contrast acknowledges that walls and windows are off limits.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority decision and his words are prophetic. Justice Scalia specifically tailored a “firm but bright” line drawn by the Fourth Amendment as the entrance to the house. Justice Scalia described this interpretation as “the long view” of the Fourth Amendment to specifically protect against more sophisticated future technology. Dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens argued the line would be crossed as soon as this surveillance technology becomes available to the public. While Kyllo v. United States is not drone specific it lifts the veil on the inherent capacity of drones to violate privacy with their electronic eyes and the potential rapid assimilation of drone technology into the commercial and private market.
Drone Commercialization
Though chaperoning Susie on her first date and having a drone dive bomb a pizza onto your front porch are gallows humor, the feasibility and potential use of drones for commercial use is real and ongoing. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) was instrumental in crafting legislative language directing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to expedite approval of police departments and universities to deploy drones under five pounds this year. Further, this language sets forth the plans for larger drones to fly the American skies in 2015.
Companies previously shy of entering the drone market due to FAA ambiguity on drones in American airspace are now all clamoring to get a piece of the evil seeping from Pandora’s box. Drone technology was born from war and the companies migrating from weapons of war to “softer” domestic applications still maintain an emphasis on spy and weapons capabilities. Once American police departments and universities are saturated with drones and their long term service contracts the technology will creep into more “innocuous” commercial applications. It is not hard to imagine this evolution ending with Billy, living in the year 2050, building a spy drone from a kit in the garage to spy on his neighbors.
Technological Barriers
This evolution of technology and the increasing accessibility to the average person takes on several dimensions of concern. It is easy to extrapolate Billy’s neighborhood spy drone wreaking havoc on nude sun bathers enjoying the privacy of their back yard or snapping a few photos through Mr. and Mrs. Jones window as they fail to close the blinds in their lust to embrace. A look into the future of drone technology we find hundreds of sovereign states across the world developing advanced war capable drones to launch against America or other states with which they disagree. It is important to understand that weapons proliferation is a collective response to technological monopoly.
A look at nuclear technology reveals technological barriers to entry serve as a counter-balance to proliferation. Because nuclear technology is high science and the materials necessary are only accessible to advanced societies, humans are only able to delay nuclear proliferation. As nuclear technology and materials are shared amongst “friends,” the barriers to entry are demolished. The result of this proliferation today is the placement of social barriers to assign who is worthy of nuclear technology and who is not. These social barriers will only delay the inevitable. Drones being significantly less advanced technologically than nukes will rapidly proliferate beyond Western domination and the Earth may plummet into global drone warfare.
Chris Martin for Media Roots
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SALON – In November 2010, a police lieutenant from Parma, Ohio, asked Vanguard Defense Industries if the Texas-based drone manufacturer could mount a “grenade launcher and/or 12-gauge shotgun” on its ShadowHawk drone for U.S. law enforcement agencies. The answer was yes.
Last month, police officers from 10 public safety departments around the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area gathered at an airfield in southern Maryland to view a demonstration of a camera-equipped aerial drone — first developed for military use — that flies at speeds up to 20 knots or hovers for as long as an hour.
In short, the business of marketing drones to law enforcement is booming. Now that Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to open up U.S. airspace to unmanned vehicles, the aerial surveillance technology first developed in the battle space of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is fueling a burgeoning market in North America. And even though they’re moving from war zones to American markets, the language of combat and conflict remains an important part of their sales pitch — a fact that ought to concern citizens worried about the privacy implications of domestic drones.
MEDIA ROOTS – Facebook, often referred to as “Fascistbook” in some circles for their authoritarian practices, has again upset users by unilaterally switching email addresses on user profiles to [user]@facebook.com. Messages are thus delivered to account inboxes without prior consent of the user.
It’s a sly attempt by Facebook to keep their audience on their sites despite the obvious violation of privacy. While users are still able to revert back to their regular email address, the switch was done discreetly and without any prior notification. In 2010, all Facebook users were provided with a Facebook email address, but it wasn’t until this past weekend that all profiles were switched over.
Avaaz, an international online social movement, has a petition that has attracted over 900 signers in the last twenty-four hours. “This major change to the privacy settings of hundreds of millions of Facebook users without their consent is unethical, and it’s bad business.”
Oskar Mosco
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THE DAILY CALLER – Over the weekend, Facebook users may have noticed that their default email address was changed to their Facebook email address without any action on their part.
The company first announced the change was coming in April with little-to-no fanfare after first releasing the new service in 2010. Their aim is to allow users to consolidate their electronic communications in one place — Facebook. Facebook’s post-email vision of the Internet was viewed at the time as a potential Gmail killer.
“The change was noticed over the weekend by blogger Gervase Markham, who said that in making the move, the company conducted an man-in-the-middle (“MITM”) attack on him. In cryptography and computer security, a man-in-the-middle attack is a form of eavesdropping, in which the attacker relays messages being sent between the victims without their knowing about it.”
“In other words, Facebook silently inserted themselves into the path of formerly-direct unencrypted communications from people who want to email me,” Markham wrote.
While switching user default settings might be a way to take a crack at incumbent email service providers — Google, for example — technology blog Lifehacker made the point in 2010 that Facebook email wasn’t about email: “It’s about extending the reach of Facebook messages.”
MEDIA ROOTS – US Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden have asked the National Security Agency to reveal an estimate of how many Americans the agency has spied on through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In 2008, FISA was expanded to allow the wiretapping of phone and e-mail communications without a warrant, and there is virtually no oversight of its wiretapping operations. The NSA’s ironic response to the Senators’ request: revealing that information would be a “violation of privacy.”
I interview Ginger McCall, director for EPIC’s Open Government program about FISA privacy concerns and EPIC’s Freedom of Information Act request, revealing the Department of Homeland Security’s official list of absurdly innocuous words they search for when they spy on social media networks.
Abby Martin
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Ginger McCall, director for EPIC’s Open Government Program on NSA hypocrisy.
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US NEWS – Wyden, who has earned a reputation as an aggressive advocate for privacy, is pushing NSA as the Senate debates the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a bill that allows the government to wiretap individuals outside of the U.S. and any communication they might have, even if they engage with American citizens.
But NSA says it cannot reveal how many Americans might be affected because the effort would be too great an undertaking.
“Obtaining such an estimate was beyond the capacity of [the] office and dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSA’s mission,” the inspector general of the intelligence community told Wyden in a Monday letter.
The NSA inspector general also concluded that revealing even an estimate of the number of Americans under surveillance would “violate the privacy of U.S. persons.”
MEDIA ROOTS — The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is the next looming threat to internet freedom, as the American government continues its relentless siege of the digital domain. Coming on the heels of SOPA, PIPA and ACTA, CISPA sounds more like the final name in a quartet of lovable Disney characters as opposed to draconian internet legislation. However, this latest incarnation appears to be the internet’s biggest foe to date. If CISPA becomes law, the risk to civil liberties is greater than all the previous bills combined.
MEDIA ROOTS – While privacy is certainly the dominant concern surrounding the controversial use of drones in this country, the lack of technological barriers to entry is the grease on the slippery slope. However, despite privacy concerns, the defense industry will continue its voracious lobbying effort to make sure drone technology becomes increasingly accessible to corporate commercialization. 
MEDIA ROOTS – Facebook, often referred to as “Fascistbook” 