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Once again, as he did with the Bradley Manning saga, Glenn Greenwald has sensationalized and distorted a complicated story, doing the best he can to glue the very worst possible interpretations onto important facts in order to further is now-routine Libertarian attacks on Obama—and most institutions of legitimate government. I assume his new monetization scheme he introduced the day before he broke the story has benefited from all the noise he's created. But now the rest of the media, and all of us, have to sort out the relevant facts, something Glenn is rarely very interested in because they clutter up his angry stick-it-to-the-man (or at least Obama) libertarian narratives.

To be sure, violations of our privacy can be a threat to our democratic principles and ideals. But as recent events have demonstrated, so too can terrorism. The balancing act we must do will be discussed for generations to come (if we last that long). I think it's essential that we discuss them fairly, and demand that our journalists do too.

Because most of my friends and readers don't have the time to parse all this stuff, I am going to present here some simple descriptions of what PRISM, and related NSA snooping projects actually do, without all the agenda-hawking hyperbole being baked into so many accounts. None of these programs are some wholesale sweep of private data and communications that Greenwald and others have tried to suggest. I will update this page as more or better pieces become available. My personal thoughts on Greenwald and this drama appear at the end.

Overviews if PRISM

U.S., company officials: Internet surveillance does not indiscriminately mine data

According to a more precise description contained in a classified NSA inspector general’s report, also obtained by The Post, PRISM allows “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers. The companies cannot see the queries that are sent from the NSA to the systems installed on their premises, according to sources familiar with the PRISM process.

Crucial aspects about the mechanisms of data transfer remain publicly unknown. Several industry officials told The Post that the system pushes requested data from company servers to classified computers at FBI facilities at Quantico. The information is then shared with the NSA or other authorized intelligence agencies.

According to slides describing the mechanics of the system, PRISM works as follows: NSA employees engage the system by typing queries from their desks. For queries involving stored communications, the queries pass first through the FBI’s electronic communications surveillance unit, which reviews the search terms to ensure there are no U.S. citizens named as targets.

That unit then sends the query to the FBI’s data intercept technology unit, which connects to equipment at the Internet company and passes the results to the NSA.

The system is most often used for e-mails, but it handles chat, video, images, documents and other files as well.

“The server is controlled by the FBI,” an official with one of the companies said. “We do not offer a download feature from our server.”

Another industry official said, “No one wants the bureau logging into the company server.”

What is Prism (by Kevin Drum (Motherjones)

Obviously this is still a little fuzzy, but the picture that's developing is substantially different from the initial reporting. If tech companies have agreed only to build more secure ways of passing along data in response to individual FISA warrants, that explains why they've never heard of PRISM and why they deny being part of any program that allowed the government direct access to their data.

Technically speaking, this also makes a lot more sense. The process described by the Times sounds quite plausible, in contrast to the "direct access" story. Further reporting might clear this up even more, for example by explaining just how automated this system is and when human intervention is necessary.

Through a PRISM darkly: Tracking the ongoing NSA surveillance story
I'm a huge fan of tech journalist, Mathew Ingram. But while I very much disagree with some of his takes on this story and feel he's far too trusting of Greenwald (something others have learned not to do), he's very good at presenting the more ominous side of the story without some of Greenwald's dishonest and distorting reporting. So in the interests of presenting some balance, I include his summation of some of the technical reporting he's seen. Keep in mind, this was early on, and many new facts are coming to light daily which sap some of the "big brother" hyperbole and drama from this story as he's written about it here.

This story is moving so quickly that it is hard to keep a handle on all of the developments, not to mention trying to follow the denials and non-denials from those who are allegedly involved, and the threads that tie this particular story to the long and sordid history of the U.S. government’s surveillance of its own citizens. So we thought it would be useful to try and collect what we know so far in a single post, which will be updated as often as possible with new information.

Note: Ingram is a Canadian, so as a targeted "foreigner" in the NSA's crosshair, I feel he can and should be rightfully concerned about just how far these NSA programs can go. I personally feel most of these fears are grossly exaggerated, but I respect anyone's right to have and report on them as they see fit.

Critical Overviews of Recent NSA Revelations

NSA Bombshell Story Falling Apart Under Scrutiny; Key Facts Turning Out to Be Inaccurate (by Bob Cesca)

It turns out, the NSA PRISM story isn’t quite the bombshell that everyone said it was. Yes, there continues to be a serious cause for concern when it comes to government spying and overreach with its counter-terrorism efforts. But the reporting from Glenn Greenwald and the Washington Post has been shoddy and misleading.

FISA 702 or PATRIOT Act 215? Questions on the Guardian/Wapo surveillance scoops (by @MSNBC contributor, Joy Ann Reid)

In other words, is this about domestic surveillance or foreign surveillance? You could argue that either way, the government colluding with phone or Internet companies to sweep up “metadata” is hellafied creepy either way. But in the interests of accuracy, the reports should get the law right.

Views and Commentary

We Are Shocked, Shocked! (by "Wired" creator David Simon)

Is it just me or does the entire news media – as well as all the agitators and self-righteous bloviators on both sides of the aisle – not understand even the rudiments of electronic intercepts and the manner in which law enforcement actually uses such intercepts? It would seem so.

http://muckrack.com/link/vBZ0/we-are-shocked-shocked

Personal Thoughts About Greenwald And This Story

The day before he started blogging about "leaked" information from the NSA, he announced that his Guardian-based blog would now allow "reader support." I'll reserve further comment on that amusing coincidence for another post.

Suffice it to say that Glenn is the PT Barnum of libertarian bloggers, and credit must be given to his flair for exciting people enough to throw money at him for distorting very important stories; stories which he may have legitimately broken, for legitimate reasons, before demagoguing right out of them any and all fairness, rationality, and respect for disagreements about what the material facts might mean. As usual, rather than go do the hard work of reporting themselves, most of the mainstream media will just suck up Greenwald's reporting and use it to sell papers.

By the time anyone realizes many of the facts were completely distorted, the popular memes and misconceptions are already out there, and nearly impossible to get back. By then, Karl Rove and the conservative noise machine have been able to recast the anger they generate into weapons they can deploy against democrats and progressives. Lee Fang's new book goes into how this works.

The result is one more huge and noisy distraction from the larger problem we all face: how to recast a global political system that is completely dysfunctional, and unable to correct the imbalances created by global capitalism run amok. None of us are comfortable knowing corporations or government have such unfettered access to our communications. But I am far more uncomfortable with the lack of focus by progressives who claim they wish to address that crisis. They are thrilled by these hyperbolic fireworks that people like Greenwald are so good at igniting, without understand that such stories just misinform, distract, and dispirit the very voters we need to fix all these pressing problems while we still have a habitable planet to host them.

Few people under 50 can grasp what the last seven years of the Vietnam war was like. It had cost over 21,000 American lives, far more than that in casualites and permanent disabilities, and generally tore America apart, socially, politcally, and spiritually. It was one of the most traumatic periods in our history, and in many respects, we are still reliving and resolving issues stemming from it. Modern conservatives still hang much of their pro-military rhetoric on the canard that "we didn't fight to win in Vietnam." Well now it seems that the conservative hero of that era, Richard Milhaus Nixon, on his way to the presidency, actually conspired to prolong the war to damage Democrats for their part in waging it, and allowing him to "win it."

Days before the 1968 election, the nation had been greeted with the news that the end of the war might be nearer than anyone thought possible during the so very nasty presidential campaign between Nixon and Hubert Humphrey (President Johnson, so politically damaged by the war, had decided not to run for another term). A deal had been struck between North and South Vietnam, a jubilant American people were told, and that peace was finally imminent.

But just days later, the nation's hopes were crushed as it was told that the deal had collapsed and the war would go on. The campaign momentum that had been shifting back toward Humphrey on the news of a peace deal, swung right back to Nixon. Tricky Dick went on to win the election, and the rest, was to become a very dark and ugly history that we are still paying for today. Rather than end the war, as Nixon promised during the campaign, he went on to expand it into Laos and Cambodia where still thousands more people died, while here at home, he set the tone and substance of the "imperial presidency" that many allege, not wrongly, we still endure today.

Old news for most of us; grim details of nearly a half-century gone by that many of those who prospered in the boom times that followed would probably rather forget. But others are far too damaged to ever forget. Whether you agreed with the war or not, you had to have been affected by it. I was in high school at the time, and it pretty much defined me, my clothing, my friends, teachers, school work, family life, and my later views and philosophies as they evolved. I still so clearly remember my mother's anguish as she anticipated my brother's pending draft number as it was about to be announced in the selective service lottery. My father, a WWII war hero who was awarded the Distiguished Flying Cross, sent his medals to Nixon to protest the war. The Vietnam war was everything and everywhere throughout the American existence. If you didn't live through those times, you can just take the Iraq war fiasco, and multiply it by 100. That was Vietnam.

And it still won't go away. Vietnam is the war that will never die. And now we learn that almost a third of it was prolonged because 1) Richard Nixon was a monumentally traitorous scumbag, and 2) Johnson lacked the courage to admit to the American people that his knowledge of just how big a scumbag Nixon had been was inhibited by the fact that the knowledge came via an illegal wiretap. How ironic that it would be Nixon's own wiretap efforts that would destroy him, but one still has to wonder how different the world might have been if Johnson could have admitted to one wrongdoing in order to reveal an even greater one. A wrongdoing that cost so many people their lives, ruined or reshaped their survivors, and probably permanently altered the trajectory and ultimate governability of the American experiment.

There is no outrage because outrage is now a tactic, not an emotion.

Today is the 10th year anniversary of the Iraq war. Seems like a pretty good time for bloggers and the media to remind us that it wasn't the first unnecessary, or unnecessarily long war, by hammering on this Nixon story hard.. Yet if not for Rachel @maddow (again), and perhaps a few Twitterers like me, the U.S. media would scarcely give this incendiary story more than a passing glance. We've become so accustomed to outrage being a tactic in our politics, or for link-baiting a blog site, or for driving a hashtag campaign, that all the genuine emotion has been sapped from the word, as well as its utility in shaping our national discourse. Who has the time or emotion for one more outrage? Especially one that is now 45 years old.

I do. And I really think that you should too.

Now prepare yourself

Because this story may and should upset you on many levels.

First, the basic outine:

LBJ Tapes Show Richard Nixon May Have Committed Treason By Sabotaging Vietnam Peace Talks

Next, the larger context and relevance…

Once again, courtesy of Rachel @maddow, whose team is just so damn good at that:

Rachel Maddow: History shows war a tool for political opportunists

Many of us in the liberal/progressive space have spent years decrying the pathetic state of the corporate news empires that govern our daily lives now. We know what they are doing to us, and there's rarely much we can do to stop it.

Perhaps ironically, and due to the very market forces we often renounce as ineffectual, things are happening that promise to restore at least a semblance of intelligent and responsible balance to the media's scales. Probably without initially intending to, @MSNBC, chasing that almighty dollar, has begun a steady transformation of cable news that seems to be on the verge of making real reporting, careful research, thoughtful analysis, and strong voices stylish and marketable enough for prime time.

Whether in the form of Rachel Maddow, Chris L Hayes, Melissa Harris Perry, Krystal Ball, Lawrence O'Donnell, Steve Kornacki, Martin Bashir, or many of the fine contributors, panelists and guests they are bringing forth each day, such as Joy Ann Reid, Joan Walsh, Goldie Taylor, Anthea Butler, and Ari Melber, @MSNBC is steadily elevating the national discourse by producing segments like the one below.

It takes a lot of thought to produce a tribute like this, but you can't do it unless you care. MSNBC has assembled a lot of fine people who care. They may not get us out of this mess, and Comcast may yet put the brakes on their development, but for now, they sure are a step-up from where we've been. I'm thankful for all of them.

The Maddow Show Gives Thanks

Would the Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up – Part 8 Church Power (1 of 8 original blog posts. See PDF below for compilation)

LISTEN: Amy Macpherson is a Canadian Journalist for the CBC, formerly of Huffington Post, who has spent a sleepless month doing some breathtaking original research on Mitt Romney and his Mormon Church's intricate machinations throughout our society. She has barely had time to edit this work, and while it will surely become a book, she wanted people to know what she's learned before they vote on Tuesday.

While it's been seen by some big dogs, few have had the courage make noise with it this late in the game. I was only handed it 90 minutes ago, I had merely skimmed it, but I found it so compelling, I got several people to start breaking it down to see if any of it can be used to bring down this scary cult-spawn named Mitt Romney.

I wish it were shorter, but I mostly wish we had it a week ago. Karoli has compiled all 8 parts of the series into one PDF for your reading pleasure (and haste).

Please share this widely.Comments are open.

A lot of people have missed this excellent little movie about the history that brought us here. People mock Mike Huckabee's ludicrously partisan history texts, but those people are educating a new generation to think like they do. Progressives should be spending billions on short educational blips like this one that get their message across with an economy of words and ideas. They are dirt cheap to produce, but just look at the page views. That's how it's done, folks. We need to fight this culture war in the trenches, and videos like this make great bullets.

So I was out trying to locate some new voters to register on the next to last day for new registrations, when I came across this street corner populated by some dedicated Teaparty/Romney voters keeping it classy. They had signs for just about every hysterical conspiracy theory that existed for Obama to date. They would rotate the different messages every few minutes, sometimes marching into the center of the street disrupting traffic when they could get away with it. I decided to ask them what one of them meant.

I apologize for the primitive nature of this little movie. It’s the very first I’ve edited on my own. I promise to get better if I ever decide I need a new hobby.

Cloward–Piven strategy — the teaparty activist in the video is not making-up this bit of strategy, but it never became the lynchpin of anything, as Glenn Beck has suggested. Legions of teaparty activists need these conspiracy theories, half-rooted in reality, so that they have a reason to get up each day.

Posted on 9/29/2012

"No facts?" In Matt Osborne's "Twitter Brigade Burn Notice" post an update referred to here, Osborne included:

80 factual points, including statements and assertions that people would testify to in court,
32 exhibits of material evidence, including emails, instant messages, tweets and deleted tweets.

Posted on 10/02/2012

Uh, people writing responsibly (and who have jobs) may require some time to construct responses using those pesky things called "facts." Oh, and it also took a week or so to scour this hit piece for the evidence of "bullying" he mentioned so often. I failed. So have others, apparently.

Once upon a slime, Milt Shook wrote a 4000 word smoke screen.

In the image at the top of this page, the political blogger Milt Shook suggests that another blogger's detailed look at the possible origins and motives of an organized smear campaign about me reads like the gossip site "TMZ." You know, the sort of site where allegations and ineuendo get made, but almost no hard facts are presented? This post shall examine a 4000 word blog hit piece (that Shook claims isn't a hit piece), where Shook appears to attack OsborneInk's post, but merely as a way of attacking me by-proxy. I think discerning readers will soon see that the gentleman doth protested—and projected— just a bit too much

Shook's screed seems to have had 4 objectives. To 1) discredit Osborne, who unpacked a complex, nearly 2 month smear campaign against me that had been cleverly packaged as victims pushing back against "verbal abuse"; 2) promote the meme that it was a consequence of my own behavior, as evidenced by rumors, gossip, and self-serving portrayals over the years by various trolls and detractors; 3) minimize and deflect from his own role in the events behind the smears, while simultaenously trying to distance himself from a drama in which he was both an actor and a screenwriter; and finally, 4) posture as a heroic truth teller, using almost no facts whatever so he could bask in the adulation of the people gleefully receptive to any new contribution to the smear campaign.

The fact that Shook would go to press with something this thinly documented, knowing Osborne was bringing out more of the story in series, makes Shook's speculations and assertions look almost like credibility suicide notes. His post mostly speaks for itself (poorly), but I will respond to some of its more reaching or specious sentences with something his post was recklessly short on: evidence.

UPDATE: Since this post was written, @HeatherEChase admitted that almost everything said here, and in Matt Osborne's posts (with evidence) were completely true. Oopsy! Of course, she continues to manipulate, offering still new lies (without any evidence) to continue her cover-up. And naturally, Shook is quick to defend those lies too. He never appears concerned with, nor makes mentions of the fact that Chase now admits to exactly what Shook says never happened. What's important is that after all of Shook's lying (which I take apart herein), Heather Chase came right out and made him look like an accomplice, a stooge, and a fool. Given his dishonesty and transparent mendacity, I'm really ok with that.

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Posted on 9/23/2012

Examples Of How Milt Shook "Mostly Stayed Out of This Whole Shoq Business"

Note: Below are a small sampling of his hundreds of tweets in just the past few weeks. He's deleted many since. Watch him pivot from being an "observer" with no agenda, to a staunch advocate for the women on just one side of this intense Twitter melodrama. These are just a few blatant examples of his involvement, hypocrisy, and agenda.

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Milt Shook, the Outsider

In many of his tweets shown on the tweets exhibits page, you can see how hard our Superman, Milt Shook tries to assert that he's just an outsider to the entire drama that has encircled my life for months. This, almost 4 months since he got involved with StopRush, 11 days before his "Burn notice, burn notice" screed, 15 days after my apology for raising my voice last January, and 33 days since @vdaze and @angryblacklady and their group began their attacks on me (on a daily basis). He alleges here that he knew nothing of my cyber-romance with @vdaze (though it had been famous fodder for almost 6 weeks before he wrote his hit piece). Here, our outsider volunteers that he knew of "5 women" I had bullied (but he doesn't name any). That number grew to 7 in other tweets. Once again, none of these assertions have been supported with a single example or other form of even hearsay evidence. Nothing. Nada. Like Mitt Romney, he just says it, and assumes a certain audience will assume it's true.

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Please see VERY Important Updates below

Early Wednesday morning (9/26/2012), Darshann Simon, aka @honeybadgerLA, the friend and legal associate of @angryblacklady, and brief (but obviously disastrous) romantic connection of mine, decided to blow up my telephone 15 times about 36 hours after OsborneInk's first Shoq's Twitter Brigade Burn Notice.

Darshann used her home phone and cell phone to make these calls. I don't know why. Perhaps she figured one was blocked. In fact, I was just not answering her. She also left several voice mails, the longest being 48 seconds.

Anything Darshann needs to say to me can be said by email.

And all of this because a man she thought she fell in love with after barely 3 weeks was a bit squirmy about "treating her like a queen," rather than just treating her well.

By the choices these smear-mongers have made, this entire story, and all of their roles in it will be locked in Internet amber for generations. That's a shame. But they made this choice. If they choose to retract their nasty lies one day, I might choose to remove all of this documented evidence of them. Might.

Update #1

I had erroneously reported there were 17 calls, when in fact, it was merely 15. Sorry! Also, I removed some extraneous verbiage from my earlier post about Darshann's family members, and those related to these other smear-mongers seeing all this someday. Obviously, they will anyway, so there's no point in wasting words saying it.

Update #2

A member of my family received this, shortly after I posted this item around 3:00am EST last night. This morning, a family member forwards me this letter which they received from Darshann this morning:

Anyone who has followed this absurd and calculated drama, and this woman's daily and public role in it can only be stunned by the venality and stupifying revisionism this letter demonstrates. All I and others have done here and elsewhere has been to carefully document what she and her friends have been doing to me (and their possible motives) since August 6th, 2012 on Twitter.

Notice there is no mention of my "abusing her," or "threatening her or her daughter," or any of the other massive conflagrations about Jessica (vdaze) and @angryblacklady she has been engaging in. Nothing. Nada. Zip. She tries to create the impression that she is the victim and not the victimizer, even though the evidence that contradicts that narrative is now all over Twitter and the Internet. If you search for mentions of her by me, you will find at most two instances of tweets on Twitter since August 6th. This one, and this one. Both responses to things said by she or others in her group. Everything else has been documentation of their contrived and crumbling storyline.

If she, or anyone else had any evidence of "harassment of any kind by me, at any time, at any place, it has not been shown to anyone publicly, nor, to my knowledge, have any charges been filed. If anyone should be doing that, it's me (and it may come to that). The woman is simply lying on Twitter, and now lying in emails to my family. And remember, this woman is an attorney—an officer of the court.

Below are just a few of her many tweets you can sample over the past month. Still not seen enough? You can see so many others by her, as well as her campaign co-horts, @vdaze and @angryblacklady, here in this document (scroll down to see more of Darshann Padilla).

shoqvalue.com

I believe in the semantic web. I just don't know what that means.

Category Archives: People

What NSA’s PRISM Project Actually Does (It’s Less Than You’d Heard)

Overviews if PRISM

Critical Overviews of Recent NSA Revelations

Views and Commentary

Personal Thoughts About Greenwald And This Story

Related

Our New Eternal American Question: Where’s The God Damn Outrage?

There is no outrage because outrage is now a tactic, not an emotion.

Now prepare yourself

First, the basic outine:

Next, the larger context and relevance…

Related

Rachel @Maddow Is Thankful For Much. I’m Thankful For Her And @MSNBC. Here’s Why

Related

Canadian Journalist Unpacks 180 Years Of Mormonism… and Romney’s Monsters Within

VIDEO: Why Obama, And Why Now? Because History Says So, That’s Why!

VIDEO: @Shoq Encounters Some High-Info Romney Voters

Related

Milt Shook Tweet Exhibits

Examples Of How Milt Shook "Mostly Stayed Out of This Whole Shoq Business"

Milt Shook — Exhibits

Milt Shook, the Outsider