This report was delivered on November 1 to the final meeting of the Socialist Equality Partys 2020 election campaign, titled On the eve of the Civil War Election.

The United States elections are being held under conditions of unprecedented social, economic and political crisis. Whatever happens in the coming days and weeks, there is no going back to the status quo. The alternative confronting workers in the United States and indeed internationally is socialist revolution or capitalist barbarism.

As the election comes to an end, the coronavirus pandemic is spiraling out of control. The Socialist Equality Party has defined the global coronavirus pandemic as a trigger event, that is, an event that is accelerating and bringing to a head all the underlying contradictions of American and world capitalism.

The virus is natural in origin, but its effects are bound up with the society in which it has emerged. It is exposing the consequences of decades of social reaction and the endless diversion of resources into the financial markets and the instruments of militarism and war. It is revealing the nature of capitalist society, a society dominated by a financial oligarchy whose control is no longer compatible with democratic forms of rule. And it is propelling millions of workers and youth into social and political struggle.

The average number of daily new cases globally is approaching half a million. The average daily death toll, according to official figures, is above 6,000. Already, nearly 1.2 million people have died. After a drop in the summer months, new cases throughout Europe are at record levels. In France, new cases average over 40,000, nearly ten times higher than the previous peak in early April. In the UK, new cases are above 20,000. In Italy, new cases peaked on Friday at over 30,000, more than five times the level in late March, when the explosion of deaths forced the shutdown of the entire country.

No country, however, has proven more incapable of safeguarding public health than the United States, which has four percent of the worlds population but nearly a quarter of deaths from COVID-19. More than 236,000 people have died from the coronavirus, and 1,000 more are added to this horrific toll every day. The number of infections is approaching 10 million, increasing by more than 10 percent in the past two weeks alone. The virus is spreading without restraint throughout the country, and hospitals in Texas, Wisconsin and other states are reaching or have surpassed capacity.

The pandemic and the response of the ruling class to it have created a social crisis in the United States unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. According to official figures, 13 million people are unemployed in the United States, seven million more than before the pandemic hit. Two-and-a-half million people have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks, and this figure is increasing at a faster rate than at any point in recorded history. The number of people in poverty has increased by eight million since May, and 10 percent of the adult population reports that they cannot buy enough food. Amidst a deadly pandemic, nearly one fifth of households report that they are not getting medical care because of the cost, while nearly half report that they are struggling to cover basic expenses and bills.

Mass layoffs are accelerating, as the ruling class uses the conditions of the pandemic to implement far-reaching changes aimed at boosting profitability. The economic consequences of the pandemic are having a permanent and devastating impact on an entire generation of young workers, predominantly employed in the gig and service sectors.

This catastrophe is the product of definite policies pursued by the ruling class over the past 10 months. The financial oligarchy is implementing a policy of mass death and social devastation. After first downplaying the danger, it utilized the pandemic to organize the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in world history, far surpassing even what was done following the 2008 financial collapse.

The printing presses of the Federal Reserve have been turned over to Wall Street, to the tune of trillions of dollars. Bank profits have surged. Morgan Stanley announced last month that its profits have risen 25 percent compared to a year ago. Goldman Sachs is doing even better, with quarterly profits at $3.6 billion, nearly double from a year ago. The wealth of the corporate and financial oligarchy has soared to new heights. Since the end of February, Jeff Bezos has increased his net worth by close to $80 billion.

It is impossible to understand the political situation in the United States on the eve of the elections outside of this social reality.

The final weeks of the election campaign have made clear: Trump is running not for president, but for Fhrer. The White House is the center of a conspiracy to ignore the results of the election, stoke fascistic violence, and utilize the courts to overturn the popular vote.

It is less than one month since the initial exposure of a fascistic plot to kidnap and murder the governors of Michigan and Virginia, plots that were encouraged and incited by the highest levels of the state. The plots grew out of the anti-lockdown demonstrations in April and May, following the bailout of Wall Street, as the ruling class was implementing its back-to-work campaign. They were encouraged by Trumps calls to liberate Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia and other states from any restraints on the spread of the coronavirus. Far-right organizations are being mobilized in order to implement and enforce a homicidal policy of the ruling elites.

In the final days of the election, Trump is doing everything he can to delegitimize the results. If the results are not known by the evening of November 3, he said in Pennsylvania yesterday, youre going to have bedlam in our country. He denounced two recent Supreme Court decisions at least temporarily allowing the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. Somebodys going to play games, and they just got an extension. Whats the extension all about? Wouldnt you like to hear, November 3, we win, we lose? There is, in fact, nothing in the Constitution that requires a result of the election on November 3. The winner of the election is determined after all the ballots are counted.

Pennsylvania, a battleground state, is a particular target. Are they going to mysteriously find more ballots after polls close, Trump asked yesterday. Strange things have been known to happen, especially in Philadelphia. National Guard troops have been deployed to Philadelphia, where they will remain until after the election, following the eruption of protests over the latest incidence of police murder.

Whatever happens over the coming weeks, Trump is building up a fascistic movement based on extreme nationalism, anti-socialism and authoritarianism.

Trumps fascistic politics are directly connected to the ruling class policy of herd immunity in relation to the pandemic. In his campaign rallies, accompanied by chants of Superman, Trump is doing everything he can to downplay the threat to the lives of millions of people and encourage the spread of the coronavirus. In recent days, he has claimed that doctors are deliberately inflating the number of deaths due to COVID-19 in order to make more money. Trumps son, Donald Jr., declared in a recent interview that deaths from the virus are almost nothing, echoing Trumps earlier comment that the coronavirus affects virtually nobody.

While Trump is attempting to steal the election, the Democrats are doing everything they can to cover up the threat to the most fundamental democratic rights.

At his own campaign events, Democratic candidate Joe Biden makes no mention of the election coup, the plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other governors, the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, or anything else related to the threat to democratic rights in the election. Indeed, the Democratic Party played a central role in the ramming through of the nomination of Barrett by refusing to do anything to stop it.

The Democrats cowardice in response to Trumps conspiracies is entirely bound up with their own opposition to any policies to address the spreading pandemic or the devastating social crisis. Beyond talking about masks, the Democrats have nothing to propose, as they reject any measures that threaten the interests of the corporate and financial elite.

The Democratic Party is terrified of anything that will spark mass unrest, which would threaten to develop into a movement against not just Trump, but the entire capitalist system.

The Democratic Party and the various pseudo-left organizations that surround it insist that in these elections all the energy of workers and youth must be directed toward the election of Joe Biden. Only in this way, they claim, can there be a return to normalcy and an end to the disaster that has been produced by Trump.

Completely absent from these arguments is any actual analysis of what the Democratic Party is and the class interests it represents, or the social and political conditions that have produced Trump.

The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military. Indeed, as the election approaches, Bidens fundraising in the third quarter has benefited from an influx of money from the finance industry. For the past four years, the opposition of the Democratic Party to Trump has focused not on his fascistic politics, but on the demand of dominant sections of the military and intelligence agencies for a more militarist foreign policy against Russia and in the Middle East, which culminated in the impeachment fiasco.

Biden has the support of some of the leading war criminals of American imperialism, who have wreaked havoc on populations throughout the world: John Negroponte, the former US ambassador to Honduras during the US-backed war against the Sandinistas, former ambassador to Iraq and former director of national intelligence; Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA implicated in constructing black site torture centers under Bush; Colin Powell, one of the leading architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and countless others.

The policy of a Democratic administration will be one not of social reform, as the apologists for Biden claim, but brutal austerity. The eight years of the Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president, saw a massive transfer of wealth to the rich following the 2008 economic and financial crisis. Indeed, it was the legacy of Obama, along with the right-wing and militarist character of the Hillary Clinton campaign, that allowed Trump to posture demagogically as an opponent of the status quo.

And it is remarkable that as Trump engages in his fascistic plots, the layers around the Democratic Party have dedicated themselves to an extended effort aimed at attacking the democratic foundations of the United States and attacking the legacy of the American Revolution and the Civil War. The center of this campaign is the New York Times' 1619 Project, a work of historical falsification that presents all of American history as a conflict between races, aimed at promoting the Democratic Partys politics of racial division.

As for Bernie Sanders, what has become of his so-called political revolution? The central aim of Sanders campaigns, both in 2016 and 2020, has been to contain mass social anger and opposition to both parties, to contain it within the framework of the Democratic Party, and to ensure that it finds no genuine progressive expression. He is performing that role now as a leading campaigner for Joe Biden.

To rely on the Democratic Party to defend democratic rights would be suicidal.

Moreover, nowhere in the media and political establishment is there any serious analysis of social and political conditions that have produced an unprecedented crisis and breakdown of American democracy. Trump is presented as some sort of demon from hell. To paraphrase Trotsky in writing about Hitler, they claim that if it were not for Trump, American democracy would blossom like a garden. What a contemptible lie! Trump is an expression of a far deeper disease.

For decades, the ruling class has been engaged in the single-minded pursuit transferring wealth to the rich. Beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s, the ruling elites launched an offensive to destroy all the gains won by workers through bitter struggle. Endless resources have been channeled into the financial markets through deindustrialization and the ripping up of social infrastructure.

Social inequality has reached levels not seen since before the Great Depression. With the crucial assistance of the trade unions, working class opposition to this social counterrevolution was suppressed. As a result, the national income share for the bottom half of the population fell from 20 percent in 1980 to 12 percent in 2014, while the income share for the top 1 percent rose from 12 percent to 20 percent. Wealth and income are even more heavily concentrated in the top 0.1 and 0.01 percent of the population.

The American ruling class responded to the dissolution of the USSR with an orgy of militarism. The terrorist attacks of September 11 were seized on to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq. More than one million people were killed in the war on terror. Torture was instituted as official government policy. NSA spying on the population became a central element of conspiracy against democratic rights. The persecution of Julian Assange, supported by the entire political establishment and spearheaded by the Democratic Party, was used as a test case for the criminalization of opposition to war.

All of this, all the crimes of American capitalism, all the inequality, all the violence at home and aboardall of this is coming to a head. Historians will look back at the 2020 elections as both a continuation and a new stage in the protracted crisis of American democracy.

There are various scenarios for what will play out over the next several days, on Election Day and after. What can be ruled out, however, is that somehow the political crisis in the United States is going to be resolved peacefully. Whether or not Trump is in the White House come January, the mobilization of fascistic organizations is now a fact of American political life. The pandemic will continue to rage, and there is no faction of the ruling class that proposes anything that will stop it.

What happens, however, cannot be separated from the development of the class struggle. The working class will not and cannot remain a bystander in events. It must prepare to respond through its own independent initiative.

Any attempt by Trump to steal the election in defiance of the popular vote will certainly be met with mass demonstrations. The working class must intervene through the method of class struggle. It must oppose Trumps coup-plotting and the incitement of fascistic violence through strike action, including preparation for a political general strike. Opposition to Trumps conspiracies must be connected to the independent intervention of the working class on the basis of a program that represents its own interests.

The working class requires a perspective not just for November 3, but for November 4 and beyond.

At the beginning of this year, we published a statement on the World Socialist Web Site, "The decade of socialist revolution begins. Before the pandemic had emerged as a global crisis, we called attention to the essential characteristics of the world situation that had developed over the previous decadethe institutionalization of unending military conflict and the growing danger of world war; the breakdown of democracy and the rise of the far-right internationally; the degradation of the environment and the growing danger of climate change; the extreme growth of social inequality, particularly following the 2008 economic crisis.

We wrote: The objective conditions for socialist revolution emerge out of the global crisis. The approach of social revolution has already been foreshadowed in the mass demonstrations and strikes that swept across the globe in 2019: in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, France, Spain, Algeria, Britain, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Kenya, South Africa, India and Hong Kong. The United States, where the entire political structure is directed toward the suppression of class struggle, witnessed the first national strike by auto workers in more than 40 years.

The dominant and most revolutionary feature of the development of the class struggle, we explained, was its global character. The working class is an international class that has grown enormously over the past two decades and is united like never before through the processes of production and advances in communications.

The growth of the working class and the emergence of class struggle on an international scale are the objective basis for revolution, we explained. However, the spontaneous struggles of workers and their instinctive striving for socialism are, by themselves, inadequate. The transformation of the class struggle into a conscious movement for socialism is a question of political leadership.

When we launched the Socialist Equality Party election campaign at the end of January, we explained that its central task was to fight for a socialist program and perspective for the working class, not only in the United States but throughout the world.

Then the global pandemic hit. As with everything else, the pandemic had a significant impact on our campaign. We decided very early on to cancel all of our in-person election meetings and our travel plans, in the US and internationally. We also decided that we could not petition to get on the ballot, as attempting to meet the already anti-democratic restrictions in the USrequiring the gathering of thousands and thousands of signatures just to get on the ballotwould have deadly consequences in the midst of a pandemic.

The courts and Democratic Party state governments defended these restrictions. Michigan Governor Whitmer, the target of the fascistic coup plot, even referenced the anti-lockdown rallies in the spring to argue that we should have gathered signatures, while the judge in the case complained of gyms being shut downthe same complaint voiced by the militiamen.

While the form of our campaign changed as a result of the pandemic, the essential content remained. Indeed, the pandemic and the response of the ruling class to it have demonstrated that the perspective advanced by the Socialist Equality Party, and only the Socialist Equality Party, is the way forward for the working class.

We say to workers and youth who are listening in on this meeting: The central conclusion that must be drawn from the experiences of this year is to join the SEP. You know what is happening in your plants and workplaces. The ruling class is using the pandemic to carry out a massive restructuring of class relations. The capitalist class has contempt for the lives of workers, forcing you to choose between starvation or sacrificing your lives for profit.

You see what Trump is doing. You see the conspiracies that are being carried out, which are directed above all at the opposition of workers. You know that there is growing anger over inequality, exploitation, unemployment, police violence, the attack on democratic rights, and endless war.

The struggles of workers cannot be advanced unless a socialist leadership is built. A political movement must be developed that takes direct aim at the source of the crisis: the capitalist system.

The fight against the pandemic must be waged on the basis of a program for the massive redistribution of wealth. The ill-gotten gains of the oligarchs must be seized in order to finance universal health care and other critically needed social infrastructure. Non-essential production must be shut down until the pandemic is under control, and all workers must receive full income and be protected from eviction. Where production is essential to the functioning of society, workplaces must be made safe, with conditions overseen by the workers themselves, in consultation with health care professionals.

To organize society on the basis of social need, not private profit, the giant banks and corporations must be turned into public utilities. World economy must be restructured on the basis of a scientific and rational plan. To carry out this program, the working class must take power into its own hands, to establish a government of, by and for the workers.

To organize the struggles of the working class, the Socialist Equality Party is spearheading the fight for the formation of rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, independent of the corporatist trade unions. It fights to unify the working class, in opposition to all efforts to divide workers along racial, gender and national lines.

There is no national solution to the global pandemic, as there is no national solution to any of the great problems confronting the working classinequality, exploitation, war, environmental degradation. The building of a mass socialist movement in the American working class must be connected to the mobilization of the billions of workers throughout the world, the massive social force that can chart a new way forward for mankind.

To meet these challenges posed before the working class, a new movement must be built, a political movement based not on pragmatic impressions and empty hopes, but on a scientific analysis of the nature of capitalist society. It must be a movement that is based on an assimilation of the great lessons of history--a movement that understands that to the crisis of capitalism the working class must respond with the perspective of socialist revolution.

The leadership of this movement is the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International.

I encourage all of you to vote for the Socialist Equality Party candidates, Norissa Santa Cruz and myself. But most importantly, make the decision to join the SEP and take up an active fight for the building of a socialist leadership.

Read more:
The socialist perspective in the 2020 US elections - World Socialist Web Site - WSWS

John Judkins Contributing columnist

Your federal government is spying on you. Every post on Facebook. Every text message. Every email. Every website visited. You have essentially no privacy online.

In 2006, a consumer advocacy group obtained previously sealed sworn statements from a former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who testified that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at one of its facilities in San Francisco. This splitter makes copies of all emails, web searches, and other internet traffic to and from AT&T customers and sends copies of all of the data to a room operated by the National Security Agency (NSA). This room has a dedicated line transmitting data out of AT&Ts facility to the NSAs own servers. Later testimony revealed that this splitter was one of dozens of devices installed at many different facilities owned by AT&T.

The Washington Post and several other media outlets have run various stories about the NSA spying on our own citizens from time to time. Through the work of these journalists, it has been revealed that the NSA has utilized provisions located in Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect metadata of phone traffic from virtually every American. Additionally, we have learned that the NSA spent over 1.5 billion dollars to build a massive data collection center in Utah five times the size of the U.S. Capitol Building complete with its own power plant. An article by Forbes estimated the power requirements of the spying facility at approximately 65 megawatts costing about $40 million per year to generate. Further, it was estimated that the facility used 1.7 million gallons of water per day to cool the massive computers used to conduct surveillance on all Americans.

Nearly all public officials swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, and any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution would hold the NSAs domestic spying as unconstitutional. I do not believe that there is any valid interpretation of the Fourth Amendment that permits the government to collect and store U.S. citizens online communications. Yet still, the NSA continues to do this without any suspicion of wrongdoing by citizens, and without any court or congressional oversight. This kind of surveillance of citizens begs to be abused in the long run. It does not matter if we trust the individuals in office at a particular moment. Allowing the government to collect our data without reason or cause is absurd and unconscionable.

Now it appears that this domestic spying program may devastate our international trade with Europe. Under European Union law, citizens of the EU have a fundamental right to privacy, with most online activities protected by something called the General Data Protection Regulation. A German privacy activist named Max Schrems has undertaken a series of lawsuits beginning in 2013 to challenge the adequacy of U.S. law to protect EU privacy rights. Recently, an EU court agreed with Mr. Schrems holding that the U.S. governments ability to collect data on EU residents without proper procedural protections makes it impossible for U.S. firms to be generally capable of complying with EU law.

In July the Office of Information and Data Protection Commissioner ruled that European countries cannot use contracts to work around data privacy laws, and essentially all data transfer to the United States is now illegal. This ruling has been stayed pending further appeal, but unless a compromise can be reached, nearly all internet traffic with Europe could be halted.

The costs of this trade disruption will be enormous. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Transatlantic trade generates upward of $5.6 trillion, of which at least $333 billion was related to digitally-enabled services. The truth is that likely far more of that overall commerce is facilitated in some way by cross-border data transfers.

All of these concerns could be obviated if Congress were to apply ordinary due process requirements to our nations surveillance programs. There is no reason for our government to spy on all Americans at all times. The NSA domestic spying of internet activity violates our constitution, and it appears to violate European law, too. It might just crash our economy if something isnt done soon.

John Judkins is a Greenfield attorney.

John Judkins Contributing columnist

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Big Brother is spying on you - Hillsboro Times Gazette

For the most part, Rotten Tomatoes seems to have its finger on the pulse, at least when it comes to quality. Every rating portal has its flaws, but we all need a reference of some sort. When it comes to documentaries and the recording of human behaviour, here are the best ones according to the folks running the fresh-o-meter.

IN 1974,daredevil Philippe Petit walked between New York's Twin Towers on a thin wire, and this is a 2008 documentary of that feat. It tells of the immense planning that went into getting it done, and keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout.

We know everything about our favourite rockstars, but what about the backup singers? They're a vital part of the sound of everyone from the Rolling Stones to David Bowie, and this 2013 documentary shines a light on their passion and hard-work.

This documentary takes a look at the simmering racial relations and tensions in America, based on a manuscript from 1979 by James Baldwin.Raoul Peck made this in 2017, envisioning the parallels between then and now.

This 2013 documentary film directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite tells the story of Tilikum, a captive killer whale. Humans and performance killer whales have a storied history, and this film looks at how we understand very little of these creatures. Basically, it's a total takedown of places like SeaWorld.

This 2010 British documentary was directed by the notorious street artist Banksy. It's an illuminating look at the borderline illegal world of underground art, as told through the eyes of Banksy and fellow artist Thierry Guetta.

This2016 Turkish film directed by Ceyda Torun is a step away from usual direction that documentaries take. It's about the 100s of thousands of cats that roam the metropolis of Istanbul, how the locals live around them, and the frantic modernization of an ancient place with a unique feline history.

This heart-rending2008 Israeli animated war documentary was directed by Ari Folman. The film tells the story of Ari himself trying to recollect memories of the 1982 Lebanon War, in which he served as an infantry soldier. This one is not for the weak of heart, but it is truly masterful.

Matt Damon narrates this documentary by Charles Ferguson about the consequences of the 2008 global financial meltdown on the American people. It examines the key elements that led to the collapse, as well as the powerful people who played a part in making it happen. Over the course of the unofficial investigation, you're taken to China, the US, and even Iceland.

This Canadian rockumentary is about a heavy metal band named Anvil that released an album in 1982. This album went on to inspire and influence everyone from Metallica to Anthrax, yet Anvil itself dropped into obscurity, consistently touring and suffering the rigours of the road without ever finding fame. It's comical, touching, and surprisingly emotive.

This 2011 British documentary focuses on a science experiment from the 1970s that involved a chimpanzee named Nim. The basis of the project was to establish that an ape could communicate through language if raised as a human child. However, it soon devolved into a heart-wrenching indictment of how terribly humans treat animals in the name of science.

This2014 biographical documentary chronicles the storied life of legendary film critic Roger Ebert. From his battles with the film industry to his battles with alcohol, this one pulls no punches.

Enron, one of the most notorious American corporations in history, a name synonymous with corruption and the evils that companies get up to. This 2005 documentary is based on the book of the same name, and tells the story of how Enron traders resorted to all manner of illegal schemes, at the cost of the public, to keep their high paying jobs.

This2014 documentary film directed by Laura Poitras was one of the first to have direct contact with Edward Snowden after the NSA spying scandal made his a notorious figure who was constantly on the run. While the information he provided is now decently documented, it's still almost surreal to see what things were like at the time, when history was being made.

This documentary chronicles the life of the charismatic and headstrong Anthony Weiner, as he runs for mayor of New York in 2013. Unfortunately for him, his political and personal life comes crashing down after a sex scandal involving him sending a picture of... well, his wiener. The irony was not lost on anyone.

This 2019 documentary wasdirected by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, and chronicles the lost-lasting, often tragic consequences of China's One Child Policy, which lasted from 1979 to 2015. It affected entire generations in a way that can only be described as devastating.

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From Scandals To War, Here Are The 15 Best Documentaries Of All Time According To Rotten Tomatoes - ScoopWhoop

opinion

President Donald Trump has put Edward Snowden back in the news. Asked if he would consider pardoning the former National Security Agency contractor, Trump said I am going to take a very good look at it.

Snowden faces criminal charges after he leaked classified documents revealing the scope of the NSAs surveillance apparatus in 2013. He has been living in exile in Russia ever since.

From the beginning, most young Americans believed Snowden acted with the publics interest in mind. The passage of time has revealed a broader shift in sympathy for Snowden, including from Trump, who once called the exiled American a spy who should be executed. His leaks are now being seen for what they were intended: a much-needed reckoning of government overreach.

Trump loves cutting deals, and its time to cut one with Snowden. Short of a pardon, Snowden can admit wrongdoing in exchange for a probation sentence. Seven years in exile has been enough; he should be allowed to return home without going to prison.

Snowden revealed that under the auspices of the Patriot Act, the NSA secretly and indiscriminately collected the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Also exposed were the lies that came from the very top of the U.S. national security establishment. The Obama administrations director of national intelligence, James Clapper, lied to Congress in denying the collection of data.

There are competing interpretations of Snowdens actions. For his critics, it is simple and straightforward. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney a vociferous defender of the NSA spying that he helped facilitate called Snowden a traitor, adding that a pardon would be unconscionable. This was echoed by Reps. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who said it would be a serious mistake to consider clemency.

On the other hand, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Justin Amash, I-Mich., all support a presidential pardon. Sen. Paul, who called Snowdens leak an act of civil disobedience said, Mr. Clapper lied in Congress in the name of security. Mr. Snowden told the truth in the name of privacy. The former committed perjury and got a sweet book deal; the latter told the truth and potentially faces life in prison.

Snowden was not selling secrets to the Russians or the Chinese. He simply revealed that the privacy of American citizens was being violated on a massive scale, with no demonstrable gain in security. Furthermore, members of Congress knew almost nothing about what the NSA was really doing, and this included members of the committees who were in oversight of intelligence gathering.

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called Snowdens act a public service for good reason. There has always been a robust debate in America about the balance between security and liberty, and the extent to which government should be spying on its citizens, but regardless of anyones views on surveillance and privacy, who among us would say that we are better off remaining ignorant about all the things our government is doing to us?

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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Guest view: Should Trump pardon Edward Snowden? - The-review

Its the 300th episode of Screen Talk this week, as hosts Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson look back on some of the biggest stories they discussed over that stretch of recordings, starting in 2014 through the present, and look ahead to what a post-COVID 19 world will look like for the theatrical movie experience.

From the beginning of what Thompson calls the golden age for documentary filmmaking, with Laura Poitras Citizenfour, which concerned Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal, winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature; to Fox Searchlights back-to-back Best Picture Academy Award winners in 12 Years a Slave (2014) and Birdman (2015); George Millers post-apocalyptic Mad Max: Fury Road, a surprise critical hit, winning six Academy Awards in 2016; the rise and rapid fall of Nate Parkers The Birth of a Nation, and Barry Jenkins Best Picture winner Moonlight as a beautiful discovery, both in 2016; Jordan Peeles breakout success with Get Out, and another breakout in Timothe Chalamet, thanks to his starring role in Call Me By Your Name, in 2017; the divided reception of Green Book, which ultimately won the 2019 Oscar for Best Picture, and in some ways was an indication of just how old and white Academy voting membership was; and the #MeToo movement, which gained tremendous traction following the exposure of the widespread sexual-abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

But looming throughout the entire conversation is the fate of the theatrical movie experience already in jeopardy before 2020, the events of this year have brought theatrical to a point of existential crisis, during which streamers like Netflix have benefited. Nothing exemplifies this conundrum more than the narrative around the release of Christopher Nolans much-anticipated Tenet.

The films release has been delayed at least three times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was finally released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2020, and is scheduled to be released in the United States on September 3, 2020, in IMAX, 35 mm, and 70 mm.

But a key question that has yet to be answered is, now that audiences have gotten a taste of first-run movies at home, where entire families have been able to watch blockbusters for little more than the cost of a single ticket at big-city theaters, is it inevitable that the trend will continue even after theaters eventually reopen widely?

Kohn and Thompson discuss all of that and more during this 300th episode of Screen Talk.

Watch this weeks episode in the video above or listen to it below.

Screen Talk is available onApple Podcasts,Stitcher, andSoundcloud.Youcan subscribehereor viaRSS. Share your feedback withThompsonandKohnon Twitter or sound off in the comments. Browse previous installmentshere, review the show onApple Podcastsand be sure to let us know if youd like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk. Check out the rest of IndieWirespodcastsonApple Podcasts right here.

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Screen Talk 300: Revisiting the Biggest Stories of the Last Six Years - IndieWire

Early this month, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the Clean Network plan, a trade war offensive aiming to cut Chinese tech companies off from United States consumers. Before a numb and beleaguered public could wrap its head around such a plan, Trump dispatched a pair of chaotic executive orders effectively aiming to ban TikTok and WeChat from American app stores within 45 days and then lobbed on a third executive order last Friday, extending the deadline for TikToks China-based parent company ByteDance to sell off its assets that support the operation of TikTok in the U.S. to 90 days. Together, this sounded to some like a blueprint for a Great Firewall, Chinas own bulwark against foreign internet services.

The executive orders ban U.S. companies from doing business with the apps, but the initial TikTok order additionally leaves room for a forced sale of TikToks American arm to a domestic company (likely Microsoft or Twitter). The WeChat executive order offers less leeway, banning all transactions with WeChat itself, no matter who owns it, which will cut off a major avenue of communication between people in the U.S. and mainland China.

Both apps pose legitimate risks, and the Chinese government can demand that the companies hand over data. But the vague language of the executive orders and the Clean Network plan sounds a lot like Trumps attitude toward immigration: All apps from one country are bad and dangerous. Or, in the words of the Clean Network plan, Chinese apps threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformation. The State Department billed the Clean Network plan as new lines of effort, which include: disconnecting Chinese carriers from U.S. telecoms; removing Chinese apps from U.S. app stores and doing the same to U.S. apps on Chinese stores or devices; removing U.S. data from Chinese company-provided cloud storage; and, oddly for a new policy, ensuring the security of undersea cables. (Presumably, the government would have already been working on that last one.)

Its more of a vision board for racism and xenophobia than a plan, but Trump & Co. have already meddled with internet freedom at home. Republicans have salivated over rolling back Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which frees internet platforms from liability over user-generated content. Its the foundational law that allows vital resources like Wikipedia, social media platforms, and even comments sections to exist; Trump most recently attempted to bludgeon it by executive order, after Twitter wounded him with a bit of extremely lenient moderation.

Given all of that, lets entertain the possibility that Trump really, really wants a Great Firewall, meaning A) cutting off foreign platforms and B) censoring speech at home. How close could he get?

In simplest terms, Chinas Great Firewall involves a combination of infrastructure patrolled by an army of human guards.

First, in order to land on gizmodo.com, for example, your computer has to communicate with a DNS root name server, which converts gizmodo.com to an IP address, a string of numbers necessary to retrieve the data which materialises as this website in your browser. (Read here for a more detailed explanation.) The Chinese state owns DNS root name servers, allowing it to block IP addresses, return the wrong address, and block search terms such as Winnie the Pooh. China also employs thousands of online censors and internet police, who show up at your doorstep for critiquing censorship or the president.

This model surely wouldnt hold up in court against the First Amendment, and DNS root name servers arent owned here by a single government entity. But the government has successfully shut down websites, most recently via FOSTA-SESTA, a package of bills that outlawed the operating of websites perceived as facilitating sex trafficking by amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which, as I mentioned earlier, shields platform operators from liability for user-posted content. So far, FOSTA-SESTA enforcement has directly come down on few sites, namely the well-publicised seizure of Backpage with a showy FBI raid, relative to the reach of its chilling effect causing preemptive shutdowns of sites like Craigslist personals and cancellations of real-world events like an annual sex worker conference. (The proposed EARN IT Act, a bipartisan FOSTA-SESTA 2.0, could now satiate Attorney General William Barrs desire to strip encryption protections under the auspices of preventing child sexual abuse.)

But the U.S.s internet infrastructure is vastly more complicated than Chinas, after decades of support for the free flow of information.

I used to describe it to people this way, Mieke Eoyang, former sta member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told Gizmodo. Its like China is on an island; the traffic to the island gets there via a handful of bridges, and they can put toll booths on the bridges. And the United States is on the mainland, and its surrounded by other countries. The data flows easily and quickly all throughout, and it is co-mingled.

A wall would require tearing down and rebuilding the internet, Eoyang explained, and the squandered time and effort would be an economically disastrous halt to whatever growth and innovation a nationalist blockade would supposedly aim to accomplish.

I think its inevitable that whenever we are discussing a plan for internet regulation, especially when China is involved, even on the other side, that the Great Firewall gets brought up, James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet, told Gizmodo. But the comparison is flawed, Griffiths said, because the blockage of foreign services is a minor function compared to the censorship and surveillance that happens inside it, safeguarding a propaganda apparatus that stifles critics. (This includes WeChat, which does the same inside, and to some extent, beyond the wall.)

The concerns here are legitimate, Griffiths reiterated. Gathering vast troves of data is par for the course in Silicon Valley, but that doesnt necessarily make it acceptable for TikTok to do so. TikTok may never be able to convince U.S. regulators that as a Chinese company they could resist an illegal order from Beijing, when push comes to shove, but if they werent hoovering up so much data in the first place, that wouldnt be such a concern, Griffiths said. WeChat was likely overdue a reckoning given long-running accusations that its been censoring users outside of China.

The Clean Network plan does resemble cyber sovereignty, Griffiths noted, the concept that a country can shape and govern the internet within its borders, which might involve banning foreign apps, banning VPNs, or fencing in citizens data. Russia and China are codifying it into authoritarian policy, though even non-authoritarian governments might control the flow of data in the interest of economic protectionism or to prevent NSA spying on their citizens.

But China similarly invokes national security as a justification to censor speech and ice out foreign competition. He does find the moves concerning as a trial balloon for similarly broad executive orders for targets that may be far less legitimate or reasons that are more self-serving.

As has become customary with Trumps executive actions, the legal challenges were swift. TikTok is reportedly expected to sue on the grounds that the Trump regime unconstitutionally neglected to give TikTok a chance to respond, and its U.S.-based employees, who may lose their jobs, are reportedly planning to sue over workers rights.

Also as usual, the chaotic executive orders are constitutionally shaky: Banning communicative apps raises First Amendment issues, the Electronic Frontier Foundation was quick to note. The U.S. Supreme Court has recognised software as a protected means of expression. Banning distributing the app in [an] app store would raise the First Amendment rights of the app stores to distribute software, EFF Deputy Executive Director Kurt Opsahl told Gizmodo. Of course, it would be up to Apple and Google whether to assert that in the face of a purported distribution ban.

In this light, forcing a sale of TikTok sounds a lot like robbery, especially after Trump threw in a gangsterish suggestion that the government would get a cut of any buyout.

The [Clean Network] plan cites no legal authority, so Id be interested to see if the State Department has coordinated this with the Department of Justice, Eoyang told Gizmodo. Eoyang added that there are huge, troubling legal issues here including sidestepping the Constitution, which gives only Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce. [F]or the President to take an action like this, hed need specific statutory authority to do so, Eoyang said. Absent the statutory authority, the President is acting by fiat, and not according to the Constitution to which he swore an oath.

Rules are anathema to the Trump regime, and though many executive orders have been put on hold or tied up in court for years (or are just meaningless), hes issued revisions, and the Supreme Courts conservative majority has been generous. Who would have imagined that a president could oppose funding for the U.S. Postal Service with the stated mission of preventing citizens from voting by mail? More often than not, Trump bulldozes expectations that actually turn out to be norms rather than laws.

It is true that the president has no inherent, unilateral authority to create legally-binding rules relating to foreign investment in the United States, Bobby Chesney, a law professor specializing in national security, has explained on the blog Lawfare, but Congress can and has delegated that authority to the president in various ways.

Namely, Chesney writes, in 1988, Congress passed an amendment to the Defence Production Act, which gives the president the power to block mergers, acquisitions, or takeovers that pose a national security threat. Trump could work through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States which reviews transactions past and present between foreign actors and U.S. companies to exercise that power. In TikToks case, Trump has targeted the foreign transaction that China-based ByteDance made when it acquired TikToks predecessor, Musical.ly, in 2017.

Instead of the anticipated avenue, Trump used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which grants the president power to regulate or prohibit foreign exchange under unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared. (The Act has previously been invoked during national emergencies such as the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.)

Its safe to assume the considerable executive privilege wasnt originally granted with a short-form video sharing app popular with teens in mind. Eoyang finds the justifications for the use of the act specious, and the potential enforcement mechanisms baffling. There may be some question over the constitutionality of the use of the IEEPA because weve not really had courts peer behind the declaration of national emergencies. Plus, this is already weird, she said: The executive orders against TikTok and WeChat assign regulation to the Secretary of Commerce, not the Secretary of State, who published the Clean Network plan.

I just dont understand how implementation is going to work, Eoyang said. Is [Trump] going to seek an injunction against an app store and say you cannot sell apps from China? And then what does it mean to be from China under the national security definition? How is an operator of an app store to know what meets the definition without much more than that? Are you going to shut down these app stores? Are you going to fine people? All the enforcement mechanisms here seem really vague and unknown and problematic and certainly beyond what was envisioned in the [IEEPA].

She added: I dont think they really understand what theyre trying to accomplish here.

It feels squishy, Andrew Grotto, former U.S. National Security Council cybersecurity official under both the Obama and Trump administrations, told Gizmodo just after the announcement of the Clean Network plan. One gaping hole is the legal definition of the national security risk; the Clean Network plan and the executive orders barely pinpoint the exact rules Chinese apps are breaking. (Nor have most TikTok critics, who point to data collection as a nefarious practice, but dont really spell out the threat posed by collecting an average middle schoolers information.)

A glaring hole in the Clean Network plan and the executive orders is the absence of clear delineation of the national security risks the apps pose and the policies they violate. Data collection in itself isnt unusual, and unlike the EU, the U.S. doesnt have federal legislation regulating data collection and privacy; nor does the U.S. have a law dictating that data cant be shared with foreign governments. The government cant enforce rules that dont yet exist.

Whats tricky is that we dont have a baseline for what an acceptable level of data protection looks like, Grotto told Gizmodo. Its hard to say how much additional risk foreign ownership poses.

Grotto agreed that its fair to say that TikTok aggressively collects data, but how much more aggressively than Facebook? He added that he has no doubt that the Chinese government exercises its authority to collect data, but then again, the Chinese government already steals a ton of data. Its just not obvious to me which is a bigger risk, he said, the fact that China has this authority to collect data from companies that it has jurisdiction over versus their ability to just go out and steal.

We called Grotto a second time after Trump released the executive orders; he noted that the action is blunt, the language is fuzzy, and the justification is loose. The IEEPA is highly amenable to executive action, and the president loves executive action, Grotto noted, adding that it gives Trump enormous leverage and discretion to wield power.

As usual, Trump doesnt leverage that power with long-term planning and stability in mind, just blowing up his enemies. Grotto pointed out that, rather than target two mainstream companies, other administrations might have created a set of guidelines for the Treasury Department to follow in order to pinpoint individuals and companies now and in the future at its own discretion.

The text of the Executive Order is very informal, Grotto noticed, particularly the chapeau the introductory paragraphs that describe the rationale of the action. The language, which is typically drafted in order for lawyers to comply with requirements, is rather a statement on the nefariousness of the Chinese Communist Party for example, that WeChat captures personal information for Chinese nationals outside the country, thereby allowing the Chinese Communist Party a mechanism for keeping tabs on Chinese citizens who may be enjoying the benefits of a free society for the first time in their lives. Its true, but it sounds more like a thesis for a manifesto than a legal guideline.

And then, Grotto noted, the use of the word reportedly in this line from the TikTok executive order is just really weird:

TikTok, a video-sharing mobile application owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., has reportedly been downloaded over 175 million times in the United States and over one billion times globally.

It either does or doesnt censor content, Grotto said, and for an Executive Order from the President of the United States who has a vast surveillance intelligence-gathering infrastructure to use the word reportedly seems incredibly weak to me. It raises a lot of red flags. Im in the camp where it wouldnt surprise me at all if the Chinese communist party requires companies to support their censorship regime, but why say reportedly?

Most experts agree that the racially loaded language speaks for itself. The bans more likely signal economic decoupling from China, rather than a closed internet.

Trains are computers on wheels, Grotto pointed out, noting that they potentially surveil riders perhaps even more than TikTok they have wifi networks, cameras, in some cases audio recorders, body scanners, and face recognition on the horizon and lately Congress and Trump have floated the idea of banning the Chinese state-owned train manufacturer CRRC from selling to U.S. metro systems. Other Chinese enterprises that present an interesting kind of matrix of risks that I could see the president taking more interest in, Grotto said.

The legal hurdles standing in the way of the Clean Network and the limited months before the next presidential election mean full implementation is probably a project for a second term, if Trump gets one, Grotto explained. Though Trump may not have time to build a wall around the American internet, we should remain concerned about how much of the existing infrastructure hes capable of destroying on his way out.

Have information about the ongoing TikTok or WeChat situation? Wed love to hear from you. Send an email to our tipline, contact our reporters individually, or send sensitive documents to our Secure Drop server.

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Trump Wants to Build a Wall Around the Internet, How Worried Should The U.S. Be? - Gizmodo Australia

Today is a sad day.

As many have noted, there are big problems with displaying images on the site.

The source of this problem is tumblr.com.

Obviously, they decided that my site was no longer acceptable and they set up specific rules so that tumbex users no longer have access to the contents of tumblr.

It's unfortunate, I loved tumblr, that's why I created tumbex. Using tumblr with an easy, clean and efficient interface was my goal. Because to be honest, their interface is really to be reviewed (otherwise you would not be here).

It is therefore with great sadness that I announce that you are living the last moments of tumbex, it was a great adventure, and a big thank you to all those who have followed me during all this time!

But don't worry, I'll be back soon with something even better;)

More here:
A list of known NSA spying techniques - Tumbex

Government surveillance has been a hot-button issue in America for the past few years, and for good reason. Not only does NSA spying affect tech giants, international communities, and world leaders, but it affects almost every single run-of-the-mill citizen as well.

Including, probably, you.

Yes, you.

How, you ask?

Add this infographic to your site using the code below:

Infographic by https://proprivacy.com

The NSAs metadata collection of domestic phone records, otherwise known as the Patriot Act, is its claim to fame, being one of the first major revelations brought to light by Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian.

The American public was floored by the news that every day, without authorization, the NSA was collecting billions of text messages, device locations, and call information such as the identification of both callers and recipientsprimarily not that of intended targets, but of innocent Americans whose data was swept up in the search.

Many people think that, three years on, the NSA had put an end to its bulk collection of telephone records.

It has not.

While the controversial section 215 of the Patriot Act was retired on June 1, 2015being swapped out for an amended version dubbed the USA Freedom Act on June 2its replacement is riddled with legal loopholes that allow it to workaround the new laws and continue to snoop on Americans en masse, should they wish to do so.

And you know they do.

Shortly after revealing the existence of the Patriot Act, Greenwald introduced the world to XKEYSCORE, an NSA tool that collects the data of almost everything that a user does on the internet.

IP addresses, emails, browsing histories, browser cookies, online chats, voice calls, pictures, Skype sessions, username and password pairs, social media activity, logged keystrokes all that and more is collected in the far-reaching NSA internet surveillance program, whose 700+ servers worldwide collect 20+ terabytes of data per day.

Like the Patriot Act, XKEYSCORE is intended to track foreign targets. However, when an American communicates with someone in a different country, they are labeled in the database as participating in foreign-to-foreign communication, and can have their personal online data searched sans warrant.

Using the data collected from the aforementioned Patriot Act and XKEYSCORE programs, the NSA can easily put together sophisticated graphs of Americans social circle, including the identification of their associates and colleagues, their travelling companions, their locations, and other highly private details.

In order to build these graphs, the NSA harvests information from things such as bank codes, Facebook profiles, passenger logs, medical insurance information, voter registration rolls, GPS location data, and tax and property records.

They can even build social network profiles simply using queries such as travelsWith, hasFather, sentForumMessage, employs when scouring their databases.

While the focus is, again, on foreign targets, there is no limit to the number of innocent Americans whove ended up in the contact chain of a person or organization of interest.

Phone and internet providers are not the only organizations in cahoots with the NSA. In addition to your phone records and web usage, your bank accounts and credit cards are also easily monitored and accessed without warrant.

A branch of the NSA called Follow the Money (FTM) collects information from the transaction networks of more than 25,000 financial firms, including banks, casinos, and wire transfer agencies. It then stores this information in a NSA databank dubbed Tracfin, which houses millions of records.

Approximately 84% of that data is estimated to be from credit card transactions.

VISA claims that they are not aware of any unauthorized access to [their] network and that they only provide transaction information in response to a subpoena or other valid legal process, but NSA presentations leaked by Snowden strongly suggest otherwise.

In fact, the NSAs hoarding of financial information oversteps so many boundaries that even their British counterpart and frequent collaborator, the GCHQ, is concerned about the act, admitting that much of the rich personal information collected is not about [their] targets.

While it is unconfirmed if the NSA conducts such practices itself (though it seems highly likely), they do have access to the webcam images available in the databases of its partner-in-surveillance, the GCHQ, who are known snoopers of Yahoos computer cameras.

Codenamed Optic Nerve, the program began in 2008 and is reported to have still been active in 2012. While its uncertain if it is still in operation, what they managed to collect in that time period is worrying enough, with over 1.8 billion webcam images of Yahoo customers worldwide collected in one six month period alone.

Optic Nerve was originally intended to be used for experiments in automated facial recognition, to monitor existing targets, and to discover new ones. Instead, they saved one image every five minutes from feedsbetween 3% and 11% of which were sexually explicit images of innocent users.

The kicker? You only had to have a username similar to a known target to become a new target, and there is no UK law that removes domestic citizens or citizens from countries that are part of the Five Eyes alliancewhich includes the USfrom its search queries and databases.

Should it come as any surprise that not even harmless online pastimes like MMORPGs are safe from the prying eyes of the NSA?

The answer is no, it shouldnt.

Believing that terrorist networks could use the online games to communicate in secret, the NSA conducts surveillance and collects the data of millions of users around the world from virtual game servers, including user location, identity and activity such as voice and text chat logs.

So, yes, your time spent playing World of Warcraft, Second Life, Xbox Live, and the like is stored and logged by the NSA. Heck, that cute elf youve been talking to might even be an NSA agent.

View post:
How does NSA spying effect you? (Infographic) - ProPrivacy.com

(EFF) The U.S. government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in a massive program of illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001.

News reports in December 2005 first revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been intercepting Americans phone calls and Internet communications. Those news reports, plus a USA Today story in May 2006 and the statements of several members of Congress, revealed that the NSA is also receiving wholesale copies of their telephone and other communications records. All of these surveillance activities are in violation of the privacy safeguards established by Congress and the U.S. Constitution.

The evidence also shows that the government did not act alone. EFF has obtained whistleblowerevidence[PDF] from former AT&T technician Mark Klein showing that AT&T is cooperating with the illegal surveillance. The undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers, and provides those copies to the NSA. This copying includes both domestic and international Internet activities of AT&T customers. As one expert observed, this isnt a wiretap, its a country-tap.

EFF is fighting these illegal activities on multiple fronts. InHepting v. AT&T, EFF filed the first case against a telecom for violating its customers privacy. In addition, EFF is representing victims of the illegal surveillance program inJewel v. NSA, a lawsuit filed in September 2008 against the government seeking to stop the warrantless wiretapping and hold the government officials behind the program accountable.

EFF is not alone in this fight. There are multiple cases challenging various parts of the illegal surveillance against both the telecoms and the government. This page collects information on EFFs cases as well as cases brought by individuals, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and of Illinois, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and others.

http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying

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NSA Spying Federal Jack

NSA Spying: A Matter of Degree

We have long noted that the government is spying on just about everything we do.

The NSA has pretended that it only spies on a small number of potential terrorists. But NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis inadvertently admitted that the NSA could spy on just about all Americans.

Inglis told Congress last week that the agency conducts three-hop analysis.

Three-hop (also known as three degree) analysis means:

The government can look at the phone data of a suspected terrorist, plus the data of all of the contacts, then all of those peoples contacts, and all of those peoples contacts.

This means that a lot of people could be caught up in the dragnet:

If the average person calls 40 unique people, three-hop analysis could allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.

Given that there are now approximately 875,000 people in the governments database of suspected terrorists including many thousands of Americans every single American living on U.S. soil could easily be caught up in the dragnet.

For example, 350 million Americans divided by 2.5 million Americans caught up in dragnet for each suspected terrorist, means that a mere 140 potential terrorists could lead to spying on all Americans. There are tens of thousands of Americans listed as suspected terrorists including just about anyone who protests anything that the government or big banks do.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes:

According to an unusually blunt Senate investigation of so-called fusion centers released last month, the TIDE [i.e. suspected terrorist] database is also full of information of innocent people that have nothing to do with terrorism. The report gave examples of: a TIDE profile of a person whom the FBI had already cleared of any connection to terrorism, a TIDE profile of a two-year old-boy, and even a TIDE profile of Ford Motor Company.

ARS Technica reports:

When the first revelations about the National Security Agencys (NSA) widespread collection of phone call metadata and Internet traffic began to surface, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham noted that for those not talking to terrorists on the phone, We dont have anything to worry about. Im glad that activity is going on, but it is limited to tracking people who are suspected to be terrorists and who they may be talking to.

Turns out the data collection is not so limited. In testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, National Security Agency Deputy Director Chris Inglis said that the NSAs probing of data in search of terrorist activity extended two to three hops away from suspected terrorists. Previously, NSA leaders had said surveillance was limited to only two hops from a suspect.

If youve ever played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon or used LinkedIn to try to reach someone professionally, you know how small the world of interconnected contacts can be. When you use big data tools to mine for relationships, the world gets even smaller. That third hop in connections greatly expands the probability of innocent people worldwide being scooped up into the NSAs surveillance machine to include a good-sized share of American citizenscitizens who Senator Graham said dont have anything to worry about.

***

By reading this article, youre one hop from meand three hops from [Afghan President] Hamid Karzai.

***

The NSAs systems sort through the data using algorithms to find connections. These can be detected in near real time from Internet data or discovered in the periodic dumps of phone metadata from carriers, building upon the systems knowledge of previous connections. The system narrows the field of potential surveillance targets through a process thats similar to playing the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacononly, in this case, its more like Three Degrees of Osama Bin Laden.***

To determine how many hops you are from Osama, for example, the NSAs data analysis engine software constantly plows through information and builds a model of all the relationships between every phone number on record and every IP address. Other software robots query the graph to discover which nodesphone numbers, IP addresses and email accountsfall within three degrees of separation from an established suspect.

If you have a direct relationship with a suspected terrorist or target (youve called them, youve emailed them, youve visited their website) thats a one hop relationship; theres a solid line connecting you to that person in the NSAs relationship graph. If you talk with, e-mail, or visit the Facebook page or website of someone whos got a one-hop relationship, youre two hops away. Add one more person in between in the graph, and youre three hops away.

If youre within three hops, you may get flagged for analysis, and then you could get extra special attention, such as a secret FISA warrant request to use PRISM for access to your data on cloud providers servers.

Under the NSAs FISA requests, Google, Microsoft, and other Internet services companies can be compelled to hand over relevant data from their servers on any account that falls within the three-hop range and is flagged as belonging to a person of interest. If youve won this lottery, the NSA will get access to your e-mails on Gmail or Outlook.com as well as your chats and Web-stored contacts, your documents, your synced data from computers and mobile devices, your backups, and anything else that can be handed overat least, so the documents Snowden leaked imply.

Your raw Internet traffic will get more attention as well. Your IP address will be watched more carefully by deep packet inspection hardware at the NSAs Net taps, and what you do online will get extra scrutiny.

If your behavior is anomalous enough, and if youre a US resident, the NSA will pass the surveillance over to the FBI. Otherwise, your data will be collected and analyzed until its determined that you have nothing to do with the alleged terrorist; how long that process takes (and how long the data is retained after analysis) is unknown.

Unfortunately, it doesnt take much to hit the three-hop jackpot; without knowing it, a large percentage of the worlds population (and the US population) could easily be classified as being in a third degree of separation from a suspected terrorist.

A great deal of research has been done into the interconnectedness of people in the Internet age. Social scientists, mathematicians, and computer scientists have explored the small world phenomenon with studies and experiments for over 50 years, and their findings show that the small world keeps getting smaller as technology advances. In 1979, chair and founder of MITs political science department Ithiel de Sola Pool and the University of Michigans Manfred Kochen published a paper titled Contacts and Influence, which draws on a decade of research into social networks. De Sola Pool and Kochen posited that in a country the size of the United States, if acquaintanceship were random and the mean acquaintance volume were 1,000, the mean length of minimum chain between pairs of persons would be well under two intermediaries.

In other words, if the average person in the US has contact with and is acquainted with 1,000 others (through brief interactions, such as an e-mail or a phone call, or through stronger associations), then were at most two hops from anyone else in the US. Ergo, if any one person in the US is one hop from a terrorist, chances are good that you are three hops away.

***

Live in a major metropolitan center in the US and youre bound to be two degrees of separation away from someone in a country thats of interest to the NSA. For example: I have been a regular customer of restaurants owned by Baltimores Karzai family, which is headed by a brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzaitwo hops. Im also, according to LinkedIn, two degrees of separation away from President Obama. Am I a good guy or a bad guy?

The Internet has blown the level of interconnectedness though the proverbial roofwe now have e-mail, social media, and instant message interactions with people well never meet in real life and in places well never go. A 2007 study by Carnegie Mellon University machine learning researcher Jure Leskovec and Microsoft Researchs Eric Horvitz found that the average number of hops between any two arbitrary Microsoft Messenger users, based on interaction, was 6.6. And a study of Twitter feeds published in 2011 found the average degree of separation between random Twitter users to be only 3.43.

So even if the NSA limited its surveillance activitiesand by surveillance I mean active probing of the content of communications of an individualto people within two hops of suspected terrorists, thats a sizable population. Three ratchets it up to hundreds of millions or potentially billions of people, especially when the definition of a hop is based on relationships so casual we could create them by accidentally clicking on a link in a spam e-mail. So far, we know that there have been about20,000 requests for FISA warrants to surveil domestic targets since 2001, but if those warrants covered three hops from the suspects at the center of the requestsdepending on how tightly or loosely the NSA defines a relationshipthree hops could encompass as much as 50 percent of the Internet-using population of the world.

Whats the likelihood that youve managed to fall into that 50 percent? Well, if you live outside the US or ever talk to anyone outside the US, your odds go up. If you have contacts in parts of the world that the US government has interest in as sources of terrorism, it goes up much more. That places people like me (journalists), social activists, academics, and a large chunk of the business world in a zone of high risk for NSA surveillance.

***

Youd be a fool not to at least consider the possibility that the NSA is already reading your e-mail.

The New York Times writes:

Adding a new chapter to the research that cemented the phrase six degrees of separation into the language, scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan reported on Monday that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world was not six but 4.74.

If the distance between any two people in the world is 4.74, the distance between any two Americans is probably less than 3 .

Legendary NSA cryptographer and mathematician William Binney who worked at the agency for 32 years, and who was the head of the NSAs global digital data efforts created a much better two hop system before 9/11.

Called ThinThread, the system created by Binney (with the help of Thomas Drake,Kirk Wiebe and Ed Loomis) automatically encrypted all Americans communications to protect our Constitutional rights. Information was gathered on people within two hops of suspected terrorists, and information could only be decrypted by a court order. In other words, Binneys system created a structure in which innocent Americans couldnt be spied on unless there was a court order showing probable cause.

Binneys system was actually cheaper and more efficient than the NSAs current Constitution-violating system.

Binney told us:

The zone of suspects was for us limited to two degrees (hops). Beyond that increases the problem exponentially. So, three hops is going much too far.

By going much too far, Binney means that the NSA is unnecessarily trashing Americans Constitutional rights.

But he also means that the more data the NSA gathers on more innocent Americans, the harder it will be to catch bad guys. Because contrary to the NSAs claims looking in bigger and bigger haystacks doesnt help find the needle.

Technical Postscript: We asked Binney about the formula for determining how many Americans would be caught up in a three hop dragnet. He explained that simple formulas cant give an accurate answer, as it depends on such factors as whether government and business organizations are eliminated from the hop analysis:

If you dont eliminate commercial companies and government agencies from the calculations, then by inclusion they reduce the number of degrees of separation.

Binney also explained that failure to eliminate duplicate contacts, the number of people caught up in the dragnet could be over-estimated.

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NSA Spokesman Accidentally Admits that the Government Is ...