Idiocy – Page 63 – Public Intelligence Blog

PDF (12 Pages): Introductory Statement & Answer to Questions

Highlights:

00 The included links are a “best of the best” selection of media stories.

01 EU security agencies have created a bazaar allowing NSA to get it all.

02 There are many other undisclosed programs.

03 According to Snowden, at least ten specific individuals are liable for failing to act on his alarm — those names are being withheld by Booz Allen and the various US agencies and Snowden has not named them himself.

04 “The culture within the US Intelligence Community is such that reporting serious concerns about the legality or propriety of programs is much more likely to result in your being flagged as a troublemaker than to result in substantive reform.”

05 Oversight focuses on limiting public discovery rather than on enforcing the limits of the law.

06 Indiscrinate economic intelligence is the true purpose of such technical collection programs as do work.

07 Defensive intelligence is more important to democracies than offensive intelligence — NSA and GCHQ have been obsessing on offensive intelligence (economic and political espionage) in what they process, while continuing indiscriminate mass surveillance that does not appear to have been processed, only stored against future possible exploitation.

Full Text with Links Below the Line

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Full Text of Edward Snowden Testimony to European Parliament”

2014/03/052014/03/05

Yoda: FINALLY — Federal Government Kills One Canary with Marijuana Overdose

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement

Here's An Updated Tally Of All The People Who Have Ever Died From A Marijuana Overdose

With recreational pot now for sale in Colorado and widespread confusion over a recent satirical story that jokingly claimed 37 people had already died of a marijuana overdose, we figured it might be about time to update our weed death count.

So, here's a GIF that still accurately shows all of the people who have died after overdosing on pot:

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The federal result, after decades of trying, was achieved by dropping a bale of marijuana on a canary staked to the ground. The fact that it was a bale (source) dropped on the hapless canary (method) was immediately classified TOP SECRET.

See Also:

Marijuana @ Phi Beta Iota

CNN Gupta: ‘I am doubling down' on medical marijuana

2014/03/052014/03/05

Mini-Me: Hillary Clinton is NOT a Moron — She Just Thinks YOU Are…Clinton Compares Putin to Hitler

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War

Huh?

Hillary Clinton compares Putin moves to Hitler's: Report

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has compared Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent steps in Ukraine to aggression by Adolf Hitler in 1930s Nazi Germany, a local paper reported.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Hillary Clinton is NOT a Moron — She Just Thinks YOU Are…Clinton Compares Putin to Hitler”

2014/03/042014/03/04

SchwartzReport: US Atrocity – Debtor Prisons, Offender-Funded “Probation” Industry

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement

I find it hard to believe the United States is bringing back debtor prisons, but that appears to be the case, as reported in the Guardian, arguably the best and most independent newspaper in the English language. The elimination of debtor prisons was something the Founders took as a very serious goal for their new country. So much for the Founders, they are trumped by the new private for-profit prison trend.

Thrown in Jail for Being Poor: the Booming For-profit Probation Industry
LAUREN GAMBINO – The Guardian (U.K.)/ The Associated Press

Many poor Americans face jail when they can’t pay steep fines for nonviolent crimes, like $1,000 for stealing a $2 beer

2014/03/012014/03/01

Steven Aftergood: IG Blasts NRO Secrecy Practices

Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

INSPECTOR GENERAL BLASTS NRO SECRECY PRACTICES

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that builds and operates U.S. intelligence satellites, frequently makes mistakes when it classifies national security information, according to an assessment performed last year by the NRO Inspector General.

“From the classified documents we reviewed at NRO headquarters, 114 of 134 documents contained classification errors,” the IG report said.

Agency classification officials “lack sufficient knowledge of classification principles and procedures necessary to perform their duties,” the NRO Inspector General found. “One OCA [original classification authority] had almost no knowledge of his responsibilities.”

“Because of the lack of full compliance in multiple areas, the NRO is susceptible to the risk of persistent misclassification,” the IG said.

Continue reading “Steven Aftergood: IG Blasts NRO Secrecy Practices”

2014/02/282014/02/28

Winslow Wheeler: Chuck Hagel on the A-10 – Without a Clue or Without Scruples?

Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

Pierre Sprey and I have authored an analysis of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's statements this past Monday on the A-10. It follows:

Chuck Hagel's A-10 Legacy

By Winslow T. Wheeler & Pierre M. Sprey

When he spoke about next year's defense budget on February 24, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel addressed his decision to go along with the Air Force and retire all existing A-10 close air support aircraft. In that statement, he made the following assertions:

· “To fund these investments [the new long range bomber, the new tanker and the F-35], the Air Force will reduce the number of tactical air squadrons including the entire A-10 fleet. Retiring the A-10 fleet saves $3.5 billion over five years and accelerates the Air Force's long-standing modernization plan – which called for replacing the A-10s with the more capable F-35 in the early 2020s.”

· “The ‘Warthog' is a venerable platform, and this was a tough decision. But the A-10 is a 40-year-old single-purpose airplane originally designed to kill enemy tanks on a Cold War battlefield. It cannot survive or operate effectively where there are more advanced aircraft or air defenses. And as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, the advent of precision munitions means that many more types of aircraft can now provide effective close air support, from B-1 bombers to remotely piloted aircraft. And these aircraft can execute more than one mission.”

· “Moreover, the A-10's age is also making it much more difficult and costly to maintain. Significant savings are only possible through eliminating the entire fleet, because of the fixed cost of maintaining the support apparatus associated with the aircraft. Keeping a smaller number of A-10s would only delay the inevitable while forcing worse trade-offs elsewhere.”

Many of these statements are questionable; several are poorly informed; at least one of them is materially incorrect.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Chuck Hagel on the A-10 – Without a Clue or Without Scruples?”

2014/02/252014/02/25

Chuck Spinney: How the Secret World Destroys Reputations – The Banality of Evil

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call

The political theorist Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “banality of evil” to describe her highly controversial thesis that “the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.” [source: Wikipedia]

Arendt argued that Adolf Eichmann's crimes resulted “not from a wicked or depraved character but from sheer ‘thoughtlessness': he was simply an ambitious bureaucrat who failed to reflect on the enormity of what he was doing. His role in the mass extermination of Jews epitomized ‘the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil' that had spread across Europe at the time. Arendt's refusal to recognize Eichmann as “inwardly” evil prompted fierce denunciations from both Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals. Her argument, which has been criticized by many, came out of her coverage of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 for the New Yorker.” [source: Encyclopaedia Britannica]

Whether or not you accept Arendt’s thesis in regard to the perpetration of the Holocaust, it is impossible to deny the thoughtless, faceless, bureaucratic banality implicit in the briefing slides below support her thesis. These official briefing slides, leaked from the Snowden Archive and analyzed by Glen Greenwald, clearly describe in antiseptic, logically-disconnected, powerpoint detail how the employees of NSA and its cohorts plan to use cyber operations as a covert means to coerce the American people, as well as foreigners, into accepting the totalitarian premises of the emerging American State.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: How the Secret World Destroys Reputations – The Banality of Evil”