[News] Edward Snowden - Digital Blackwater rules
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jun 11 13:06:37 EDT 2013
*Digital Blackwater rules*
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-03-110613.html
The judgment of Daniel "Pentagon Papers" Ellsberg is definitive; "There
has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward
Snowden's release of NSA material". And that includes the release of the
Pentagon Papers themselves. Here is the 12-minute video
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video>
by The Guardian where Snowden details his motives.
By now, everything swirling around the US National Security Agency (NSA)
points to a black box in a black hole. The black box is the NSA
headquarters itself in Fort Meade, Maryland. The black hole is an area
that would include the suburbs of Virginia's Fairfax County near the CIA
but mostly the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32.
There one finds a business park a mile away from the NSA which Michael
Hayden, a former NSA director (1999-2005) told Salon's Tim Shorrock is
"the largest concentration of cyber power on the planet". [1] Hayden
coined it "Digital Blackwater".
Here is a decent round up of key questions
<http://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-black-hole-5-basic-things-we-still-dont-know-the-governments-snoop>still
not answered about the black hole. But when it comes to how a 29-year
old IT wizard with little formal education has been able to access a
batch of ultra-sensitive secrets of the US intelligence-national
security complex, that's a no-brainer; it's all about the gung-ho
privatization of spying - referred to by a mountain of euphemisms of the
"contractor reliance" kind. In fact the bulk of the hardware and
software used by the dizzying network of 16 US intelligence agencies is
privatized.
A Washington Post investigation found out that US homeland security,
counter-terror and spy agencies do business with over 1,900 companies.
[2] An obvious consequence of this contractor tsunami - hordes of
"knowledge" high-tech proletarians in taupe cubicles - is their
indiscriminate access to ultra-sensitive security. A systems
administrator like Snowden can have access to practically everything.
"Revolving door" does not even begin to explain the system. Snowden was
one of 25,000 employees of Booz Allen Hamilton ("We are visionaries")
for the past three months. [3] Over 70% of these employees, according to
the company, have a government security clearance; 49% are top secret
(as in Snowden's case), or higher. The former director of national
intelligence Mike McConnell is now a Booz Allen vice president. The new
director of national intelligence, the sinister-looking retired general
James Clapper, is a former Booz Allen executive.
At least US - and world - public opinion may now have a clearer idea of
how a Pashtun girl in Waziristan is obliterated by a "targeted strike".
It's all a matter of this privatized NSA-collected meta-data and matrix
multiplication leading to a "signature". The "terrorist" Pashtun girl of
course may eventually morph in the near future into a dangerous
tree-hugger or a vocal political protester.
*It's all China's fault*
True to form, as soon as Snowden revealed his identity US corporate
media privileged shooting the messenger instead of poring over the
message. That included everything from cheap character assassination
<http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/10-things-to-know-about-edward-snowden-92491.html?hp=r2>
to the usual former CIA asset spinning that in Washington many were
looking at Snowden as an agent in a potential Chinese espionage plot
<http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/10/Former-CIA-Officer-Intel-Considering-NSA-Whistleblower-Potential-Chinese-Espionage>.
Much has also been made of the John Le Carre-esque plot twist of Snowden
leaving his tranquil life in Hawaii and flying to Hong Kong on May 20,
because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of
political dissent". Hong Kong-based blogger Wen Yunchao memorably
described it as Snowden having "left the tiger's den and entered the
wolf's lair". Yet Snowden's visa stamp at Chek Lap Kok airport lasts for
90 days - plenty of time to ponder the next move.
Since 1996, before the British handover to China, an extradition treaty
applies between the tiger and the wolf. [4] The US Department of Justice
is already surveying its options. It's important to remember that the
Hong Kong judicial system is independent from China's - according to the
Deng Xiaoping-conceptualized "one country, two systems". As much as
Washington may go for extraditing Snowden, he may also apply for
political asylum. In both cases he may stay in Hong Kong for months, in
fact years.
The Hong Kong government cannot extradite anyone claiming he will be
persecuted in his country of origin. And crucially, article 6 of the
treaty stipulates, "a fugitive offender shall not be surrendered if the
offence of which that person is accused or was convicted is an offence
of a political character." Another clause stipulates that a fugitive
shall not be surrendered if that implicates "the defense, foreign
affairs or essential public interest or policy" of - guess who - the
People's Republic of China.
So then we may have a case of Hong Kong and Beijing having to reach an
agreement. Yet even if they decided to extradite Snowden, he could argue
in court this was "an offence of a political character". The bottom line
- this could drag on for years. And it's too early to tell how Beijing
would play it for maximum leverage. A "win-win" situation from a Chinese
point of view would be to balance its commitment to absolute
non-interference in foreign domestic affairs, its desire not to rock the
fragile bilateral relation boat, but also what non-pivoting move the US
government would offer in return.
*The ultimate Panopticon*
The usual rabid right-wingers in the US predictably skip the fact of how
Snowden does not see intelligence analysts - and even the US government,
per se - as inherent "bad guys". [5] What he stressed is how they all
work under a false premise; "If a surveillance program produces
information of value, it legitimizes it ... In one step, we've managed
to justify the operation of the Panopticon".
Oh yes, make no mistake; Snowden has carefully read his Michel Foucault
(he also stressed his revulsion facing "the capabilities of this
architecture of oppression").
Foucault's deconstruction of the Panopticon's architecture is now a
classic (see it here <http://cryptome.org/cartome/panopticon1.htm> in an
excerpt of his 1975 masterpiece /Discipline and Punish/). The Panopticon
was the ultimate surveillance system, designed by utilitarian
philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The Panopticon - a tower
surrounded by cells, a pre-Orwellian example of "architecture of
oppression" - was not originally conceived for the surveillance of a
prison, but of a factory crammed with landless peasants on forced labor.
Oh, but those were rudimentary proto-capitalist days. Welcome to the
(savagely privatized) future, where the NSA black hole, "Digital
Blackwater", lords over all as the ultimate Panopticon.
/*Notes*/:
1. Digital Blackwater: Meet the Contractors Who Analyze Your Personal
Data
<http://www.alternet.org/digital-blackwater-meet-contractors-who-analyze-your-personal-data?paging=off>,
Alternet, June 10, 2013.
2. Top Secret America
<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/>, Washington
Post, June, 2010.
3. See here <http://www.boozallen.com> for company website.
4. See here <https://bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/documents/105/td003.pdf>
for extradition treaty.
5. Code name 'Verax': Snowden, in exchanges with Post reporter, made
clear he knew risks
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/code-name-verax-snowden-in-exchanges-with-post-reporter-made-clear-he-knew-risks/2013/06/09/c9a25b54-d14c-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story_1.html>,
Washington Post, June 10, 2013.
/*Pepe Escobar* is the author of/ Globalistan: How the Globalized World
is Dissolving into Liquid War
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim>
(Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during
the surge
<http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898>.
His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan
<http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1>
(Nimble Books, 2009).
/He may be reached at/ pepeasia at yahoo.com.
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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