Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
December 17, 2012
According to new rules the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) has been given access to all governmental databases, intelligence on all citizens in the US. The information is retained for years without review and stored in case there is ever suspicion or a US citizen is under “reasonable belief” that they are connected to terroristic activity.
By providing the US government an “indispensable source for analysis and strategic operational plans” the NCTC is considered an integral “instrument of national power” that will ensure expert perspectives are authoritatively sourced with regard to surveillance.
The NCTC is allowed to analyze and obtain copies of information on US citizens including:
• Flight records
• Americans hosting foreign-exchange students
• Casino records
• Behavior patterns
This information can be shared with other governments while searching for justification for pre-crime accusations.
In March of this year, new guidelines for the NCTC with regard to access, retention, use and dissemination of surveillance data stored on Americans are shared under the guise of domestic terrorism. In the name of national security this data is retained and used against Americans whether living within the domestic US or abroad.
Attorney General Eric Holder signed the new guidelines that has collaborated all law enforcement agencies such as local state officials, tribal courts and private partners; as well as the FBI and DHS and other federal agencies.
Robert S. Litt, the general counsel in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the National Counterterrorism Center, said: “There is a genuine operational need to try to get us into a position where we can make the maximum use of the information the government already has to protect people. . . We have to manage to do that in a way that provides protection to people’s civil liberties and privacy. And I really think this has been a good-faith and reasonably successful effort to do that.”
Those “appropriate entities” that will be conferred with regarding surveillance intelligence gathered on Americans will be at the discretion of the NCTC. Those could be local law enforcement, federal agencies or foreign intelligence communities that work with the US government to determine what “constitutes terrorism information.”
A collection of documents have been drawn up that detail how the various governmental and international agencies work in tandem with the NCTC to collect surveillance intelligence on Americans.
Obama signed an addendum to executive order 13354 that codified the “Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004” which redefined the direct line of authority for the NCTC to the executive branch of the US government; as well as the director of National Intelligence as instructed by the President and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
While the US government continues to empower itself to spy on its own citizens, the Senate has passed a bill entitled, “Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011” ( S.1223 ) that creates new rules for location privacy. This legislation restricts online and mobile “stalking” through digital media giants such as Google Maps, Foursquare, Facebook and corporations who collect data on Americans under the guise of marketing. It is known that this type of information is worth quite a bit of money to corporations that deal in intelligence based on surveillance.
With the assistance of Trojan cookies embedded into websites and disseminated into user’s computers when they visit that particular website, the cookie will “maliciously tracks” the movement of the user across the internet. In effect, all of your web surfing is tracked by Jones – every other website you visit, login information, digital data.
Corporations operating within the US like the Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor) are Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) fronts that allow the US government to conduct unfettered surveillance without overtly having to admit to governmental missions.
Stratfor claims to gather intelligence from “open-source monitoring and a global network of human contacts.” Using real time global networks of human contacts, supplied knowledge of events worldwide, connections to geopolitical situations and developments nationally and globally Stratfor is able to “provide global awareness and guidance to individuals, governments and businesses around the world.”
The inception of NSA-GCHQ ECHELON system with the immensely profitable Surveillance Industrial Complex has become a technologically advanced interception system as journalist Nicky Hager predicted in 1996.
ECHELON was designed to extract massive amounts of data indiscriminately. A covert system of interception facilities were built to spy on the world’s satellites, international telecommunication, and radio communications. ECHELON was the link between all these and provided the US government with high tech surveillance capabilities for its time.
Whether blanket spying or eavesdropping, the intelligence community can now sit back covertly and mine for data on unsuspecting US citizens without detection.
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