[My apologies for not having this up earlier as intended. Blog Talk Radio show reading of this article with some discussion, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/toddy-littman/2013/06/22/nsa-an-equal-opportunity-oppressor.]

This is the story from Washington isn't it? The massive collection of records to carry out 300 queries of the database, some 18,000 by request to the FISA “court” (yeah, I am not buying they don't happen otherwise, for I do not see any foolproof and untamperable automated system sending a record to the FISA court when an employee does a query of the database), 11 of which were denied, mostly under the Bush years. I mean, it was Democrat Jimmy Carter, after all, who gave us FISA in 1978, and since they hadn't turned down a warrant before George Bush's DOJ requests… well, some things are just obvious.

Whatever you do, do not consider how the NSA program under the Patriot Act is not the UKUSA program that's been using Signal Intelligence and intelligence sharing agreements to spy on Americans sine the 1940s, http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/ukusa.shtml, creating the modern day NSA in the last disclosure in 1956, http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ukusa/new_ukusa_agree_10may55.pdf, and that the literalness used by government to alter the affect of their actions by conscious knowledge and willingness to report themselves as querying the database using UKUSA, and therefore not governed by FISA, is a real, a genuine manner by which government employees perform their job so they can remain employed. Even the least reasonable person will arrive at the notion that the access can be a single terminal, but the log-ins to it can be multiple, and under differing programs, merged, or otherwise used together, by the terminal's operator, a Snowden, when in the best interest of government. We are already kind of doing that with NSA right now in relation to domestic uses of these databases… Yes, including those of foreign governments spying on us for our government who is spying on another country, in a circle of nations spying, on the idea that 1) it limits their liability to their own citizens and 2) this means assured integrity of the data or we all spy as enemies (better explained here http://changingwind.org/index/news.php?extend.249.2.) And yes, for those who follow my writings, those first 2 links are a repeat, because this issue is too important to not take the time for reiteration (read on).

Imagine a prosecution going on, say Jodi Arias, just for an example. Sure she's guilty, but many people are guilty, Freedom does naturally assure that some people get away with some crimes, sometimes even murder. To catch every single murderer, every single criminal, is to do away with Freedom for everyone at some level, however, we're not getting into a worthless Obama "balanced approach" discussion hahaha.

I'd figure everyone noticed the "passion" the Prosecutor, Juan Martinez, displayed in the Jodi Arias case. Which, for me, seemed odd when you look at the beginnings of this case, that Arias was willing to plead guilty to 2nd degree murder and this Prosecutor declined to accept that deal to instead pursue a trial to prosecute her. That he, for some reason, felt it most important to get the 1st degree murder conviction. This is peculiar for Law Enforcement to take the "gamble" instead of the "sure thing" unless, of course, Juan Martinez knew it wasn't a gamble, that pursuing 1st degree murder is a sure thing worth the additional financial and media frenzied expense the 2nd degree murder plea would not have cost. Also notable is that the death penalty is the reason the 1st degree murder conviction was pursued.

Maybe it was worth it, maybe it wasn't, that's neither here nor there, but what if Juan Martinez's certainty, his passion and conviction in prosecuting this case, the information he presented at trial, was based on information “secretly” shared to him by an insider at the NSA, from Juan Martinez having a Snowden to query the database without FISA, and without any records of this query even if they are made as the information in the database can be erased and/or modified by those managing it as well. Of course, then again, it may have been the result of a legitimate query, that somehow Jodi Arias had made some communication overseas or in some other way that triggered an NSA query of her records in the database, and the NSA just shared the information with Juan Martinez in order to have a prosecution that would take care of her as a spy but without revealing their program nor revealing her role that might panic Americans. Of course, no one would know if any of this is true or not because the FISA “court” (Where no defendant is present and they are not apprised of their being surveilled, even if an American Citizen. And they say we get due process through FISA issuing a warrant... Ahem!), its records, its testimony, the “hearing” is all behind a vault door and conducted in secret.

These scenarios would have resulted, at one time, in me being called a paranoid, crazy, delusional, wacko for merely suggesting them, but now that the fact of NSA surveillance is out here – and these sigint and intelligence sharing agreement programs have been revealed and aren't part of the Patriot Act but are still used by NSA, where one of these agreements even explains NSA’s formation and designation of their responsibilities, not by acts of Congress but by these agreements alone – and while we do not know how to use the knowledge of the program's existence or what to do about any of this, and that's if the whole thing isn't just completely mind-numbing by just the overwhelming undermining of what we've believed, today I am not considered a paranoid, crazy, delusional, or even wacko. A right-wing wacko sure, but my sanity has been vindicated by the reality that, what was once deemed impossible and insanity to suggest, is actually taking place.

So the truth of what I am describing, using the Jodi Arias trial, is that the scenario is possible, and that this scenario can be true for anyone when government is storing and “controlling” records on everyone. At first blush, the Arias example might seem like a reasonable use, a brilliant way to do away with a spy, let alone a murderer, while not giving up anything regarding our nation's intelligence and security. The trouble is, that the system has been, and can be, wrong, innocently inaccurate, or worse, abused and corrupted, firstly by "the wrong people in charge," per se. But since the entire “apparatus,” the “scheme” is clandestine, since it is protected as a National Secret, since those involved don't want the link of the Patriot Act’s remedies at law to be used in any relation to sigint or intelligence agreements, what is the chance, the likelihood, of abuse and of the abuse becoming the standard, becoming the policy and procedure, to where, secondly the “right people” are in charge but the previous policy remains in place and is viewed as an objective standard of “law and intelligence” that, by actual use, is an equal opportunity of government oppression over all?

This is the trouble with the government just having this information, irrespective of the views of the United States Supreme Court, for the information is a "snapshot" of communications and decisions one has made in their lives, their past actions and thoughts, even emotions and how they express them, all that “can and will be used against you,” if by no other means than "profiling you," to fit people to a crime instead of prove they actually perpetrated the crime. A horrible thought but the heart of the very trouble with this whole scenario.

Thus, when I did a cursory review of the Patriot Act and found the sections for civil and criminal remedy (see http://changingwind.org/index/news.php?extend.249.2) it was immediately obvious to me that people need to know about them, and have some suggestions of what they could do with the Patriot Act to protect themselves. There is too much of a drum beat to get away from a law, the only law that I know of, that we could use to expose not just what NSA has on someone, but how they got it, whether by sigint or through intelligence sharing, and then be able to bring an end to the whole idea that this domestic spying and database storing of information is a good thing instead of as the genuine threat to national security it is by threatening the very Freedom we hold dear; affecting our considerations of what to do and when by our own 2nd guessing of "what will the NSA think if I say that?" or "What will the government think if I do this?" and handing the immoral secular government the chance to be the moral contrast to our thoughts and actions, a coerced (by duress) undermining of the American way and Spirit.

Using Arias again, what if the phone records used were intercepts by China under intelligence sharing? Would you want to be deemed an enemy of the State subject to this kind of trial and prosecution because of records we got from China about you? Would anyone? And is it a check or balance if both governments decide to name innocents -- those droned civilians the left is always propping up in feigned worry about -- and falsify records to have people imprisoned and killed in order to test the trust between their governments so these governments can play the "I duped you" urinating contest of machismo with each other ad infinitum, while we are less than pawns on a chess board to be discarded? All because of a cold institutional view of data that we transfer to an assumption of objective use by those managing the data? Are we truly going to sit back and let the government literally treat us as "just a number?"

Suddenly these things aren't delusions, as they once were when technology wasn't able to achieve what has since happened with the digital age, and everyone's foolish embrace of it as though there are no strings attached. Thus we're all thrust into the midst of the reality prophesied by those we thought to be paranoid -- our summary ostracizing of them our waiver of discussion and solutions -- only now that the prophecy has occurred and been proven true by government's admission do we belatedly ask if this is the reality we want in the future, the one the paranoid mind envisioned and that we now cannot discount with confidence in knowing it's just not possible. Note how government "force" comes in a variety of packages.

This is the proper danger of the answers to questions leading to the next set of questions, that, of course needs to take place. Information technology has quietly evolved in a vacuum created by the commercial possibilities of it, treating it as the unleashing of human potential, irrespective of the myriad misrepresentations made by "science" over other things such as global warming. So, it would seem the time has come for the technology to be taken to task as to its affect on reality, that maybe it is time we established limits to technology's areas of application and objects of its study and use as we did with government. Because the influence of information and how it is managed, presented, and re-presented, the ease with which we assume trust and the assumption of trust in regard to information, and how this is exploited by government using technology for oppressive ends, is just too great.

I can't emphasize enough the import of understanding what it means for government to be Agent “Ralph Edwards” of the NSA, with “This Is Your Life” on a thumb drive.

Thank you for reading,

Toddy Littman