Can We Know When We Are In The Government's Crosshairs?

NSA has made many, many innocent people nervous. Most of us remember how quickly, though probably necessary, joking about terrorism at the airport became serious enough to land you in deep, deep trouble. It has become more than clear that the rights of citizens have been deteriorating, and privacy most likely is near extinct. Personally, I believe that if the TSA or whoever were in control of airport security were less prone to egregious violations of civil rights, I would be OK realizing our nation, my family, and friends can be significantly safer in exchange for a small bit of personal intrusion. Further, I believe strongly that there have been many more successes than we will ever know about, hopefully for good reason, in the war against terrorism that world authorities cannot or will not discuss or advertise. In short, even in the face of diminished privacy and freedom, we as a civilization are safer even with the recurrent mistakes than without the increased and near suffocating security. Perhaps if I were the only one I know being inconvenienced, I would resist more aggressively and be more offended. However, as I see my family reaping the benefit and safety stemming from at least some of the known and unknown government intelligence I am prepared to accept a greater degree of infringement than I would otherwise.

But there is a sinister side to this as well. One that cannot and by no means should ever be ignored. As with any environment enlisting such a large number of individuals in its efforts, there are going to be good, bad, ugly, and outright unacceptable outcomes constituting the percentages of the whole. As the recipient of past, present, and ongoing personal and professional government oppression from not just agencies but individuals within said agencies who are allowed impunity and exemption from legal repercussion I know first hand the devastation an out of control, low level, non-elected person with an ego can create.

So this is a double edged sword, neither of them good. First, as mentioned, allegations can be made with not only the absence of malfeasance on a private individual, but in our case we even had multiple, consistent, 100% success when we were forced into court to combat allegations they had to know were wrong to begin with. We were easily able to prove innocence beyond doubt, which therefore made it quite clear we were victims of governmental harassment, bullying, and intimidation. We have yet to be told why we were singled out while there are quite a few others in the healthcare field from which we come that flagrantly disregard the laws (in fact it is rampant and relatively obvious who the perpetrators are) and those of us who are honest and ethical simply can never compete without lying, cheating, and stealing from others.

Second, if the government is comfortable with and condones the complete absence of due process, how does one protect themselves from personal agendas, mistaken conclusions, and overly aggressive government employees with more authority than the governor of your state? Now we know we are all being watched. Someone with “x” amount of training is being tasked with interpreting some unknown data mining algorithms, and you, you kids, your parents, neighbors, or maybe your pastor could be living in Guantanamo this time tomorrow and no one will know why or where.

So, even as the victim of government abuse which continues to threaten my family’s livelihood I still support LEGAL and COMPETENT impositions on freedom if done for the right reasons by the right and well trained people. Unfortunately, since this is definitely not the case (as I can prove through our experience), are there ways to recognize when Big Brother is breathing down your neck and getting ready to "pounce"? Of course he has us all in his sights, but there clearly are a select number that become flagged with or without good reason, and secondly is there anything that can be done if you find out they are considerably more interested in you than they should be?

I don’t know if there are any good answers, but if we can come up with a few we can possibly help one another here at ATS, and we all know we draw attention to ourselves simply by being members in the first place.

My best to all, and hopefully we can collectively discover some means to make a difference.

Originally posted by samstone11
even as the victim of government abuse which continues to threaten my family’s livelihood I still support LEGAL and COMPETENT impositions on freedom if done for the right reasons by the right and well trained people.

The threat of terrorism is a very convenient little thing. It causes usually rational and intelligent people to become sniveling wrecks begging at the feet of a jackbooted soldier to protect them.

The mathematical probability of you being harmed in a terrorist attack is far less than the chances of you being murdered by your partner, of being killed in a car accident, or dying of a heart attack in the coming week.

If we put as much effort, money and resources into fighting cancer as we do into "fighting terrorism", we would probably have a cure by now. But a cure for cancer doesn't help the state to control the masses, it doesn't assist the global corporations to stay in control of the government that you think you elect.

The threat of terrorism is almost inconsequential in comparison to the many real and genuine threats to you as a free citizen, and the power of your government and their corporate partners should be more of a concern to you than some random extremist.

It goes without saying that there are larger threats to a country from foreign powers, but where is the evidence for this? If the USA or UK has thwarted a cyber attack on our infrastructure from China, why the f is Obama meeting up for a chat, why haven't we been told about the attack, and why are we still doing business?

I don't buy any of the BS our governments say. Obama or Cameron could take to the podium right now and tell me the sky is blue, and I would make a point to check that it actually still is and that they are not lying to me.

Originally posted by samstone11
I don’t know if there are any good answers, but if we can come up with a few we can possibly help one another here at ATS, and we all know we draw attention to ourselves simply by being members in the first place.

There is no way to know whether you are being watched. But consider this... there are politically opinionated people who have found themselves on watch lists, no fly lists, only because they objected to the government. There are numerous people who have found that they are on such a list when they have tried to leave the US for a business trip, and their crime? Disagreeing with government and saying so. It's fair to say, with that kind of standard being set, we are all on at least one list for being a member of this site.

This is the biggest problem. Even if there was no intention to create a state of fear and distrust, the leak of this has created it. How many members here will now openly admit that they think again before clicking that reply button? How many here now wonder when they comment on an article whether they are being watched? Who has censored themselves in their political opinion because they now fear the state?

I'll admit it, I have been stopping myself from commenting a few times, and I'm not even an American citizen. It seems to be a nonsense that I would be targeted, just for being critical... but then I think about some NSA goon reading it and getting that bloodlust, and then the problems they could probably cause just with a few clicks.

The fear of this shadowy group with untold power should be enough to terrify everyone, and it should terrify you more than some random religious maniac. These are people who can arrest you without reason, detain you indefinitely, make you vanish under court-ordered secrecy, and they can do that to anyone at all at any time. The fear of that itself has an effect on society, instantly making it less free, immediately forcing people into silence, quashing democracy.

The fact that the NSA has been doing this is bad enough, the fact that we now know they can and have been doing this has effectively ended true democracy in the United States. You cannot have a real democracy when the press fear for their security and freedom, when the public fear a response from a government they dare to criticize, or where political opponents are targeted and treated unfairly.

You need to do a couple of things as a priority... 1. Support Snowden and Manning. Show other whistleblowers that they can speak out and not have their fellow citizens calling for their assassination! 2. Tell Obama in no uncertain terms that this is unacceptable. I don;t know whether that should be through protest or petition, but the American people need to make sure their elected know that they are enraged by this

I think they are just fear mongering the folks who buy into the MSM news because there is no way to go through this amount of data by hand. And fear mongering and manipulating the body politic is their forte.

A computer will scan our telecoms and look for red flags, not just keywords but pictograph detection is even possible. You can take a photo of you holding a sign with handwriting on it, and it can detect what you wrote even though it's masked so cleverly from traditional computer scanning.

Human operators will then go over all the red flags closely to determine the false alarms (of which I presume over 90% of the cases are), and then pursue the more legitimate cases in detail.

This way we can have say: 15,000 employees handling the information of hundreds of millions of citizens efficiently and in a timely fashion while still intercepting anything they might consider of interest.

The reason this unnerves people because it causes them to feel they are being watched, which isn't even possible under 99.9% of circumstances. Only special targets are watched and even then it's occasionally, very rarely is it 100% full time surveillance and in that case it's on really high profile types. This is mostly common sense deduction I would say.

How long do they keep the data stored? Unknown.
Are they using people's cameras in their phones/pc's/etc without their knowing? Probably occasionally but they wouldn't waste time unless they had a reason whether real or imagined.

I want to bring up the possibility this news story about the NSA leak may be intentionally crafted by the psyops departments themselves in order to create some sort of reaction or belief in the common public's mind. The fact that this has been going on for decades (just not through PRISM which is supposedly more recent) is enough to cause me suspicion when people are only suddenly this week caring about it specifically. And this is all the result of the MSM creating stories on it to begin with after all.

I just cannot help but imagine the goal must be to compel the US citizens to lose faith in their government and demand some sort of UN intervention or something of similar nature. This is an ongoing thing, with all the constant barrage of "revelations of govt corruption", whereas much of it is petty. The issue causing me to be very suspicious of what smells very fishy to me, is that all of the actual heinous crimes are going unnoticed or downplayed as a result.

Drug trafficking, assassination, slavery rings, extortion rackets, etc. Where are the leaks?
Oh there are tons of leaks, but the MSM doesn't really get into all that. Wonder why this is allowed in the press and hyped up than?

I study the Art of War and military strategy, and if you want my honest assessment I am convinced this is a smoke screen tactic. It's designed to obscure our view and distract us temporarily. The use of decoys and sleight of hand is effective and the MSM has been shown in 20/20 hindsight to have been utilizing these concepts to our disadvantage.

Why are we being hit with this "flavor" of smoke screen right now though? That's quite a question and I can't quite put my finger on it. But they are up to something and are conducting maneuvers right now as we speak. What's the objective to this? I will think about it and if I come to any good ideas I'll share them if it ever happens.

reply to post by samstone11


didn't even read the post and only have 1 thing to say..

make no mistake about it .. We've ALL been the cross-hairs ever since Eisenhower...

I can really understand why people are worried about this

but...

its been going on a lot longer than most people think with ECHELON and we seem to be doing ok.

really the idea that the NSA Would be interested in dirty phone sex and how much porn we're all watching and our illegal down loads is just funny.

they're not.

Originally posted by Komodo
reply to post by samstone11

 

didn't even read the post and only have 1 thing to say..

make no mistake about it .. We've ALL been the cross-hairs ever since Eisenhower...

When you put it like that I'll just go ahead and say we the people have been in the 'crosshairs' of tyrants since the dawn of civilization. When one man seeks to rob another man of his liberties, we have tyranny. This is nothing new or recent, all of history is based on it.

Go check out what happened with John Dillinger and the FBI for example. Dillinger showed the FBI were ruthless trigger happy thugs willing to gun down any innocents in the way of them getting their man. That predates Eisenhower's Presidency by a long shot and reveals that government types have always been power hungry and ambition prone. (Dillinger is a really great topic to delve into for conspiracies btw hah).

Really think about it. Name one point in civilization where people were treated fairly and their liberties respected? You can't. Not even in US history can you show such a thing. Someone always got jacked.

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
I can really understand why people are worried about this

but...

its been going on a lot longer than most people think with ECHELON and we seem to be doing ok.

really the idea that the NSA Would be interested in dirty phone sex and how much porn we're all watching and our illegal down loads is just funny.

they're not.

I agree. My first long post above is an elaboration upon that general idea.

The part that shows to me this is a form of MSM smoke screen is that this is not a new revelation. Only the information about PRISM (US-984XN) itself appears to be new (to me at least). And I am willing to also propose PRISM is a little bit older than they admit (as the pattern established would lead us to predict).

Use the list that the government uses:

Expressions of libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership, holding a CCW permit)
Survivalist literature (fictional books such as “Patriots” and “One Second After” are mentioned by name) Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)
Religious views concerning the book of Revelation (apocalypse, anti-Christ)
Expressed fears of Big Brother or big government
Homeschooling
Declarations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties
Belief in a New World Order conspiracy

DHS List
So, if you homeschool, read the Bible, have food in your cupboards or believe in the Constitution.... you are on a list.

Also I didn't know about the BLARNEY or Boundless Informant operations specifically by name. I realized something of this nature was going on but didn't know the code words etc.

Here is a tidbit about it:
Wiki

"A parallel program, code-named BLARNEY, gathers up metadata as it streams past choke points along the backbone of the Internet. BLARNEY's summary, set down in the slides alongside a cartoon insignia of a shamrock and a leprechaun hat, describes it as "an ongoing collection program that leverages IC [intelligence community] and commercial partnerships to gain access and exploit foreign intelligence obtained from global networks."[59] A related program, a big data or data mining system based on cloud computing and free and open-source software (FOSS) technology known as "Boundless Informant", was disclosed in top secret documents leaked to The Guardian and reported on June 8, 2013.[60]

Maybe this is a genuine leak by a lower level intel operator? It very well could be legitimate but I just cannot figure out why the MSM is getting in on this? They NEVER have good reasons, it's always ulterior for their own agenda if even just for ratings or money.

Originally posted by muzzleflash

I want to bring up the possibility this news story about the NSA leak may be intentionally crafted by the psyops departments themselves in order to create some sort of reaction or belief in the common public's mind. The fact that this has been going on for decades (just not through PRISM which is supposedly more recent) is enough to cause me suspicion when people are only suddenly this week caring about it specifically. And this is all the result of the MSM creating stories on it to begin with after all.

Why are we being hit with this "flavor" of smoke screen right now though? That's quite a question and I can't quite put my finger on it. But they are up to something and are conducting maneuvers right now as we speak. What's the objective to this? I will think about it and if I come to any good ideas I'll share them if it ever happens.

Neuro linguistic programming. Maybe it's not a smoke screen but a snow blind. These things are time dependent. It's Summer and the big name is cool. A message from the Southern Hemisphere. Or on the winter you hear a name, snow, and it elicits a reaction to be afraid of the NSA. It might mean England or Austraila will or won't be doing something. Phonetically is the hidden expression. There might be a military code word connected to his name.

So as usual the government gets you with words, letters, beliefs. And they know who got the sleeper cell programming by who wore red and then decided to buy a snowcone. Ahh, it might be a counter north Colorado program...Ed ward to the snow den. Maybe snow den refers to Utah. Propaganda to get people in education to go to Utah? Subconscious!

Getting governmental is easy, getting out is not.

reply to post by Sandalphon


That was a cool post.

I have also been wondering what the phonetic hidden messages may possibly be.
And I also thought about snow blindness, as it is a common meme in Illuminati propaganda films.

I also agree that they are using neuro-linguistic programming (among other forms), and are attempting to brainwash us all through clever manipulation of phraseology or placement of cryptic keywords etc etc etc.

One aspect of this I have been researching a lot for the past few years is the fact that an entire host of words we use today in English actually originally had opposite or different meanings than they do today. I am lead to believe that language was purposely molded and corrupted in order to manipulate the masses.

Originally posted by muzzleflash

Originally posted by Komodo
reply to post by samstone11

 

didn't even read the post and only have 1 thing to say..

make no mistake about it .. We've ALL been the cross-hairs ever since Eisenhower...

When you put it like that I'll just go ahead and say we the people have been in the 'crosshairs' of tyrants since the dawn of civilization. When one man seeks to rob another man of his liberties, we have tyranny. This is nothing new or recent, all of history is based on it.

Go check out what happened with John Dillinger and the FBI for example. Dillinger showed the FBI were ruthless trigger happy thugs willing to gun down any innocents in the way of them getting their man. That predates Eisenhower's Presidency by a long shot and reveals that government types have always been power hungry and ambition prone. (Dillinger is a really great topic to delve into for conspiracies btw hah).

Really think about it. Name one point in civilization where people were treated fairly and their liberties respected? You can't. Not even in US history can you show such a thing. Someone always got jacked.

yes..

but it seriously ramp up for the USA till after Eisenhower's death ..as always.. I could be wrong

reply to post by muzzleflash

I had to take a moment to commend you on your obvious knowledge and studies of the subject. I wish I could add that it made me feel better, but as your comments make so much sense I have to say I am more alarmed than ever. Surely we have all been under significantly more scrutiny than we are overtly allowed to know about, and there are times when I would feel like a terrible father if I didn't take an occasional peek around the corner to be sure my 12 year old is safe. I truly understand and would likely defend the need for covert surveillance as warranted by common sense and/or historical precedent, but unfettered, unsupervised, and essentially unlimited freedom to intrude on myself and my family concerns me.

Is that wrong?

Again, there is surely much more going on behind the veil than we will ever know. How many lives have been saved but circumstance prevents us from ever being told? With all the hate and dissension out there you better believe there has been many more disasters averted than not. So, where is the line? Do we, as a nation, surrender privacy and whatever constitutional rights supposedly afforded us to unseen forces with the ability to destroy us themselves if someone else doesn't beat them to it? How do we know who to trust, and how much trust is warranted or necessary?

This, my good friend, is a very slippery slope.

Regardless, you need to know you and your diligence to the subject matter is appreciated. Keep up the good work.