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<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=578081120-28092010><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>No to #1, Yes to #2. will send you some articles. One:
Obama's Massive Power Struggle with the American Military Machine; Two:
Gorbachav and the Pentagon (or something like that); plus one from, believe it
or not, one that I am told appeared in the HChron (we have quit taking it for
financial reasons) from the Washington Post 2 or 3 part report on Woodward's new
book. Obama needs us to "have his back." Lee Loe</FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> discuss-bounces@paa-tx.org
[mailto:discuss-bounces@paa-tx.org] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Ron and Kris
Graham<BR><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, September 28, 2010 2:51 PM<BR><B>To:</B>
discuss@paa-tx.org; Deb Shafto ; HCJPP@yahoogroups.com<BR><B>Subject:</B>
[PAA-Discuss] Big Brother Obama: US to Spy on Internet
Messaging<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=Section1>
<P class=MsoNormal><B><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=black size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Comic Sans MS'">Is
there any doubt at all in anyone’s mind that we are living in a Police State? Is
there any doubt in anyone’s mind that Barack Obama is a stinking fascist? We are
living in a fascist nation, people. If you think voting Democrat is going to
change anything you are dead wrong. You will be contributing DIRECTLY to the
continuation of fascism, and I’m talking about on a local, state and national
election. It’s way past time to wake up and realize a coup has taken place in
this country. STOP perpetuating the sham that we live in some sort of democracy
or representative republic. We have neither. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><B><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=black size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Comic Sans MS'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><B><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=black size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Comic Sans MS'">Kris<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><B><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=black size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Comic Sans MS'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><B><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=black size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Comic Sans MS'"><A
href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/wire-s28.shtml">http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/wire-s28.shtml</A><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><B><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=black size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Comic Sans MS'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></P>
<H2><B><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=4><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">Big
Brother Obama: US to spy on Internet messaging<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></H2>
<H4><B><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Regulations to target Skype, Facebook,
Blackberry<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></H4>
<H5><B><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">By
Patrick Martin <BR>28 September 2010<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></H5>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The Obama
White House is backing new regulations that would compel popular Internet
messaging services like Facebook, Skype and Blackberry to open up their systems
to FBI surveillance, the <EM><I><FONT face="Times New Roman">New York
Times</FONT></I></EM> reported Monday, citing federal law enforcement and
national security officials.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The threat
to democratic rights goes far beyond anything envisioned by the Bush
administration. The goal is to make all forms of electronic communication that
use the Internet subject to wiretapping and interception by federal police
agencies.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">In the past
few years there has been a large-scale shift from conventional telephone
communication to Internet-based messaging, which is both cheaper and more
secure.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">“Investigators have been concerned for years that
changing communications technology could damage their ability to conduct
surveillance,” the <EM><I><FONT face="Times New Roman">Times</FONT></I></EM>
reported. “In recent months, officials from the FBI, the Justice Department, the
National Security Agency, the White House and other agencies have been meeting
to develop a proposed solution.”<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">This would
include drafting new statutory language to bring providers like Research in
Motion, the Canadian-based company that makes Blackberry devices, under legal
controls similar to those established by the 1994 Communications Assistance to
Law Enforcement Act.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">That
legislation required telecommunications companies to make their call-processing
systems accessible to federal government spying, whether the calls pass through
conventional phone lines or cell phone relay
towers.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">One of the
biggest issues will be a government demand that communications service providers
change the structure of their hardware and software, providing a “back door” for
the use of intelligence agencies and ensuring that government agents can break
any encryption applied to messages either by the service provider or the
customer.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The
<EM><I><FONT face="Times New Roman">Times </FONT></I></EM>article did not raise
any alarm over the prospect of government snooping on the private communications
of hundreds of millions of people, whether in the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> or
in other countries. Nor did it quote any objection to the proposal from civil
liberties groups, although the American Civil Liberties Union quickly issued a
statement calling the plan “a huge privacy invasion” that was “one more step
toward conducting easy dragnet collection of Americans’ most private
communications.”<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The only
downside suggested by the <EM><I><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Times</FONT></I></EM> account was the existence of
technical problems that might prove expensive and cumbersome for the
corporations that would have to comply with the new rules, and that the new
security procedures might create new opportunities for
hackers.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">FBI General
Counsel Valerie Caproni, who discussed the issue with the newspaper, said that
there was a consensus among police and intelligence agencies that companies
which provide encrypted communications would have to retain the key to any
encryption, rather than allowing their customers to devise and hold their
own.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">“No one
should be promising their customers that they will thumb their nose at a
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> court order,” she told the
<EM><I><FONT face="Times New Roman">Times</FONT></I></EM>. “They can promise
strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain
text.” In other words, encryption would protect the privacy of communications,
except when the government says otherwise.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">This is the
same stance taken by dictatorial governments from <st1:country-region
w:st="on">China</st1:country-region> to the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle
East</st1:place>. The governments of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Saudi
Arabia</st1:country-region> and the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">United Arab Emirates</st1:place></st1:country-region> only last month
threatened to bar Blackberry services in their countries because Research in
Motion refused to allow the local intelligence services to monitor and intercept
messaging.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The
<EM><I><FONT face="Times New Roman">Times</FONT></I></EM> article gave two
examples of government efforts to intercept encrypted or peer-to-peer
communications that ran into technical obstacles, one involving a drug cartel,
the other related to the failed Times Square bombing earlier this year. These
examples were chosen to support the claim by the Obama administration that the
buildup of surveillance is part of a struggle against crime and
“terrorism.”<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">However,
the Obama administration has defined “terrorism” so widely that the term now
covers a vast array of constitutionally protected forms of political opposition
to the policies of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> government, including speaking,
writing, political demonstrations, even the filing of legal
briefs.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The
<EM><I><FONT face="Times New Roman">Times</FONT></I></EM> report comes only
three days after FBI raids on antiwar political activists in Minneapolis and
Chicago, who could face charges of providing “material support” for terrorist
organizations because they have spoken and written in opposition to US foreign
policy in the Middle East and in Colombia.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" color=red size=3><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; COLOR: red">According to an attorney for one of those
targeted, the dragnet was so all-encompassing that FBI agents seized “any
documents containing the word <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:City>.”<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" color=red size=3><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; COLOR: red">By the same logic, any data packet passing
through the Internet with the word “<st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:City>” could be subject to interception,
decryption, and storage in a federal database where both the person sending the
message and the person receiving it would be permanently recorded as under
suspicion of links to terrorism. Other words suggest themselves as likely
targets: socialism, class struggle, imperialism, revolution, Marxism,
Trotskyism.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">US</st1:country-region></st1:place> national security apparatus seeks
the power not only to spy on the Internet, but to seize or shut it down entirely
when that might seem advantageous. Former CIA director Michael Hayden,
interviewed by Reuters at a cyber-security conference in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">San Antonio</st1:City>, <st1:State
w:st="on">Texas</st1:State></st1:place> on Sunday, called for giving President
Obama, or any president, the power to shut down the Internet. “It is probably
wise to legislate some authority to the president to take emergency measures for
limited periods of time, with clear reporting to Congress, when he feels as if
he has to,” he said.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Hayden was
echoing a view that is increasingly widespread in official <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State>. In June, a
Senate subcommittee approved a bill, introduced by Joseph Lieberman, the
right-wing Democrat from <st1:State w:st="on">Connecticut</st1:State>, declaring
the entire World Wide Web a “national asset” of the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and giving the president the power to seize control of the Internet or order its
complete shutdown “for national security reasons.”<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The
197-page bill is entitled “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act,” or
PCNAA. It has the backing of another top Senate Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of
<st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">West Virginia</st1:place></st1:State>.
Big software companies and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are supporting the
bill because it grants them immunity against civil lawsuits for any damage
caused by a shutdown or government takeover.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Also on
Monday, the US Treasury Department issued proposed new regulations that would
require American banks to report all electronic money transfers into and out of
the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United
States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, regardless of the amount. Up to now,
transfers of $10,000 or more had to be reported.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The new
regulations were issued under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention
Act, passed in 2004, which gave the treasury secretary authority to require such
reports to “combat terrorist financing.” The new rules would require banks to
pump information on 750 million transfers a year into a huge new database that
could be mined by police, intelligence and regulatory
agencies.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The
information accompanying a wire transfer usually includes the name, address and
account number of sender and recipient, as well as identification such as a
driver’s license or passport number if required by the money service. Banks
would have to provide Social Security numbers for senders and recipients on an
annual basis.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">These
actions demonstrate that a turning point has been reached in the erosion of
democratic rights in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>. A full decade ago, at
the time of the stolen presidential election of 2000 and the Supreme Court’s
anti-democratic decision in Bush v. Gore, the Socialist Equality Party and the
<EM><I><FONT face="Times New Roman">World Socialist Web Site</FONT></I></EM>
warned that there was no longer any constituency for the defense of democratic
rights within the American ruling class.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">For a
decade since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, first under Bush, now under Obama, the
American ruling class has erected the framework for a police state. At no stage
in this process has there been any significant opposition from any section of
the political establishment.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Now the
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United
States</st1:place></st1:country-region> stands on the brink of major social
struggles, with tens of millions of working people seeking the means to fight to
defend jobs, living standards and public services. The American ruling class has
long understood that the real threat to its vast wealth and privilege comes not
from foreign “terrorists,” but from below, from the working people who
constitute the vast majority of the population.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Working
people must be equally clear-eyed: millions will now come into conflict with the
vast military/intelligence apparatus of the federal government. What is posed
now is a turn to political struggle, to the independent political mobilization
of the working class against the two official parties of big business, the
Democrats and Republicans, and against the capitalist state
itself.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
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