Daniel Byman and Christine Fair have written a short but compelling essay at The Atlantic in which they assert (with good evidence) that the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorist organizations are not characterized by stunning skill and crystal-focused religious zeal, but rather by incompetence and an obsession with porn.

To call terrorists “nitwits” is to deny them the capacity to terrify us. It is to disarm them. Want to stand up to terrorism? Then laugh at the fools who expect us to bow and scrape before them while they can’t even light their shoes or their underwear or their SUVs on fire.

Yesterday morning, a team of Washington Post journalists unveiled a major new resource called Top Secret America: A Hidden World, Growing Beyond Control. A series of connected web pages identify and connected various government agencies and private companies that are engaged in erecting a new classified surveillance structure in the United States.

The amount of information contained in these pages is initially overwhelming, and it may be hard at first to figure out how useful the information might be. For instance, below is a static copy of Top Secret America’s “interactive” map — to zoom in and use other features, click on the map to be taken to the original website:

Unfortunately, the “zoom” and search by city features are of limited utility because zoomed-in maps (with the notable exception of the Washington, DC area) don’t provide any more detail. It’s perhaps understandable, but there aren’t any names and addresses of facilities or involved corporations or government agencies on the map, no matter how closely one zooms in. But even in the national aggregate, the map tells us a lot. For instance, while these classified organizations are clustered around Washington DC, they’re also distributed in every state, no matter how small that state is in size or population, making these classified industries part of the constituency for members of Congress from every state. The bar below the map with the distribution of classified installations for various government agencies tells us that the parts of government that are least accountable to democratic processes are most in charge of classified activity.

The aspect of the Top Secret America website I think will be of most use is the search function which allows one to find companies or government agencies by type of work or location. Using this function, I can quickly generate a list of 32 government agencies and 36 companies involved in classified activity related to the “War on Drugs”. For each of those agencies and companies, I’m informed of headquarters location and other contextual information. This kind of data would prove useful in determining, say, whether a correlation exists between campaign contributions from companies involved with the “War on Drugs” and a congresscritter’s policy actions regarding the same.

The Washington Post has written a series of news articles connecting the dots in this data in various fashions as well:

… In June, a stone carver from Manassas chiseled another perfect star into a marble wall at CIA headquarters, one of 22 for agency workers killed in the global war initiated by the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The intent of the memorial is to publicly honor the courage of those who died in the line of duty, but it also conceals a deeper story about government in the post-9/11 era: Eight of the 22 were not CIA officers at all. They were private contractors.

To ensure that the country’s most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation’s interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called “inherently government functions.” But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest — and whether the government is still in control…

If you’re interested at all in the expansion of the Homeland Security state, this resource is worth more than a casual look.

In 2005, Irregular Times responded to the Bush administration’s plans for lifetime detention without criminal charges or trial, writing an essay calling George W. Bush “The Quiet Dictator”:

It was revealed this week that the Bush Administration is planning to keep people as prisoners for their entire lives, even though there is no evidence that those people have committed any crime against the United States. The lack of evidence against these people is so striking that the American government does not even have enough grounds to bring them before a form of military tribunal that has been set up by George W. Bush precisely for the purpose of evading the standards of justice set by the United States Constitution….

In the old, pre-Homeland, United States of America, a person had to be convicted of murder, by a jury of peers, in a public, open trial, on the basis of evidence without a reasonable doubt, and with the opportunity for fair representation and appeal to the justice system to rule out mistakes and prosecutorial fraud. Oh, but that was before The Homeland was created, and as we’re told over and over again, in the Homeland, everything changed.

At first, it was a scandal that the President of the United States had claimed the power to set up his own courts, outside of the judicial branch of government, to force people through military tribunals that would be little more than kangaroo courts. Now, it appears that Mr. Bush, the Master of our Homeland, has decided that he does not have to give prisoners any trial at all, ever. He can just lock them up, forever….

It is a sad day for those Americans who actually care about freedom, to see the American President give himself the power to convict people and punish them with life sentences without any need of evidence or even the formality of a show trial. This power is at the heart of totalitarianism, and now that George W. Bush has seized it, he is nothing more than a dictator….

The saddest thing of all is that most Americans just don’t care. So long as they are not taken prisoner, they don’t care if other people are. So long as they are not tortured, they don’t care if other people are. So long as they are able to live safely in their homes, they don’t care if other people, in other countries, are killed in their homes.

There is a new nonchalance in America about the withering of freedom. Freedom has now become an abstract concept for most Americans, something that is to be given only to some people, but not to others. Now, under the shadow of The Homeland, Americans seem to like the idea that only good people that the government approves of have the privilege of freedom. Gone are the days when freedom was regarded as a universal human right. Americans seem to want only security and vengeance.

It’s five years later and George W. Bush is no longer in the White House. But have matters changed? Barack Obama, the new Master of our Homeland, has agreed with the old Master that he does not have to give some prisoners any trial at all, ever. He, too, can just lock them up forever.

On what basis does Barack Obama justify his seizure of dictatorial powers? The Obama Administration says that the people it is imprisoning are suspected of providing support to “terrorist organizations.” But at the same time, the Obama administration’s own task force declared in 2010 that:

Notably, the principal obstacles to prosecution in the cases deemed infeasible by the Task Force typically did not stem from concerns over protecting sensitive sources or methods from disclosure, or concerns that the evidence against the detainee was tainted. While such concerns were present in some cases, most detainees were deemed infeasible for prosecution based on more fundamental evidentiary and jurisdictional limitations tied to the demands of a criminal forum….

Generally these detainees cannot be prosecuted because either there is presently insufficient admissible evidence to establish the detainee’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in either a federal court or military commission, or the detainee’s conduct does not constitute a chargeable offense in either a federal court or military commission.

In plain English, what does this mean? It means that the Obama administration is maintaining the Bush administration practice of detaining people without end when there is not sufficient evidence to actually convict them of terrorist acts, or terrorist support, or even terrorist affiliations.

The Guantanamo Review Task Force, consisting of officials from six branches of the Obama administration, was unanimous in making these declarations. In its unanimous report, the Guantanamo Review Task Force approvingly placed the following fig leaf over the indefinite detention of people who have insufficient evidence of guilt and whose conduct does not constitute a chargeable offense:

Significantly, the Executive Order does not preclude the government from prosecuting at a later date someone who is presently designated for continued detention. Work on these cases continues. Further exploitation of the forensic evidence could strengthen the prosecution against some detainees. Other detainees may cooperate with prosecutors. If either the Department of Justice or the Department of Defense concluded in the future that prosecution of a detainee held without charges has become feasible in a federal court or in a military commission, the detention decisions made in the course of this review would permit the prosecution to go forward.

You read that right: the Obama administration wants to keep these people locked up because one day some new evidence might come up that connects these people to prosecutable crimes, and just in case the government wants to keep them handy.

It is another sad day for Americans who care about freedom but see the American President give himself the power to punish people with a life in detention without any need for evidence, without even the formality of a show trial. Such power is still at the heart of totalitarianism, and now that Barack Obama has taken that power, we might as well call him what he is: a dictator.

American liberals long warned that George W. Bush was leading America toward dictatorship. But Barack Obama has taken the same dictatorial powers for himself. Bush may be gone, but the dictatorship is still here.

It’s now been 535 days since Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. Since a time before Obama’s inauguration, federal law has required President Obama to appoint a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. This board is charged with the responsibility of tracking the compliance of the executive branch of government with the provisions of the Constitution. The board is granted the ability to subpoena members of the government to testify and supply documentation, and it is granted access to classified information in order to carry out its work. Finally, the board is tasked with making regular reports to the U.S. Congress and the American public on the constitutionality of activities by a presidential administration.

This board and these powers do not fill a hypothetical need. Just yesterday, the National Security Agency acknowledged the existence of a program called Perfect Citizen in which the United States Military is putting surveillance devices in computer networks across the domestic USA to snoop on Internet traffic. Of course, the National Security Agency denies that the Perfect Citizen program is planning to spy on Americans using these devices — which is odd, considering that they are being deployed domestically — and proclaims that its efforts are purely for purposes of “research and development.” The military-industrial corporation assigned the $100 million Perfect Citizen contract, Raytheon, tells the media that “We have no info on this” — which again is odd, considering that the Wall Street Journal obtained a Raytheon e-mail in which the corporation declares that “Perfect Citizen is Big Brother.”

What does the operation called Perfect Citizen have to do with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board? A lot. First of all, the NSA didn’t even acknowledge the existence of Perfect Citizen until Wall Street Journal investigators uncovered details about the program. If the Wall Street Journal hadn’t stumbled across the information, we might never have known about this domestic military surveillance program. But since the NSA is under the authority of the executive branch and the President of the United States, then the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board would have had the power to uncover this program and report on its activities to the Congress and the public. It doesn’t stop there. In 2010, after the disclosure of the program’s existence, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board would have had the power to assess the claims of the NSA that Perfect Citizen is just a hypothetical program.

The board would have been able to do these things if it had been constituted as it should have been in 2009. But for 535 days now, Barack Obama has ignored federal law and failed to nominate even one member to sit on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board. The Board remains nonexistent. The Board’s oversight functions are going undone. Because the board has not been filled and does not exist, it cannot carry out these investigative and reporting functions on programs like Perfect Citizen. We’re lucky we even know that the program exists. We have no idea what other Obama administration programs are out there that may be violating our constitutional rights. And when programs like Perfect Citizen do come to light, there’s no way to assess the accuracy of the NSA’s protestations that this is all just “research” and we don’t have to worry our purty little heads none.

The ongoing lack of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is not only a violation of federal law, but is also a violation of the trust placed in a candidate who told us on the campaign trail that unlike his predecessor, he would restore the rule of law and obey the Constitution. This is not the Change we were promised.

Over here on the East coast, there are only five hours left before the end of the 4th of July. That’s only five hours for the prediction of a U.S. government’s atomic bomb attack on one of its own cities either to come true or to be established as yet another in the long line of hysterical imminent-attack predictions that didn’t come true.

The nearly-done nature of July 4 hasn’t stopped the conspiracy theorists from dreaming up some new predictions for today:

Imagine…..

Heavy fireworks sabotaged with nuclear waste – so when they explode the dust is ejected and lingers over the crowd and is blown slowly into the waters….

The sabotaged fireworks are fired in NYC; in Washington; in Boston and Miami.

They are fired in Cleveland and Chicago and Pittsburgh and Des Moines.

Fired in OKC; Dallas, Houston and Denver.

Cheyenne; Portland, Seattle and San Francisco.

That would be one hell of a shitty 4th of July, would it not?

(PS… still think ff could mean ‘For Fourth’; false flag being a little too obvious and not the kind of thing ‘They’ would need to tell their followers on the street)

Yes, imagine that. Then imagine that Skeletor and the Decepticons ride Unicorns onto the Brooklyn Bridge and unlock the ghost portal to the 5th Dimension, unleashing the power of the undead upon the Big Apple, and Yonkers too. The terrorists would love that, wouldn’t they?

Since we’re talking about apocalyptic predictions, let’s not forget the apocalypse with a capital A. Linda Newkirk’s prophesy for the Second Coming of Christ to be revealed in “a few months” is overdue, considering that it was made back in December of 2009.

The first sign that things aren’t right with the draft National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is that it’s being organized through the Department of Homeland Security. Who thought of trying to combine the concepts of “trusted” and “Homeland Security”?

The idea of the NSTIC is that the Internet isn’t trustworthy and secure, and so people need to have a means for engaging in online activities. So, there will be created an Identity Ecosystem which will allow just one login procedure to access a broad number of services ranging from email to bank accounts and health records.

Howard Schmidt, Cybersecurity Coordinator for President Obama, introduced the NSTIC last Friday, writing:

“The NSTIC, which is in response to one of the near term action items in the President’s Cyberspace Policy Review, calls for the creation of an online environment, or an Identity Ecosystem as we refer to it in the strategy, where individuals and organizations can complete online transactions with confidence, trusting the identities of each other and the identities of the infrastructure that the transaction runs on. For example, no longer should individuals have to remember an ever-expanding and potentially insecure list of usernames and passwords to login into various online services. Through the strategy we seek to enable a future where individuals can voluntarily choose to obtain a secure, interoperable, and privacy-enhancing credential (e.g., a smart identity card, a digital certificate on their cell phone, etc) from a variety of service providers – both public and private – to authenticate themselves online for different types of transactions (e.g., online banking, accessing electronic health records, sending email, etc.). Another key concept in the strategy is that the Identity Ecosystem is user-centric – that means you, as a user, will be able to have more control of the private information you use to authenticate yourself on-line, and generally will not have to reveal more than is necessary to do so.”

The Department of Homeland Security is accepting comments for the draft version of effort to centralize online information… but there’s a catch: You need to log in and create an account in their system before you can leave a comment.

Here’s the comment I would have left about the proposal, if it weren’t for the requirement to give Homeland Security my email address:

“Remembering different account information is a privilege, not a problem. It’s a security protection to individuals, both from hackers and from government surveillance, to have highly idiosyncratic, decentralized, personally improvised systems of multiple sources upon which online identity is founded.

The proposed system may, strictly speaking, be voluntary, but only in the sense that a driver’s license is voluntary. A driver’s license is now required for access to a huge number of places and services, and isn’t just about driving any more. Please, let’s work on methods to make individually-controlled, multiple and separate online identities more secure.”

When the Patriot Act was passed in 2001, the bar above which financial institutions are required to send the U.S. Government “suspicious activity reports” regarding Americans’ financial transactions was dramatically lowered. The Patriot Act also placed new emphasis on the use of financial surveillance to keep track of PEPs. That acronym stands for “politically exposed persons” and refers to surveillance of political leaders. Adam Davidson explained the process two years ago:

Banks monitor every transaction. Every one, no matter how small…. The software is checking to see if maybe that $4 is part of a pattern…. The report goes to a bank’s compliance officer, listing all recent suspicious transactions. Every transaction is given a numerical score…. The computer makes the score based on who is making the transaction, where does he come from, who is he associated with, what else is he up to. Every bank customer has, somewhere, in some computer database, a risk assessment score….

It also checks a bunch of lists. Are you on a terror watch list? A list of criminals?… A PEP — banks really do use that term — is anybody with political power. That means a Nigerian General, a U.S. Senator, or, say, the Governor of New York. And any PEP — any Politically Exposed Person — is monitored more carefully.

Davidson’s quip about “the Governor of New York” refers to Eliot Spitzer, whose political career was ended in part due to his own hubris but also in part due to the exposure of his hubris by government surveillance of his spending.

Last week, the U.S. government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network released its latest “SAR Activity Review — By The Numbers,” a series of reports on the volume of suspicious activity reports beginning in 1996 and now complete through the end of 2009. Since 1996, the trend toward increasing numbers of suspicious activity reports from year to year went unabated — until now. In 2009, the number of suspicious activity reports actually went down slightly from the number of reports in 2008. This reflects a downturn in the last six months of 2009 — suspicious activity report collection in the first half of 2009 was at a pace to set a new record high.

What is the reason for the downturn in the volume of suspicious activity reports in 2009? Is it possible that the surveillance apparatus is ramping down its efforts in this regard? That’s possible. Another possibility is that this surveillance downturn reflects the effect of the economic downturn we’ve all been experiencing. People with less money may simply have fewer transactions, generating fewer suspicious activity reports to the federal government.

If a policy shift explains the surveillance downturn, we should continue to see a decline in suspicious activity reports in the next few years as surveillance heads back down toward pre-9/11 levels. If an economic downturn explains the surveillance slump, then as the economy revs back up we should see suspicious activity report levels rise again. Watch and see.

If the trend continues for the second six months of last year, 2009 will be yet another year seeing record high collection of Americans’ financial information without warrants. This new record rate for the government in collecting Suspicious Activity Reports has been met utterly without mention by the U.S. government’s press offices or by the professional media.

(Tip of the pen to qs)

The Defense Department calls its new unit FICOR — the Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operation Records. But the military group describes the data it will collect through intelligence and data mining operations:

“Social Security Number (SSN), address, citizenship documentation, biometric data, passport number, vehicle identification number and vehicle/vessel license data… [from] Federal, state, local, and tribal entities, foreign intelligence agencies, educational and research institutions, foreign governments and open source literature.”

Data collected from “federal, state, local, and tribal entities” including a person’s “Social Security Number (SSN)”? How foreign does that sound to you?

Military spying on Americans? No, that’s not Change I Can Believe In. It’s more of the same. Read up on the Bush-era TALON program, a military program that spied on law-abiding American citizens without their knowledge and without a warrant, solely on the basis of their political activity (For the younger among you who may not have heard of this thing called a “warrant,” see the increasingly quaint document known as the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 4. See also “freedom of assembly and petition,” Amendment 1). Read especially the part of the 2007 Defense Department brief in which the military explicitly indicates it will keep the data and restart the program in the future:

DoD to Implement Interim Threat Reporting Procedures

DoD’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) will close the TALON Reporting System effective Sept. 17, 2007, and maintain a record copy of the collected data in accordance with intelligence oversight requirements.

To ensure there is a mechanism in place to document and assess potential threats to DoD resources, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs will propose a system to streamline such threat reporting and better meet the Defense department’s needs.

In the interim, until this new reporting program is adopted, DoD components will send information concerning force protection threats to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Guardian reporting system.

It was hiding there in plain sight: no, the military never planned on keeping TALON shut down at all. But the military has a new Commander in Chief. Barack Obama could have stopped this domestic military surveillance. But he went right along with it. That’s not Change. It’s more of the same.

When President Barack Obama promptly nominated James Clapper to be Dennis Blair’s replacement as Director of National Intelligence, he urged that the Senate work without delay to confirm him:

Not surprisingly, the Senate has voted to confirm Jim for senior positions on four separate occasions — and each time it has done so overwhelmingly. Given the importance of this position, the urgent threats to our nation, and Jim’s unique experience, I urge the Senate to do so again — and as swiftly as possible. I’ve spoken to the appropriate Senate leaders and I’ve indicated that I expect this nomination to be completed during this work period. This nomination can’t fall victim to the usual Washington politics.

513 days ago, Barack Obama was inaugurated as president of the United States. The president is required by law to appoint a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The Board is charged with the responsibility of tracking the compliance of the executive branch of government with the provisions of the Constitution, and of making explicit reports to Congress and the public when the executive branch fails in this regard.

For 513 days now, Barack Obama has failed to nominate even one member to sit on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board. The Board remains — in violation of federal law — nonexistent. The Board’s oversight functions are going undone.

In the meantime, Joseph Lieberman in the Senate and Jane Harman in the House of Representatives are introducing bills that give the U.S. government new powers to interfere in the workings of the Internet and even shut it off. But don’t worry, in both the Senate bill and House bill there’s this board that’s tasked with making sure the government doesn’t trample on Americans’ constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms.

It’s called the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. And it doesn’t exist.

If you want to figure where out a person’s priorities lie, don’t watch what they say. Watch what they do.

Just two weeks ago today, Obama administration Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair was let go. After just 14 days, Obama announced his nominee to replace Admiral Blair: yet another member of the military spy apparatus, General James Clapper.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has now gone 500 Days in office without appointing a single member to the legally mandated Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The board has subpoena power to uncover and report on Obama administration violations of the U.S. Constitution, particularly in its intelligence activities. Thanks to Barack Obama, the board does not exist.

14 days, 500 days. Now that’s a big difference.

If you want something talked about all week, announce it on a cold and rainy Monday. If you want people to forget about something, announce it on a sunny and warm Friday.

Why does Barack Obama want us to forget that he’s nominated another General from military intelligence to be in charge of U.S. spying, both international and domestic?

Much was made of Senate candidate Rand Paul’s support for business owners who want to engage in racial discrimination, setting up separate facilities to isolate African-Americans. Much less has been made, however, of some of Mr. Paul’s other extreme positions, such as absolving BP of responsibility for the Gulf oil spill and declaring that mountaintop coal mining ought to be appreciated for replacing the Appalachian mountains with great big fields of waste that will be better than the mountains because they’re flat.

Another area of Rand Paul extremism that has received little focus is his antipathy to immigration. Even though border crossings are dramatically down in recent years, Paul often speaks to whip up the false perception that there’s some sort of crisis in illegal immigration.

Recently, Rand Paul has expanded his anti-immigration fervor to include a particularly small target. Rand Paul is now going after the babies.

The Constitution declares that anyone born in the United States is an American citizen, but Rand Paul seems to believe that these particular American babies are a great danger. “That baby becomes a citizen, and I think that that should stop also,” Paul warns.

Rand Paul wants to change the Constitution to limit the legal rights currently given to American babies, stripping them of their citizenship. Why? What do these babies do that’s so terrible, other than being American? Is it really so awful for babies to be American?

I just don’t understand Rand Paul’s fear of babies, but I’ll do him the favor anyway of passing along his campaign’s message: Vote Rand Paul 2010 – Because The Baby Menace Must Stop!

President Barack Obama is required by federal law to appoint a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to report to Congress and the public on the extent to which the Obama administration does — or does not — respect constitutional liberties in its actions.

Barack Obama’s been in office 485 days now, and he hasn’t submitted the name of a single person in nomination for this board. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board therefore does not exist, and its responsibilities are going unmet.

Yesterday, former New Jersey Governor and 9/11 Commission head Thomas Kean joined the growing list of people calling on Barack Obama to meet his legal obligation and appoint the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. In testimony at a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee, Kean remarked:

Following the 9/11 Commission recommendations, the Bush Administration created a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to advise the executive branch and oversee government efforts to defend civil liberties. The board was staffed and became operational in 2006. In 2007, Congress restructured the Board as an independent agency outside the White House. Despite early criticisms of undue delay and inadequate funding, the Board held numerous sessions with national security and homeland security advisers, the attorney general, and the FBI Director, among others, on terrorist surveillance and other issues arising from intelligence collection.

However, the Board has been dormant since that time. With massive capacity to develop data on individuals, the Board should fight to ensure that collection capabilities do not violate privacy and civil liberties. Mr. Chairman we support the sentiment expressed in your letter to President Obama, supported by many members of this committee, that he should quickly appoint members to the Board. We continue to believe that the Board provides critical functions and we urge President Obama its swift reconstitution.

What happened to the candidate who stated so frequently and with such fervor that he would restore respect for the constitution and the rule of law when he took office as president?

Back during the oh-so repressive era of George W. Bush, Ben Metcalf was driven to write in Harper’s to ask whether, for having the audacity to declare “I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands” he could be imprisoned.

Now, during the oh-so enlightened era of Barack Obama, an American citizen has actually been targeted for death — without warrants, without hearings, without a trial. This is not because the American citizen has actually gone out and harmed anyone. No one is claiming that he has. Rather, it is because the American citizen has made a public declaration that he would like others to take up arms against the United States.

For this speech, the Obama administration has put this American citizen on a list of people to be killed. Not to be arrested. Not to be brought to trial on some charge or another. Simply to be killed.

What do you think of that?