Notes From the Editor
by Larry Kerschner
If you have the feeling that you are being watched, you probably are not paranoid. Welcome to the NationalSecuritySurveillanceState. A recent book The Daily You by Joseph Turow shows how ads, discounts, news and entertainment are being customized and personalized on the basis of data being collected and coordinated by powerful but not well-known media agencies. When you fill out a survey, swipe your card at Safeway, download a Groupon coupon or Google any information on the Internet, these media agencies are developing an individualized profile of you despite their claim that this process is anonymous.
The Department of Defense provides a “free” test to all school districts in this country called the ASVAB which is supposed to help students develop career choices but what it actually does is collect the data that the military recruiters need to inveigle students to join up. This is the same approach the advertisers are using on you. Collect the data from you that will be used to convince you to buy the ideas and products they are selling. Recently William Binney, who worked for the National Security Agency for almost 40 years, warned how the NSA is building the largest spy center in the country inBluffdale,Utah. He states that the government has already collected and stored over 20 trillion pieces of telephonic and Internet communication ofU.S.citizens. Using programs that they have developed, if they want to focus on you, they can call up any former and future forms of communication between you and any members of your social network.
The House of Representatives recently passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act which would make legal any sharing, unbeknownst to you, of any online and private communications with government agencies which is something that the NSA is already doing. Within a month of 9/11 Congress passed the Patriot Act which authorized expanded surveillance by the government and the military. President Obama now has and uses power that President Bush didn’t dare. He has ordered the death of U.S.citizens without court review or trial. He signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 which authorizes the U.S.military to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone suspected of assisting terrorists. In many ways, the effect of these changes has been to militarize allU.S. police departments. The Seattle Police Department obtained one of 700 recent permits from the Federal government given to government and law enforcement agencies in this country to spy onU.S. citizens with Predator drones.
What can you do about it? One way to stop the advertising media from tracking you is to install the free Do Not Track program from www.donottrack.us. You can contact www.torproject.org. The Tor Project has a free download which will protect you from a common form of internet surveillance known as “traffic analysis.” It helps maintain real anonymity on the Internet. Another useful site is www.eff.org. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a Surveillance Self-Defense site to help educate all about the law and technology being used by the government to spy on and manipulate us.