When we talk the serious conspiracies, those that pass the schizoabsurd, lizardman-constant filter, so skepticism toward the official accounts of certain pivotal events, a common wisdom is quickly invoked: It would take too many people, and someone would talk.
Would they?
On March 8, 1971, Smokin' Joe Frazier fought Muhammad Ali in the Fight of the Century. Both were undefeated -- 26-0 with 23 knockouts for Frazier, 31-0 with 25 knockouts for Ali. Past the biggest fight, it was considered the biggest sporting event ever up to that point. Madison Square Garden made a million at the gate; 2.5 million tickets were sold for closed-circuit pay-per-view venues; in London where it was broadcast at midnight, 90,000 tickets were sold. They went 15 rounds and Smokin' Joe won by unanimous decision, though Ali would go on to the win their next two bouts. While everyone was watching that fight, less than 100 miles away 8 members of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into a Bureau office in a Philadelphia suburb called Media. The documents they found revealed the existence of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program: COINTELPRO.
COINTELPRO started in 1956, its stated goal was undermining communist activity in the United States and much can be said on that, but I think most relevant is socialism and communism already had a popularity in the States at the turn of the century and after World War 1 and the Russian Revolution they had a real presence in American academia. I doubt a man so circumspect as J. Edgar Hoover was unaware of decades of fomenting communist thought and the subsequent infiltration into power of white communists. I imagine his black book had quite a few names Joseph McCarthy would have been very interested in seeing. Nevertheless, it went on, COINTELPRO worked against the Communist Party of the US, the Socialist Workers Party, the Black Panthers, and also the KKK. "Tactics included anonymous phone calls, IRS audits, and the creation of documents that would divide the American communist organization internally." MLK arrived and Hoover quickly identified him and singled him out, bugging his home and hotel rooms, and then using the audio from the bugs to threaten King, saying he should kill himself. I have a singular hatred for communism and MLK was a socialist but he had committed no crime, there was no legal basis for the FBI's considerable efforts against him. RFK signed off on a month of watching MLK, Hoover just kept it running.
On the militant side, COINTELPRO efforts, if not wholly responsible for the schism in the Nation of Islam that saw Malcolm X break away, sharply accelerated the deterioration of the relationship between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad that culminated in NOI members killing Malcolm.
As an aside, the FBI was apparently concerned with and dedicated to preventing the rise of a "Messiah-like figure" who would unify black militants. I find this curious. At the time the demographics of the US were 88% white, 10% black, 4% hispanics of any race, those are stark lines. Had there been black militancy and an actual armed conflict, they would have been put down hard and America of the 60s, certainly the South as popularly portrayed, surely had the racial animus to back mass expulsion or if not that, death squads. Right? Hoover was no integrationist. I notice I'm confused. Alas.
For these, for the buggings, for the creation of inflammatory documents, we have an FBI that had no problem serially and severely breaking the law, at stoking hostilities, overlooking murders they effectually encouraged, and with MLK, just outright telling the guy "kill yourself or else." They didn't bother with that for Fred Hampton, they just had him killed. Maybe this seems tame now, my how we've fallen.
The CIA had something of their own version of COINTELPRO established under LBJ and expanded by Nixon, Operation MHCHAOS. They also had something older and in the same window as COINTELPRO: Project MKUltra. "MK" from the internal staff rating, the CIA's version of military MOS, involved in the project, and "Ultra" likely from the extremely high secrecy around the project. I expect most here have the gist: starting in the 50s, the CIA dosed the unknowing with various psychoactive substances alongside research into brainwashing, psychological torture and general manipulation of thought. MKUltra was the successor to the CIA's Project Artichoke, which was itself likely a successor to Nazi research from scientists procured through Operation Paperclip. What we know is horrifying, and we don't know a lot, because amidst Watergate, CIA director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all MKUltra files. A small number survived. What brought it to light wasn't even anything out of the project itself, it was Seymour Hersh reporting on MHCHAOS in the New York Times. His piece resulted in the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, and it was under those the existence of MKUltra was revealed.
Ted Kennedy, on the Senate floor in 1977:
The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations."
Hundreds at least, maybe thousands of people were involved in MKUltra, and with universities performing tests on unwitting citizens it seems like it wasn't particularly compartmentalized. What brought it to light? It wasn't people on the inside blowing the whistle in the 50s or 60s or at the start of the 70s, and I doubt Helms was the only one who thought the American people wouldn't like the truth.
There's Iran-Contra. Oliver North & co. selling guns to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua: busted by an Iranian official leaking to Lebanese journalists. There's the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking, something they've covered their tracks on well, "They knew it was happening" is good enough. There's also Operation Fast and Furious, though I wouldn't group it with the rest, it had interesting goals that might have worked, and those cartel guys don't really have problems getting guns so I don't see FF guns being found at shootings as the biggest pie on their face. But it's worth including because there were people within who objected and blew the whistle.
Then there's PRISM. You know it, Edward Snowden saw the NSA's backdoor to all internet communications, got the files to prove it, now he's a Russian citizen. PRISM is still around, it hasn't been reduced. They can still surveil whomever FISA says they can. The USA FREEDOM Act, the only attempt to limit its reach, moved data holding to the phone carriers; US citizen data of which the NSA can still access with ex parte FISC warrants, an entirely separate incredibly troublesome practice of the US government. PRISM is COINTELPRO and MHCHAOS in one, supersized, a dossier at a click for just about anyone, anywhere. It ranks among the very worst things done by the American government and nobody involved has said a fucking word except Edward Snowden.
What's the common factor?
In each scandal we have large numbers of people involved in such operations. In each scandal, save the exception that proves the rule, none of them came forward. Discovery happened by a lucky break-in, or investigation into a different debacle, or adversarial geopolitical interest.
A CIA official who knows his history knows they don't get caught because someone on the inside spills the beans. They get caught by leaving breadcrumbs for outside eyes. No breadcrumbs, no scandal.
There are smaller scandals, in terms of scope or gravity, not necessarily the height of office of those involved, where whistleblowers did come forward. It's not unheard of. But this is an evidenced rejection of the common wisdom that there is a limited and small number of people who can be involved in highly illegal and evil projects before someone says something. So: "It'd take too many people, and they'd talk"? No, sometimes they don't. Sometimes hundreds or thousands of people can scrape the abyss and go to their graves saying nothing.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I present to you some food for thought: a post from the stupidpol subreddit from 4 years ago: Did we ever find out who killed those kids in the CHAZ?
Reading through the comments, the consensus seems to be that there had to be multiple, maybe dozens of leftist activists there, mostly local White antifa, who either witnessed the murders or knew who the armed guards were or knew who recruited and armed them. Had just only one of them ever snitched, we'd probably know about it, because there would have been arrests and interrogations, and the media would have reported it. But no such thing happened, which means nobody ever snitched. Not one of them. And the reason is probably not that this is such a well-organized group.
More options
Context Copy link
The last sentence is, word-for-word, what a representative of the GDR would say if asked about the Stasi (pre-1989). As such, it doesn't exactly prove much.
More options
Context Copy link
No, progressives can be quite authoritarian. In fact plenty kind of organically function similar to three letter agencies in this respect - If they don't directly work on something they'll not check, let alone call into question the work of an ally. And if they do, they'll be careful to only publish correct results, lest it might be "misused". I've been personally told better not to research something bc I might get unpopular results, and this was by someone who otherwise was quite willing to pick a fight on other issues that don't go against his politics.
More options
Context Copy link
Your facts are wrong here. PRISM was always getting data that was held by the carriers. UPSTREAM was the program where they directly tapped the overseas lines.
Right. FISA is the long-standing acceptance that the United States is not going to be the only country in the world without foreign signals intelligence capabilities, and trying to bring a wide variety of methods that have the most risk of impacting US Persons within the purview of statutes passed by the Congress, rather than simply within the Executive power of foreign/military affairs. That is, when you have the Russian ambassador and a bunch of likely FSB stooges operating in the embassy under diplomatic cover, the Constitution says that they are US Persons, but your elected representatives agreed that it is worthwhile to surveil them. Basically nobody disputes this core purpose/use of such power. It's the more fringy things, specific methods of collection, specific authorities granted, specific justifications required, etc., that are the subject of controversy. You have to actually get into some detail to find something actual and particular to complain about, and you have grossly failed to reach that bar.
Your elected representatives agreed that PRISM is still justified enough, and unsurprisingly so. The only really controversial thing Snowden got was the 215 program. 99.9% of what he published was about pretty legal, pretty legitimate, pretty supported-by-your-elected-representatives intelligence programs focused on foreign governments and militaries. If he hadn't gotten lucky with that one, frankly pretty tiny, program, the narrative could have been entirely different, with Snowden being viewed as doing immense damage to a huge number of legitimate programs without any supportable justification at all. That people can't even accurately recall the one little program that he happened to get lucky on is evidence that you've more just fallen for propaganda and vibes rather than a big scary 'COINTELPRO and MHCHAOS in one'.
Snowden revealed that the NSA was (and I would assume still is) collecting all the call metadata for every phone call in the country. And also tapping the internet wholesale domestically, not just overseas or specific persons. "SSL added and removed here :-)". None of this was surprising to those of us who have seen such programs revealed before (ECHELON, AT&T Room 641a) and been called tinfoil hatters for believing they existed. And of course "our elected representatives" are OK with this; they're a bunch of snakes. But it's not "no big deal" just because the "our elected representatives" and the David Sternlights of the world are happy with it. I'm fine with the NSA tapping Angela Merkel's phone; that's their job. Collecting every American's email, call record data, etc. is very different. Even if they pinky swear not to query their own database without a good reason.
I believe Snowden also revealed some DEA co-operation in the manner of parallel construction, where the NSA would pick up evidence of drug smuggling, tip off the DEA, and then the agencies would fabricate a clean chain of evidence and present that to the court. This, too, is a pretty big deal. (and, again, likely still going on).
Correct, except for your parenthetical. The program was ended, after having been the one truly controversial thing Snowden dropped, being reformulated several times by Congress, it was ultimately killed by NSA (probably because the requirements put on it by Congress made it more hassle than it was worth).
Nope. This is definitely false. Still tinfoil hatter.
Then I challenge you to put forward a proposal of rules and systems to accomplish both these items. I think it likely that if you actually spend enough time engaging with the problem, you'll probably come up with something that is to too far off from where we currently are. Like I said in my first comment, you're gonna have to get into the more fringy things, specific methods of collection, specific authorities granted, specific justifications required, etc., even though that is precisely what you won't want to do because it's hard.
Is illegal, and if you happen to have good evidence of it happening, I welcome seeing you bring the case.
I don't believe the information available to the public would be any different if the NSA was still doing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
And I certainly don't believe that was, or is, the only such place.
No thank you, I'm not a legislator and I'm not playing the game where I propose something and if you can find a loophole I'm implicitly required to agree that the status quo is fine.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/exclusive-us-directs-agents-to-cover-up-program-used-to-investigate-americans-idUSBRE97409S/
I'm sure that you believe that the information available to the public would be the same even if lizardmen were running the NSA.
Your bare link doesn't do what you think it does. Try again, maybe even try with words.
Fair enough. But by the very terms of your position, you can't expect me to think that you have a remotely-acceptable alternative, and so I can feel perfectly fine continuing to let my words and position stand. If you want someone to change their mind, you have to try. You have to give at least a reason.
Oh yes, that one slide from forever ago that literally nothing came out of. I don't recall the details; would have to find that reddit search function again (I lost my bookmark recently). But yeah, there was no there there. Or can you find some there there that actually followed out of it?
If the lizardmen were sufficiently competent.
My bare link shows you're just playing Dory like most people do, forgetting all the past revelations of the sort of stuff the NSA has been doing.
Of course nothing came of it, "my elected representatives" are very much in favor of parallel construction.
Whelp.
Nope. It literally does not do the thing you said it did. Try. Even try.
So you can cite the vote for this?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Collecting emails is different from metadata. Collecting metadata is not the same as collecting content. You can object to the government collecting metadata too, but it is really not the same thing as "they are reading your emails."
It's not just "pinky swearing," it's heavily regulated and monitored, overseen by multiple internal and external oversight authorities. Now of course you can assume they just lie and hide things and do whatever they want "LOL at Congress and the OIG," but that requires believing a lot of things that fail the usual conspiracy theory reality checks, and if true you are already living in your imaginary dystopia.
The point is they did all of that. Captured all call metadata and collected emails.
Internal, maybe, though I tend to doubt it -- that's just pinky swearing. External, no, not really. Nobody's going in and auditing every search of the NSAs own records. We know they caught SOME people misusing it (e.g. LOVEINT), that's all. We also know about systematic misuse like DEA parallel construction.
Snowden claimed the NSA collected actual email content, but I'm not aware that any evidence has been provided for this, and Snowden said lots of things that weren't accurate. Collecting metadata was of dubious legality (hence the many commissions and oversight hearings set up afterwards), but collecting actual communications of US persons would be an unambiguous violation of the law and there would have been an absolute shitstorm. Forget what you see in the movies; if the NSA reads your email or listens to your phone calls, without a FISA warrant, someone's head is going to roll. Unless, again, you believe that what you see in the movies is real and federal employees just LOL at the six zillion mandatory trainings they all have to take on what they are allowed to do and what will get them fired/criminally charged.
Sure, you can dismiss every huge and very public internal and external organization that exists to say otherwise as a bunch of make-believe "pinky swearing" when in reality GS-9s are doing black helicopter Hollywood shit and loling at Congress. That just tells me you know nothing about how the government works.
People who get caught misusing it (especially in "LOVEINT" cases) - and they are almost always caught - lose their jobs and clearances, and sometimes get criminally charged.
Parallel construction is more gray - I know the EFF has a big beef with it, but I think the laws on whether it can be dismissed as unconstitutional are still pretty ambiguous. Likewise, most of the claims that it's actually happened have come from dubious sources (like Snowden). Let's assume it has actually happened and that we agree it's bad - that's still higher-ups playing with legal edge cases to target narco-traffickers and terrorists in a Constitutionally questionable manner. Not the scenarios you are cooking up where ordinary employees just spy on whoever they feel like and nobody ever gets audited or caught or held responsible. Basically every government system has all kinds of audit trails, especially those that can look at PII. If you think the NSA has carved out some exception for itself where they can do whatever they want without such restrictions and systems in place (especially after the post-Snowden congressional hearings) then all I can say is, again, you have no idea of how very different the operations of the government in the real world are from the Oliver Stone government of your imagination.
They absolutely collected the actual communications. And indexed it, through XKEYSCORE. What they claimed is they they wouldn't actually read it without the proper authorization. That's the pinky-swearing.
What things did they collect with the tap described in that article?
All of Google's inter-data-center communication.
How do you know that?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Reading comprehension is important, as are details.
They collected metadata, and (theoretically) had the capability to collect actual emails (which, you know, if you actually care about the country having an intelligence agency, you would want them to be capable of doing). There is no evidence they did, in fact, collect actual email content, especially of US citizens. Saying they "could have" done that is like saying that the police "could" drag you out of your car at a traffic stop and beat you up for no reason. Which actually happens sometimes! Abuses of power exist, and there are mechanism in place to monitor, prevent and remediate that (I would argue, far more for federal agencies than for local police departments).
Yes, once again - if you assume they simply ignore every single law and policy and the Constitution, all the mandatory classes government employees take with dire consequences for misuse spelled out for them, if you assume the OIG sits in his office with his thumb up his ass, if you assume that every time DIRNSA gets hauled before Congress to answer questions he's bullshitting them - then sure, they're just "pinky swearing" and it's all make believe.
You don't have sufficient understanding of the topic and don't want to.
They collected metadata about phone calls. They collected EVERYTHING on their internet intercepts. Then they sorted it out later.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As someone who used to be one of those GS-9s, this is a pretty accurate take.
The NSA in particular takes compliance very, very seriously out of the self-interest of not losing the legal authorities granted by congress and approved by the courts.
I was once tracking a foreign target for quite some time. And then I saw she was conversing with a family member about how to get a spouse a Green Card.
Uh oh.
Turns out this lady and her sister were born in the same small college town I was, and were looking to come to America with their husbands.
At that point, we had to either delete all the things related to this person, or jump through all the hoops necessary to justify continued efforts (which in theory was possible, since she was the employee of a foreign government). But we opted to just delete all the things given she wasn’t sufficiently high-ranking to justify the effort and was clearly trying to leave her job.
(I should point out that if a US Person contacts a valid intelligence target, those comms are going to be collected by default and retained if there’s a valid reason, without a warrant beforehand [though with a shit ton of other oversight and approval]. Just ask Mike Flynn.)
Not just a US person contacting a valid intelligence target. The NSA gets to go three hops from the target. So a US person contacting a valid target. A US person contacting the person in the previous sentence. And a US person contacting the person in the previous sentence. And of course that applies to all parties in the communication.
For metadata. In the 215 program. Not in other stuff. @SwordOfOccam is talking about the other stuff. Yet again, you actually have to get into the nitty gritty to have a proper complaint, but approximately two seconds after you get into any nitty gritty, it becomes immediately apparent that you don't have any of the facts correct.
More options
Context Copy link
That is not a valid interpretation of standard procedures.
I believe you are conflating what I am talking about with metadata rules and some particular authority.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
When it comes to CIA conspiracies like this, it's quite easy to imagine why it would be easy to get people to not talk: CIA is presumably full of the kind of people who don't really see illegally surveying or harassing a bunch of communists as a crime at all, or as something that might technically be illegal but still fully immoral - after all, sometimes you need to break the rules to get to the bad guys. It gets more problematic where you have the idea of CIA, for instance, organizing the 9/11 to kill 3 000 innocent Americans to achieve... well, it's unclear what this would be, since there are presumably other, subtler methods to convince the government to go to war if that's what you want. Unless the organization is full of robots, there would be vastly more stakes for someone to get such a guilty conscience that they'd blab about it.
I think you may be overestimating the amount of people you would need. Even many of the loopier conspiracy theories about 9/11 could be executed with 100 people or less. JFK’s assassination could easily have been done with a working group of five people fully read-in and a few unwitting accomplices.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My conspiracy theory story, told quickly because I really should be working right now: I was assigned to Carrier Air Wing Five. While we were deployed, our CAG (HMFIC) was quickly and quietly relieved due to "loss of confidence". All the officers were pulled into a conference room and we held a quick ceremony where DCAG (number 2 in command) assumed responsibilities for the Wing. Never saw CAG again.
It turns out that he was sleeping with the base XO's wife. They were both married with kids. Infidelity is a common reason for getting fired in the military (perhaps the last place in America where that's true). But immediately after the change of command, the rumor mill was still a little unsure about the specifics and I wanted to know more, because when you're stuck in cramped quarters with the same people for long periods of time, gossip is high entertainment. So I googled. And whoa boy did I find some conspiracy theories. My favorite was that he was relieved because the US was going to attack North Korea in a week, and the CAG wouldn't do it, so they replaced him with someone who would.
As you may recall, the US has not launched an unprovoked air strike on North Korea. The conspiracy theorists were just throwing shit to the wall and hoping some stuck.
I like this post, and I think it's important to understand what has happened and what is possible for a US conspiracy. But it's also important to keep a very strong bayesian prior that each particular conspiracy theory is incorrect.
More options
Context Copy link
Point well taken, but doesn't Snowden's whistleblowing itself undermine your point?
More options
Context Copy link