Crooks and Clowns revert to their “Yellow Peril”
US Officials’ Indiscriminate Transcontinental Data Vacuuming
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eighbors Close or Far, “Friends” or “Foe”
Global surveillance
Operating out of “diplomatic missions” Five Eyes—Australia, Britain,
Canada, New Zealand, USA—conducts Stateroom, a “highly sensitive signals
intelligence collection program involving interception of radio,
telecommunications and internet traffic.”
At US diplomatic missions, the program is run jointly by US
intelligence agencies NSA and CIA under the umbrella of “a joint venture group
called ‘Special Collection Service’ (SCS). Its members, working undercover in
shielded areas of US embassies and consulates, are officially credited as
diplomats with special privileges of diplomats, and licensure to spy without
hindrance. During the Obama administration the SCS “used the American Embassy
near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to monitor communications in Germany’s
government district with its parliament and the seat of the government.”
Over There Comes over Here
2011
In secret, the Obama Administration in 2011 “won permission from the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National
Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency
to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases.
The searches take place under a surveillance program Congress
authorized in 2008 under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA).
Under that law, the target must be a foreigner ‘reasonably believed’ to
be outside the United States, and the court must approve the targeting
procedures in an order good for one year.
But a warrant for each target would thus no longer be required, which
means “that communications with Americans could be picked up without a court
first determining that there is probable cause that the people they were
talking to were terrorists, spies or ‘foreign powers.’”
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “extended the length of time
that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted US communications from five years
to six years with an extension possible for foreign intelligence or
counterintelligence purposes—both measures were done without public debate or
any specific authority from Congress.”
2013
Though a US district court judge for the District of Columbia, in 2013,
declared that the National Security Agency’s “mass collection of metadata of
Americans’ telephone records” was “probably” in violation of the Fourth
Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures,” a federal judge in New York City ruled that
“the U.S. government’s global telephone data-gathering system is needed to
thwart potential terrorist attacks, and that it can only work if everyone’s
calls are swept in.”
2014
The US government-funded non-profit [contradiction in terms]
non-governmental think tank Freedom House observed in 2014 that “[s]ome states
are using the revelations of widespread surveillance by the US National
Security Agency (NSA) as an excuse to augment their own monitoring
capabilities, frequently with little or no oversight, and often aimed at the
political opposition and human rights activists.”
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igh” Grounded in Quicksand
Actions in various technological fields (in agriculture and other
fields) taken by US officials against other countries, leaders and businesses,
technological, weapons, cyber spying
companies are not actions on moral principle, or principles of
fundamental law or human rights conventions and protections.
These actions—in
the service to and the embodiment of lawlessness and impunity, rabid plunder,
and greed preserving and protecting narrowly drawn and inordinate power—stand
in violent, criminal opposition to fair principles and fair play, and, indeed,
democracy at every level, everywhere.
What the American officials accuse others
of doing and against whom they repeatedly impose sanctions (i.e., societal,
trade, economic, earnings, cultural, livelihood, innovations warfare)—they are
doing, have done; and once they have destroyed other innovators, free thinkers,
and market competitors, they will sharpen the spear and drive to the hilt their
“humanitarian” viciousness, virulence and violence against the world.
July 9, 2020
US Accuses Chinese firms
Trump administration has accused Chinese firms “of gathering data from
global users for the benefit of the Chinese government.” In its latest move,
Washington falls back on a Bush mantra: you’re with us or against us— do
business with the US, or the China, if the latter suffer US punishment.
Companies that are selling surveillance equipment will be required “to
certify that their offerings do not use components from Dahua or Hikvision,
despite the fact that both are among the world’s largest manufacturers of
surveillance cameras.”
Global publicly-traded company (2017 estimate Chinese Yuan 41.905 billion [$ 5.99133 billion],
Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd. a partially state-owned Chinese
manufacturer and supplier of video surveillance equipment [CCTV and Network
Surveillance Systems] for civilian and military purposes, headquarters
Hangzhou, China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikvision
Global publicly-
traded company with 35 subsidiaries covering Asia, the Americas, Europe, Middle
East, Oceania, Africa, and others, its products and services used in 180-plus
countries and regions (founded in 2001, headquarters Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 2016
estimated revenue $2.1 billion), Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., Ltd. is a
Chinese company whose products include security cameras, network cameras, HDCVI
analog-to-hd solutions, NVR/DVR, PTZ cameras, Fisheye cameras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahua_Technology
The Trump government “is reportedly finalizing a rule that would prevent
any firm using products from five Chinese tech companies—including telecoms
giants Huawei and ZTE—from winning government contracts.”
Years ago, US public officials with the corporate for profit and not
for profit paymasters off- shored (offloaded, gave away) US invention, innovation,
workmanship and labor for cheap products cheaply labored. A few, including the
Trump-Pelosi types, garnered big returns. Now the US en masse suffers the
consequences of bad policy. But the horse has long left the barn.
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elosi and Co Perform at Munich
Highhandedly Nancy Pelosi
proclaims “National security, economy and values all come together on the
Huawei issue….”
The choice between adopting or not adopting
Huawei solutions is a choice between “autocracy [and] democracy on the
information highway,” says the [dis]honorable speaker.
Playing to audience ignorance or
deliberate forgetfulness, Pelosi omits in her lecture, as the writer points out,
that she “helped renew the NSA’s [US National Security Agency’s] spying powers”
two years earlier; and that it was US (not Chinese) mass surveillance that was
“famously exposed by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers.”
With contempt for the
intelligence of her audience listeners (and the public more generally), Pelosi failed
to explain “what makes America’s surveillance [or surveillance products] more democratic” [of course her policy
project is patently anti-democratic] than China’s surveillance or surveillance
products.
Tribal ‘R’ US
According to the Pentagon’s Esper
and State’s Pompeo, Hauwei is China’s “‘… nefarious strategy” of undermining
“Western infrastructure” with a China-made “‘Trojan horse’”
US officials have a habit of threatening other nations as it often does
against the whole body of the United Nations. Pompeo threatens Europe over
Chinese technological products—buy from us or else. When challenged, deny the
threat.
The former CIA operative reportedly scolded “Europeans for not ditching
China in favor of the US as a trading partner.” Pulling the “tribal”
([?]identity politics: race-creed-color-region) card, Trump’s smear man at
State reportedly declares at a conference in Copenhagen that Europeans’ buying
from Beijing is tantamount, echoing Pelosi, to
“…abandoning who we are,” and prizing “tyranny” over “freedom.” [Emphasis added]
Sounds like the desperate, dying
cries of a dynasty. It’s embarrassing—as if the United States has nothing in
its own right, on its own merit, that is strong enough, solid and sure enough
to build on. I believe this is wrong. I believe America has its people; but a
long line of officials, over at least forty years, have deserted the people of
America.
Tyranny is homegrown—in the character and acts of opportunists,
incompetents, and scoundrels such as Pompeo, Pelosi, Wray, Esper, Trump, and
Co.
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officials put themselves above the law but often entrap others in
their nets
Case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou: Deputy chair of the board and chief financial officer (CFO) of telecom
giant and China’s largest privately held company, Huawei, founded by her father
Ren Zhengfei, Meng Wanzhou
- In December 2018, the business executive was detained at Vancouver International Airport by Canadian officials and questioned for three hours then formally arrested by Royal Canadian Mounted Police “on a provisional US extradition request, in regard to breaches of US sanctions against Iran
- In early 2019, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced financial fraud charges against Meng
- In early 2020, the first stage of the extradition hearing began and the DOJ indicted Meng “on charges of trade secrets theft.”
She remains under house arrest in Vancouver, Canada, an Authority to Proceed
has been issued regarding the extradition request by the United States. If convicted of charges against her, Meng could face up to ten years in
a US prison.
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owever, when other nations prefer charges against US allies, US
officials feign outrage. Such is the case of the Chinese government’s espionage charges in June
2020 against two Canadians.
US officials hopped on their high horse, and counter charged political motivation. Said the pompous Pompeo:
“These charges are politically motivated and completely groundless”
Tell
me about it.
US officials’ actions are transparent, their responses embarrassingly
duplicitous and disingenuous. China just won’t give us a break, they seem to
say. The People’s Republic of China was recently castigated by one of Trump’s
FBI men as
“…calculating …, persistent …, patient and …, not subject to the righteous constraints of an open, democratic society or the rule of law.”
Sound familiar?
A finger of the
accuser’s hand points back toward the accuser. These people wouldn’t know, or care,
about the rule of law if it rose up
and kissed them on the lips.
The US characteristically charges others with acts that US officials
have virtually invented, patented, and carried out everywhere all the time
with—bombs away—impunity.
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od bless America with leaders who are not crooks and clowns.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House
RT “US will BAN government contractors from using Chinese tech,
including Huawei – report” July 9, 2020
https://www.rt.com/usa/494283-huawei-government-equipment-ban/
RT “‘is the democratic system so
fragile?’ Audience applauds as Pelosi’s Huawei scare session prompts rebuke
from Chinese delegate” February 16, 2020 https://www.rt.com/news/480955-pelosi-huawei-rebuke-munich/
RT “Pompeo demands Europe ditch
trade with China and choose FREEDOM over TYRANNY (in favor of US)” June 19,
2020 https://www.rt.com/news/492399-pompeo-china-europe-sovereignty-fail/
RT “Look who’s talking! Pompeo slams
China’s ‘politically motivated’ charges against 2 Canadians nabbed after Huawei
CFO Arrest” June 22, 2020
https://www.rt.com/news/492593-pompeo-political-prosecution-canadians-china/
RT “If China seeks world
domination, should the US keep doing business with it? FBI chief Wray seems to
want it both ways” Nebojsa Malic, July 7, 2020 https://www.rt.com/usa/494090-wray-fbi-china-threat/
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