{"id":132023,"date":"2014-07-21T01:58:34","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T01:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=132023"},"modified":"2014-07-21T01:58:34","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T01:58:34","slug":"high-level-nsa-whistleblower-says-blackmail-huge-unreported-part-mass-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/high-level-nsa-whistleblower-says-blackmail-huge-unreported-part-mass-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"High-Level NSA Whistleblower Says Blackmail Is a Huge \u2014 Unreported \u2014 Part of Mass Surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Untold Story In the NSA Spying Scandal: Blackmail<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is well-documented that governments use information to blackmail and control people.<\/p>\n

The Express\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0last month:<\/p>\n

British security services infiltrated and funded the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange in a covert operation to identify and possibly\u00a0blackmail establishment figures<\/strong>, a Home Office whistleblower alleges.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Whistleblower Mr X, whose identity we have agreed to protect, became a very senior figure in local government before retiring a few years ago.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

He has given a formal statement to that effect to detectives from Operation Fernbridge \u2026.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he said [the pedophile group] was being funded at the request of Special Branch which found it politically useful to identify people who were paedophiles\u2026.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 made gross indecency a crime in the United Kingdom, which included male gay sex<\/a>. The Amendment was so frequently used to blackmail gay Brits that it was dubbed the “Blackmailer\u2019s Charter”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is\u00a0widespread speculation<\/a>\u00a0that Pope Benedict resigned because of sexual blackmail.<\/p>\n

And the American government has a\u00a0long history<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0blackmailing people \u2014 including\u00a0high-level officials<\/a>– with knowledge of their sexual peccadilloes.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia\u00a0notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Lavender Scare refers to the fear and persecution of homosexuals in the 1950s in the United States, which paralleled the anti-communist campaign known as McCarthyism.<\/p>\n

Because the psychiatric community regarded homosexuality as a mental illness, gay men and lesbians were considered\u00a0susceptible to blackmail<\/strong>\u00a0\u2026.<\/p>\n

Former U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson has written: \u201cThe so-called \u2018Red Scare\u2019 has been the main focus of most historians of that period of time. A lesser-known element . . . and one that harmed far more people was the witch-hunt McCarthy and others conducted against homosexuals.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FBI head Hoover was famous for blackmailing everyone \u2026 including politicians. The New York Timesreports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

J. Edgar Hoover compiled secret dossiers on the\u00a0sexual peccadillos<\/strong>\u00a0and private misbehavior of those he labeled as enemies \u2013 really dangerous people like \u2026\u00a0President John F. Kennedy<\/strong>, for example.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alfred McCoy \u2014 Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison \u2014\u00a0provides details<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Upon taking office on Roosevelt\u2019s death in early 1945, Harry Truman soon learned the extraordinary extent of FBI surveillance. \u201cWe want no Gestapo or Secret Police,\u201d Truman\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in his diary that May. \u201cFBI is tending in that direction. They aredabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a quarter of a century of warrantless wiretaps, Hoover built up a veritable archive of sexual preferences among America\u2019s powerful and used it to shape the direction of U.S. politics. He\u00a0distributed<\/a>\u00a0a dossier on Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson\u2019s alleged homosexuality to\u00a0assure his defeat in the 1952 presidential elections<\/strong>,circulated<\/a>\u00a0audio tapes of\u00a0Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s philandering<\/strong>, and\u00a0monitored<\/a>President Kennedy\u2019s affair with mafia mistress<\/strong>\u00a0Judith Exner. And these are just a small sampling of Hoover\u2019s uses of scandal to keep the Washington power elite under his influence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator,\u201d\u00a0recalled<\/a>\u00a0William Sullivan, the FBI\u2019s chief of domestic intelligence during the 1960s, \u201che\u2019d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that \u2018we\u2019re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter\u2026\u2019\u00a0From that time on, the senator\u2019s right in his pocket<\/strong>.\u201d After his death, an\u00a0official tally<\/a>\u00a0found Hoover had\u00a0883 such files on senators and 722 more on congressmen<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

With a few hundred cable probes and computerized decryption, the NSA can now capture the kind of gritty details of private life that J. Edgar Hoover so treasured and provide the sort of comprehensive coverage of populations\u00a0once epitomized by secret police like East Germany\u2019s Stasi<\/strong>. And yet, such comparisons only go so far.<\/p>\n

After all, once FBI agents had tapped thousands of phones, stenographers had typed up countless transcripts, and clerks had stored this salacious paper harvest in floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, J. Edgar Hoover still only knew about the inner-workings of the elite in one city: Washington, D.C. To gain the same intimate detail for an entire country, the Stasi had to\u00a0employ<\/a>\u00a0one police informer for every six East Germans \u2013 an unsustainable allocation of human resources. By contrast, the marriage of the NSA\u2019s technology to the Internet\u2019s data hubs now allows the agency\u2019s\u00a037,000<\/a>\u00a0employees a similarly close coverage of the entire globe with just one operative for every 200,000 people on the planet.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In the Obama years, the first signs have appeared that NSA surveillance will use the information gathered to traffic in scandal, much as Hoover\u2019s FBI once did<\/strong>. In September 2013, the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that the NSA has, since 2010, applied sophisticated software to create \u201csocial network diagrams\u2026, unlock as many secrets about individuals as possible\u2026, and pick up sensitive information likeregular calls to a psychiatrist\u2019s office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

By collecting knowledge \u2013 routine, intimate, or scandalous \u2013 about foreign leaders, imperial proconsuls from ancient Rome to modern America have gained both the intelligence and aura of authority necessary for dominion over alien societies. The importance, and challenge, of controlling these local elites cannot be overstated.\u00a0During its pacification of the Philippines after 1898, for instance, the U.S. colonial regime subdued contentious Filipino leaders via\u00a0pervasive policing<\/a>\u00a0that swept up both political intelligence and personal scandal<\/strong>.\u00a0And that, of course, was just what J. Edgar Hoover was doing in Washington during the 1950s and 1960s<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

According to<\/a>\u00a0James Bamford, author of two authoritative books on the agency, \u201cTheNSA\u2019s operation is eerily similar to the FBI\u2019s operations under J. Edgar Hoover\u00a0<\/strong>in the 1960s where the bureau used wiretapping to discover vulnerabilities, such as\u00a0sexual activity<\/strong>, to \u2018neutralize\u2019 their targets.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ACLU\u2019s Jameel Jaffer has\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0that a president might \u201cask the NSA to use the fruits of surveillance to discredit a political opponent, journalist, or human rights activist. The NSA has used its power that way in the past and it would be na\u00c3\u00afve to think it couldn\u2019t use its power that way in the future.\u201d\u00a0Even President Obama\u2019s recently convened executive review of the NSA\u00a0admitted<\/a>: \u201c[I]n light of the lessons of our own history\u2026 at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, whistleblower Edward Snowden has accused the NSA of actually conducting such surveillance. In a December 2013 letter to the Brazilian people, he\u00a0wrote<\/a>, \u201cThey even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target\u2019s reputation<\/strong>.\u201d If Snowden is right, then one key goal of NSA surveillance of world leaders is\u00a0not U.S. national security but political blackmail<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 as it has been since 1898.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today, the NSA tracks people\u2019s porn-viewing habits\u00a0in order to discredit activists<\/a>. The NSA also\u00a0gathers<\/a>and keeps\u00a0nude<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0suggestive<\/a>\u00a0photos of people in order to blackmail them.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press\u00a0notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The stockpiling of sexually explicit images of ordinary people had uncomfortable echoes of George Orwell\u2019s \u201cNineteen Eighty-Four,\u201d where the authorities \u2013 operating under the aegis of \u201cBig Brother\u201d \u2013 fit homes with cameras to monitor the intimate details of people\u2019s home lives.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The collection of nude photographs also raise questions about\u00a0potential for blackmail<\/strong>. America\u2019s National Security Agency has already acknowledged that half a dozen analysts have been caught trawling databases for inappropriate material on partners or love interests. Other leaked documents have revealed how\u00a0U.S. and British intelligence discussed leaking embarrassing material online to blacken the reputations of their targets<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds\u00a0alleged under oath<\/a>\u00a0that a recently-serving Democratic Congresswoman was secretly videotaped \u2014 for blackmail purposes \u2014 during a lesbian affair. There have been allegations of\u00a0blackmail of gay activities<\/a>\u00a0within the U.S. armed forces for years.<\/p>\n

And even the\u00a0raw<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0data on American citizens collected by the NSA is\u00a0shared with Israel<\/a>. This\u00a0likely<\/a>includes\u00a0Congress members and other politicians<\/a>, as well.<\/p>\n

Bill Binney \u2014 the NSA\u2019s senior technical director and head of the agency\u2019s global digital information gathering program \u2014 told Washington\u2019s Blog:<\/p>\n

Bulk collection of everything gives law enforcement all the data they need on every citizen in the country. And, it gives NSA all that info on everyone too. Makes them akin to a\u00a0J. Edgar Hoover on super steroids<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Binney explained to us the importance of this story:<\/p>\n

Being able to blackmail people is one major aspect of bulk\/mass collection that has not been talked about. E.g., they could use this data to blackmail members of governments around the world<\/strong>. But, surely just\u00a0to get them to do what they wanted them to do<\/strong>. Just like J. Edgar Hoover did.<\/p>\n

This is on top of the ability to do world-wide industrial espionage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, Binney tells us that the NSA\u2019s blackmail tactics are the same as those used by the KGB and Stasi:<\/p>\n

This is just one of the ways to make controlling people possible. Standard KGB\/Stasi tactics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Binney\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the Guardian recently: \u201cThe ultimate goal of the NSA is\u00a0total population control<\/em>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

And Binney\u00a0tells<\/a>\u00a0Washington\u2019s Blog that NSA surveillance allows the government to target:<\/p>\n