{"id":41034,"date":"2013-06-11T21:27:23","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T20:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/digital-blackwater-rules-the-nsa-black-box-in-a-black-hole\/41034\/"},"modified":"2013-06-11T21:27:23","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T20:27:23","slug":"digital-blackwater-rules-the-nsa-black-box-in-a-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/digital-blackwater-rules-the-nsa-black-box-in-a-black-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDigital Blackwater\u201d Rules: The NSA Black Box in a Black Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

The judgment of Daniel \u201cPentagon Papers\u201d Ellsberg is definitive; \u201cThere has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden\u2019s release of NSA material\u201d. And that includes the release of the Pentagon Papers themselves. Here is the 12-minute video<\/a> by The Guardian where Snowden details his motives.<\/p>\n

By now, everything swirling around the US National Security Agency (NSA) points to a black box in a black hole. The black box is the NSA headquarters itself in Fort Meade, Maryland. The black hole is an area that would include the suburbs of Virginia\u2019s Fairfax County near the CIA but mostly the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32.<\/p>\n

There one finds a business park a mile away from the NSA which Michael Hayden, a former NSA director (1999-2005) told Salon\u2019s Tim Shorrock is \u201cthe largest concentration of cyber power on the planet\u201d. [1] Hayden coined it \u201cDigital Blackwater\u201d.<\/p>\n

Here is a decent round up of key questions <\/a>still not answered about the black hole. But when it comes to how a 29-year old IT wizard with little formal education has been able to access a batch of ultra-sensitive secrets of the US intelligence-national security complex, that\u2019s a no-brainer; it\u2019s all about the gung-ho privatization of spying \u2014 referred to by a mountain of euphemisms of the \u201ccontractor reliance\u201d kind. In fact the bulk of the hardware and software used by the dizzying network of 16 US intelligence agencies is privatized.<\/p>\n

A Washington Post investigation found out that US homeland security, counter-terror and spy agencies do business with over 1,900 companies. [2] An obvious consequence of this contractor tsunami \u2014 hordes of \u201cknowledge\u201d high-tech proletarians in taupe cubicles \u2014 is their indiscriminate access to ultra-sensitive security. A systems administrator like Snowden can have access to practically everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cRevolving door\u201d does not even begin to explain the system. Snowden was one of 25,000 employees of Booz Allen Hamilton (\u201cWe are visionaries\u201d) for the past three months. [3] Over 70% of these employees, according to the company, have a government security clearance; 49% are top secret (as in Snowden\u2019s case), or higher. The former director of national intelligence Mike McConnell is now a Booz Allen vice president. The new director of national intelligence, the sinister-looking retired general James Clapper, is a former Booz Allen executive.<\/p>\n

At least US \u2014 and world \u2014 public opinion may now have a clearer idea of how a Pashtun girl in Waziristan is obliterated by a \u201ctargeted strike\u201d. It\u2019s all a matter of this privatized NSA-collected meta-data and matrix multiplication leading to a \u201csignature\u201d. The \u201cterrorist\u201d Pashtun girl of course may eventually morph in the near future into a dangerous tree-hugger or a vocal political protester.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all China\u2019s fault<\/strong>
True to form, as soon as Snowden revealed his identity US corporate media privileged shooting the messenger instead of poring over the message. That included everything from cheap character assassination<\/a> to the usual former CIA asset spinning that in Washington many were looking at Snowden as an agent in a potential Chinese espionage plot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Much has also been made of the John Le Carre-esque plot twist of Snowden leaving his tranquil life in Hawaii and flying to Hong Kong on May 20, because \u201cthey have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent\u201d. Hong Kong-based blogger Wen Yunchao memorably described it as Snowden having \u201cleft the tiger\u2019s den and entered the wolf\u2019s lair\u201d. Yet Snowden\u2019s visa stamp at Chek Lap Kok airport lasts for 90 days \u2014 plenty of time to ponder the next move.<\/p>\n

Since 1996, before the British handover to China, an extradition treaty applies between the tiger and the wolf. [4] The US Department of Justice is already surveying its options. It\u2019s important to remember that the Hong Kong judicial system is independent from China\u2019s \u2014 according to the Deng Xiaoping-conceptualized \u201cone country, two systems\u201d. As much as Washington may go for extraditing Snowden, he may also apply for political asylum. In both cases he may stay in Hong Kong for months, in fact years.<\/p>\n

The Hong Kong government cannot extradite anyone claiming he will be persecuted in his country of origin. And crucially, article 6 of the treaty stipulates, \u201ca fugitive offender shall not be surrendered if the offence of which that person is accused or was convicted is an offence of a political character.\u201d Another clause stipulates that a fugitive shall not be surrendered if that implicates \u201cthe defense, foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy\u201d of \u2014 guess who \u2014 the People\u2019s Republic of China.<\/p>\n

So then we may have a case of Hong Kong and Beijing having to reach an agreement. Yet even if they decided to extradite Snowden, he could argue in court this was \u201can offence of a political character\u201d. The bottom line \u2014 this could drag on for years. And it\u2019s too early to tell how Beijing would play it for maximum leverage. A \u201cwin-win\u201d situation from a Chinese point of view would be to balance its commitment to absolute non-interference in foreign domestic affairs, its desire not to rock the fragile bilateral relation boat, but also what non-pivoting move the US government would offer in return.<\/p>\n

The ultimate Panopticon<\/strong>
The usual rabid right-wingers in the US predictably skip the fact of how Snowden does not see intelligence analysts \u2014 and even the US government, per se \u2014 as inherent \u201cbad guys\u201d. [5] What he stressed is how they all work under a false premise; \u201cIf a surveillance program produces information of value, it legitimizes it \u2026 In one step, we\u2019ve managed to justify the operation of the Panopticon\u201d.<\/p>\n

Oh yes, make no mistake; Snowden has carefully read his Michel Foucault (he also stressed his revulsion facing \u201cthe capabilities of this architecture of oppression\u201d).<\/p>\n

Foucault\u2019s deconstruction of the Panopticon\u2019s architecture is now a classic (see it here<\/a> in an excerpt of his 1975 masterpiece Discipline and Punish<\/em>). The Panopticon was the ultimate surveillance system, designed by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The Panopticon \u2014 a tower surrounded by cells, a pre-Orwellian example of \u201carchitecture of oppression\u201d \u2014 was not originally conceived for the surveillance of a prison, but of a factory crammed with landless peasants on forced labor.<\/p>\n

Oh, but those were rudimentary proto-capitalist days. Welcome to the (savagely privatized) future, where the NSA black hole, \u201cDigital Blackwater\u201d, lords over all as the ultimate Panopticon.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

1. Digital Blackwater: Meet the Contractors Who Analyze Your Personal Data<\/a>, Alternet, June 10, 2013.<\/span>
2. Top Secret America<\/a>, Washington Post, June, 2010.<\/span>
3. See here<\/a> for company website. <\/span>
4. See here<\/a> for extradition treaty. <\/span>
5. Code name \u2018Verax\u2019: Snowden, in exchanges with Post reporter, made clear he knew risks<\/a>, Washington Post, June 10, 2013. <\/span><\/p>\n

Pepe Escobar<\/strong> is the author of<\/em> Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge<\/a>. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan<\/a> (Nimble Books, 2009).<\/p>\n

He may be reached at<\/em> pepeasia@yahoo.com<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Global Research<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The judgment of Daniel \u201cPentagon Papers\u201d Ellsberg is definitive; \u201cThere has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden\u2019s release of NSA material\u201d. And that includes the release of the Pentagon Papers themselves. Here is the 12-minute video by The Guardian where Snowden details his motives. By now, everything swirling around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-41034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}