I am in Berlin for the annual Sam Adams Award – this time to William Binney, formerly Technical Director of the NSA. There will be an address by Edward Snowden (and a short contribution from me). It really is a tremendous event, with some very senior former intelligence professionals making revelations about the extent to which the security state is out of control, a tool of immoral governments dominated by corporate interests.
The event is at the Berlin-Moscow Venue, 52 Unter Den Linden, and starts at 7pm (6pm UK time). It will be livestreamed on the Sam Adams website.
7:00-7:05 Wilkommen by Joerg Dreger, Managing Partner, Dreger Group
7:05-7:12 Ray McGovern, veteran CIA senior intelligence officer (27 years) and presidential briefer; SAA cofounder and Master of Ceremonies: Moment of Silence for Ambassador Robert White; acknowledgement of David MacMichael, retired Senior Estimates Officer in National Intelligence Council; Overview of history/purpose of Sam Adams Award
7:12-7:15 Annie Machon, former M15 intelligence officer (speech + introduction of Katharine and Craig)
7:15-7:20 Katharine Gun*, former GCHQ intelligence officer
7:20-7:25 Craig Murray*, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan
7:25-7:28 Coleen Rowley*, former FBI Special Agent and Minneapolis Chief Division Counsel (brief remarks +introduction of Todd P., Jesselyn & Tom)
7:28-7:33 Jesselyn Radack*, former ethics adviser, US Department of Justice and National Security; Human Rights Adviser, Government Accountability Project (GAP)
7:33-7:37 Todd Pierce, Major, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.); Guantanamo Military Commissions Defense Counsel
7:37-7:45 Thomas Drake*, former senior intelligence service executive, National Security Agency (NSA) – (speech + introduction of Ed Snowden)
7:45-8:00 Edward Snowden* (by video link), former NSA contractor; former CIA systems administrator
8:00-8:05 Ray McGovern segue to SAA Award Announcement; Reading of SAAII citation by Annie M. & Elizabeth M.(English and German versions, respectively); conferral by Thomas Drake of Sam Adams Integrity in Intelligence Corner-Brightener Candlestick to William Binney, former National Security Agency (NSA) Technical Director, World Geopolitical and Military Analysis, NSA, and co-founder, Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center
8:05-8:20 Acceptance speech by William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical and Military Analysis, NSA, and co-founder, Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center; Q & A
8:20-8:25 Wrap-up by Ray McGovern
8:25-8:30 Closing remarks by Joerg Dreger
8:30-9:00 Reception
*denotes former Sam Adams Award recipient
“Mass surveillance is a works both ways. There watching us as well we are watching them. So we almost have transparency. So what’s to worry about.”
If we are all equal?
They have unlimited budgets vs ordinary people, not to mention the fact that they should not be persecuting the innocent by spying on them Anyway. It’s a form of abuse. We are gathering your information but your not being treated with suspicion? Yea right.
These are meant to be public servants. Public servants , private individuals.
“It’s the dark underworld and deep cover that we should have our concerns”
No it’s not. It’s a state within a state that has near total privacy, and a citizenry that can’t get the slightest measure by comparison. Unaccountable agency’s are corrupt by definition, despite all the the stuff they pretend they are not doing. Or try their hardest to hide. And it spreads the “underworld”, they are great examples to them, power with no moral code, i’v seen it get worse as a direct result. But it only really harms poor people, again they have no power, who cares.
They are the enemy within. They know it, we know it. Let battle begin. That is let us fight back this attack on a free society.
I can’t believe real people who I assume may have kids or something could bring themselves to argue for a future of mass surveillance, and with the net the nature of witch would be unimaginable. The only people who would argue for such things are those sitting behind the curtain, who are just blind or evil…Total contoll freaks.
I’m a painter / artist, all growth and experimentation takes place in a private realm, just the idea that it could be looked at some time in the future changes behaviour in everything you do. Just why totalitarian fascist states go for that kind of thing.
I think people who endorse this kind of thing are deeply suck individuals. I can hardly believe i’m having this debate, Don’t you want your children to feel that freedom? It seems pretty sick in the head not to. But to try and force it on other peoples families? Words can’t describe the sickness of that.
“we are the generation that enforced mass surveillance on society” what a legacy. And notice there was no debate involved what so ever. These programs need to end now.
………And our society claims to be custodians or lovers of the art world? It’s destroying art, anything new will not happen. You will watch the stolen sculptures as they slowly rot, wondering why nothing radical happens as you stamp down a little harder. The boot on the face of humanity.
Syriza has 33.6%
ND has 27.8%
Pasok, bless has only got 4.7%
Anel the same at4.7%
CA has 6.3%
KKE has got 5.5%
Potami has got 6%
Kidiso 2.4%
Syriza, KKE and Potami and Kidiso all have gained votes compared to the last elections, whilst all others have lost votes, with Pasok taking the biggest hit of all, just as they deserved.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/griechenland-syriza-gewinnt-parlamentswahl-a-1014393.html
Kiddiso and Potami are brand new parties
“I can’t believe real people who I assume may have kids or something could bring themselves to argue for a future of mass surveillance, and with the net the nature of witch would be unimaginable. The only people who would argue for such things are those sitting behind the curtain, who are just blind or evil…Total contoll freaks. ”
You’d better believe it. I can’t believe that given the increasing chaotic weather patterns and crass changes, the dying of species and degradation of our global soils, that these surveillance freaks can make out that their only concern could possibly communications.
We are going to hell in a hand cart and however much CO2 we expend here on multiple posts, it will not matter much.
“We are going to hell in a hand cart and however much CO2 we expend here on multiple posts, it will not matter much.”
Probably, but we should still give the sculptures back.
(1)
The lost credibility of the World Economic Forum
And then this morning I received a Viber message from my brother as I woke up. He said, ‘A little piece of me dies today when I read Pharrell Williams is a guest at the WEF in Davos.’
He was referring to the World Economic Forum
I did a double take. What the hell is a recording artist doing at the WEF? He’s there with Al Gore, the wannabe celebrity, as an opening double act to the conference.
The WEF’s agenda this year includes Ebola, global warming, oil and banks. World leaders, pillars of business…and a couple of pop stars, will be hitting the issues.
It’s a farce. And it destroys any credibility that the World Economic Forum may have once held.
According to The Independent, Will.I.Am will also join them later in the week. Previous WEF attendees include Matt Damon and Goldie Hawn. Of course, each of these celebrities is attached to a good-deed business of some description.
The WEF mission statement:
‘[The World Economic Forum] engages political, business, academic and other leaders of society in collaborative efforts to shape global, regional and industry agendas.’
The celebrities must fall under the ‘leaders of society’ category. They certainly don’t fit under any of the other descriptions.
And that brings me full circle. If celebrities are ‘leaders of society’, that’s a sad reflection on today’s society.
To me, the leaders of society are teachers, doctors, and scientists. These were what we wanted to be just 30 years ago. These should be the real leaders of society.
But they’re not. At least not according to the WEF. And not according to society.
Perhaps the biggest global issue isn’t political or economic. Maybe it’s social, and how we define who and what is really important in our world.
Regards,
Sam Volkering +
http://www.techinsider.com.au/2015/01/world-economic-forum-ebola-oil-banks-global-warming-pop-stars/
(2)
This is by Barry Fantoni, an old, old Private Eye stalwart, and he seems to have the whole picture summarised very neatly here :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0501kvd
Sometimes the BBC comes up trumps, even now. Recommended, strongly.
The moment of purchase:
http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/vds080/picture7995696/ALTERNATES/FREE_960/[email protected]_13.jpg
In this Sept. 15, 1998 file photo, then Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, right, presents British Prime Minister Tony Blair with the highest of Saudi honours, the order of King Abdul Aziz ribbon in 10 Downing Street, London.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/article7995828.html#storylink=cpy
That was when Blair could still move his face, and the rictus was variable.
@ homenera
How are we not all equal?
What is required?
@peacewisher
Watching “some” universe of discourse being egalitarian empathy.
BellyHeave
“Could you supply back-up for that statement (links or otherwise)?@
No, but I’m sure you can; this thread is chockablock with your catdo.
[craigmurray.org.uk: sorry – spam filter held this up]
Am I on pre-mod? I’ve just posted 4 comments and none of them registered. I think it’s this link.
http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/tsarev-poroshenko-will-be-overthrown-in.html
Sorry to have queered Baal’s pitch.
Remind me to ‘skim’ his stuff.
~~
Whatever Dreoilin thinks about what I say or write about the troll is of no interest to me and to nobody else here. Could she please mind her own business and retract her claws like a good cat.
@Habbabkuk: You’re welcome (to the replies earlier, on data harvesting).
My earlier answer addressed your question of who is going to read the intercepts, and also whether the manpower was available. I think that question was addressed in full, albeit briefly.
Your new question (to me) asks where is the problem in that, so I would need to start afresh on this new topic. I take it there are no follow-ups to my mini-essay on “Who will read the intercepts?” I do welcome questions, please don’t be shy! (In particular, may I confide, I was hoping someone would ask for examples of these “cunning means of communication”. Ah well. One doesn’t alway get the more inquisitive students that their entry grades might suggest.)
But you asked about using words like “Syria”. With respect, I fear you are being all too 1990’s in your understanding of the data being collected. Text messages using key words are not of so much interest any more, really. What is of interest, is the websites you might have looked at. People you have been near. Search terms that you may have started to enter, but then thought better about, and entered something else instead. Text that you started to enter before going back to re-edit or delete it altogether. Anything that puts you outside the authoritarian comfort zone of “mindless consumer”, “sports fan”, “gossip-obsessed celebrity watcher”, “money-grubber”, “frantic parent”, or any other category who is unlikely to trouble themselves with the actual workings of society.
Nobody buying Das Kapital is going to be blackmailed for doing so. I take it a man of your integrity has no personal problems, and nothing in your life which makes you the least discomforted, in any company whatsoever. Not everyone has such iron resolve.
As KOWN has illustrated very well, and others have mentioned, the knowledge of being surveilled has an effect too – something of the Heisenberg principle in operation, maybe. It has a “chilling effect” on free activity and speech.
Perhaps in Britain, where all personnel of authority at every level is of the utmost integrity, we should not be concerned, in your opinion?
Did someone ask for a source for Leon Brittan’s litigiousness?
Daily Beast: Thatcher Protégé Leon Brittan Was a Pedophile Suspect (Jan. 23, 2015):
“Could she please mind her own business and retract her claws like a good cat.”
Practise what you preach, Mary. Not one thing you’ve written above refutes what I said about you responding to Habbabkuk. Which you do, regularly.
Trowbridge reminds us that he is under constant surveillance –
“I never suspected that the post was lost on your side. It happemed on this side, and I suspect NSA.”
It’s gems like this that make it worth while wading through all the brain-dead shit that passes for commentary. LOL++
“Whatever Dreoilin thinks about what I say or write about the troll is of no interest to me and to nobody else here. ”
It’s of interest to me. Tho’ I suppose Mary was probably referring to members of her runny-brained fan club.
“It’s gems like this…”
It is interesting though that with all we’re told about Five Eyes, GCHQ and NSA, spying on anything that moves, we immediately ridicule anyone who claims to have been spied upon.
Curious, eh.
“It is interesting though that with all we’re told about Five Eyes, GCHQ and NSA, spying on anything that moves, we immediately ridicule anyone who claims to have been spied upon.
Curious, eh.”
Not really. I didn’t know that you (in “we”) ridiculed anyone claiming to be spied upon. I just find it funny that crackpots think they’re important enough to have their comments deleted by NSA. Hilarious, in fact.
“Despite the misinformation put out by the resident turds (or mounds of chocolate lard to use their terminology) – the OSCE confirm the missile attacks on Mariupol came from DNR controlled areas
http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/136061”
This report does not concur with that put out by the OSCE (initial report). But even if the freedom fighters were responsible it would be one instance against hundreds of war crimes against civilians committed by the Nazis you love so much. You’ve had nothing to say about them Resident Dissident. Well, there’s a surprise.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/mariupol-donetsk-frunza-firing-on-the-civilian-population-in-east-ukraine-poroshenko-responsible-for-crimes-against-humanity/5426821
Hardly funny, Jemand as NSA was spying on me, and CIA repeatedly tried to kill me in Portugal for what I was complaining about the Clinton White House’s treatment of arch criminals Tricky Dick Nixon, former DCI Richard Helms who was then monitoring DCI George Tenet, and Al ‘Deep Throat’ Haig.
Clinton’s Chief of Staff Leon Panetta was managing the process through American Ambassador to Portugal Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, and Jose Floor was administering the minute doses of ricin in sweet and sour fish that T ate too often in hs restaurant in Caldas da Rainha. It was hoped that it would make my death look like an accident or suicide.
At that time the Portuguese weekly Ja’ was putting together an issue about Clinton’s gates, and an article about my theory about Watergate’s relation to the JFK assassination was included as a gate too far.
And this was before I was even on the internet, just writing the second volume of my biography of Henry Brougham.
America’s covert government isn’t even concerned about what I write now, like its being completely ignorant of what Osama and his allies were doing in the States, like the assassination of Yale student Suzanne Jovin for what she was trying to put in her senior thesis about his Al Qaeda?
Trowbridge
“Jose Floor was administering the minute doses of ricin in sweet and sour fish that T ate too often in hs restaurant in Caldas da Rainha.”
__________________
What is the name of that dish you refer to (in Portuguese, I mean)?
Don’t really know. Supatra was a very up market restaurant in Caldas.
Don’t ever recall seeing a menu in Portuguese. As I recall it was all in English.
BBC Obituary for Leon Brittan:
The Lifecooler page on Supatra lists among the restaurant’s specialties: “Pla lad prik (Dourada frita, em molho de tamarinde, picante)”. Sounds like sweet and sour fish to me.
Doesn’t to me.
That’s hot red snapper,Thai style, while I was eating sweet and sour sea bass.
“Sea bass” in Portuguese is “robalo”. But I can’t find confirmation on line that Supatra serves it.
Are you just trying to live up to your user name on this thread?
If anybody thinks I am like the original Lysias, I would feel most honored. He bravely defended Athenian democracy against the 30 Tyrants.
A brilliant Iranian nuclear physicist post-graduate identified fatal flaws in the blueprint passed to Iran by a Russian that described a firing block for a nuclear device:
To be precise, the Russian was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a “firing set”, for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.
It is with gratitude this young man prevented Iran being involved in an American conspiracy to show the world Iran was determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2058/merlin-redux
http://cryptome.org/2015/01/sterling-cia-exhibits.pdf
Thanks, Mark Golding, for the links.
The one from cryptone about the names of source is particularly interesting when one scrolls down to p. 13 where CIA, it seems, is complaining about the use of two other source, along with Sterling, another Mt. S and a Mr W.
John P. Wheeler was apparently complaining about NSA using the Stuxnet virus to disrupt Iran’s centrifuge program, and when Wheeler attempted to tell Ali Resaa Pahlavi about it in the hope of working out a settlement with the Mullahs, they both conveniently died, Wheeler by being hit on his head with a blunt instrument, and his body put in a dumpster in the hope of making it part of the Wilmington landfill. as if the fervent opponent of NSA was like Jimmy Hoffa.
This is far worse than the spooks intended treatment of leakers like James Risen and Sterling.
And if you look at calls that Risen was making, and NSA was keeping a record of, you will see that someone was calling from the White House in 2003 when Wheeler was often visiting it because of his involvement in the building of the Vietnam War Memorial, and what was going on at the Air Force, especially its use of the National Reconnaissance Office.