Tag: bureaucratic counterterrorism imperative

Don’t Worry: Area Counter-Terrorism Center Laser-Focused on Bicycling Cellphone Thief

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If you like your mass surveillance steak sauced in a Keystone Kops level of organizational dysfunction, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, or BRIC, could be your dream meal.

This story comes via a former Emmanuel College student, who received a BRIC “intelligence bulletin” to all students regarding a man stealing cell phones on his bicycle in the Fenway area (see below). Is it upsetting to have your cellphone stolen by an environmentally conscious thief? Yes. Is it at a level of criminality that warrants shoveling tens of millions of our dollars towards a gee-whiz high-tech surveillance center to gather information on all Massachusetts residents? Uh, probably not. Tell me again when we signed up for that?

Far from focusing on intelligence related to terrorism, in practice, the BRIC concentrates almost exclusively on criminal activity unrelated to any conceivable notion of what “terrorism” actually is. The truth is that the risk we face from terrorism is extremely low, but the continued existence of the BRIC, of 77 other “fusion centers” around the country, of the Department of Homeland Security itself, and of a whole ecosystem of security grifting companies, depends on taxpayers not working that out. So, to keep themselves going, BRIC has to use surveillance to disrupt a broad array of minimally criminal or even entirely non-criminal activity, and redefine that activity as much as possible as being terrorism. We have to be told, repeatedly, that the wolf is at the door, that things are getting worse, and that mass surveillance will actually help make things better. Here at Digital Fourth, we call this the “Bureaucratic Counterterrorism Imperative.”

With that in mind, here are the results of our latest Public Records Act request to the BRIC, which documents for the first time that BRIC does get data from intelligence agency sources.

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NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice Explains NSA Targeting of US Politicians

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Mass surveillance is damaging enough; but the capabilities we have handed to the surveillance agencies create a different kind of opportunity for the empire-building surveillance bureaucrat.

The constant claim is that Americans are not “wittingly” “targeted” under the dragnet; it’s just that their communications are vacuumed up “incidentally” because they are one, two, or three “hops” from a given “target”, a category that includes a shifting set of millions of people at a time. But even that face-saving statement is a lie. American citizens are “targets” themselves, and there’s an obvious category of people it would make strategic sense for the surveillance agencies to target: Namely, the set of people with authority over the budgets and remits of the surveillance agencies themselves.

NSA whistleblower Russell Tice is much less well known than Edward Snowden, but his testimony is just as explosive. Here’s an interview he gave in 2013, with a partial transcript:

Okay. They [the NSA] went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges [Samuel Alito] is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. companies that that do business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs like the Red Cross that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it.

Continue reading NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice Explains NSA Targeting of US Politicians