Ron Paul
the-free-foundation.org
April 22, 2013
This week, as Americans were horrified by the attacks in Boston, both houses of Congress considered legislation undermining our liberty in the name of “safety.” Gun control continued to be the focus of the Senate, where an amendment expanding federal “background checks” to gun show sales and other private transfers dominated the debate. While the background check amendment failed to pass, proponents of gun control have made it clear they will continue their efforts to enact new restrictions on gun ownership into law.
While it did not receive nearly as much attention as the debate on gun control, the House of Representatives passed legislation with significant implications for individual liberty: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). CISPA proponents claim that the legislation is necessary to protect Americans from foreign “cyber terrorists,” but the real effect of this bill will be to further erode Americans’ online privacy.
Under CISPA, Internet corporations are authorized to hand over the private information of American citizens to federal agents, as long as they can justify the violation of your privacy in the name of protecting “cyber security”. Among the items that may be shared are your e-mails, browsing history, and online transactions.
Like the PATRIOT Act, CISPA violates the fourth amendment by allowing federal agencies to obtain private information without first seeking a warrant from a federal judge. The law also allows federal agencies to pass your information along to other federal bureaucrats — again without obtaining a warrant. And the bill provides private companies with immunity from lawsuits regardless of the damage done to anyone whose personal information is shared with the government.
CISPA represents a troubling form of corporatism, where large companies cede their responsibility to protect their property to the federal government, at the expense of their customers’ privacy and liberty. In this respect, CISPA can be thought of as an electronic version of the Transportation Security Administration, which has usurped the authority over airline security from private airlines. However, CISPA will prove to be far more invasive than even the most robust TSA screening.
CISPA and the gun control bill are only the most recent examples of politicians manipulating fear to con the people into giving up their liberties. Of course, the people are told the legislation is for “limited purposes,” but authority granted to government is rarely, if ever, used solely for the purpose for which it is granted. For example, the American people were promised that the extraordinary powers granted the government by the PATRIOT Act would only be used against terrorism. Yet soon after the bill became law, reports surfaced that it was being used for non-terrorism purposes. In fact, according to data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union, 76 percent of the uses of the controversial “sneak-and-peak” warrants where related to the war on drugs!
Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48 hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”
I would not be surprised if the Transportation Security Administration uses this tragedy to claim new authority to “screen” Americans before they can attend sporting or other public events. The Boston attack may also be used as another justification for creating a National ID Card tied to a federal database with “biometric” information. The only thing that will stop them is if the American people rediscover the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin that you cannot achieve security by allowing government to take their liberties.
They don’t have to ask for it, they, probably, already have it if enough interest is there.
From a good friend and one of the smartest persons I know. The man who developed the first wireless data transmission, and was elemental in the development of the satellite communication systems, something we all use everyday with satellite TV, banking, and phones.
The person who set-up the very first live TV transmission from one country to another when Nixon went to China. He should write a book on that adventure. He also set-up the very first satellite remote school system in the world when he enabled India’s remote areas to receive satellite broadcasts from their central school. So he is a fount of communication knowledge … knows what he is talking about.
In his response to my recent mailing about the FireFox ‘Stop Watching Us’ letter/petition to congress, he gives a bit of history and a heads up about the governments(and other actors) ability to gather our personal information through all electronic forms of communication. . Another recipient of this mailing, probably, also has some past knowledge of the NSA’s capabilities, but I doubt he will chime in on the subject.
Note; A better link to ‘sign’ the FireFox letter to congress> https://optin.stopwatching.us/
So, a heads up, courtesy of Wes.
Hi! Tre
Thank you for the email about the spying petition. I hope you are well and always wish you the best. My health is great!
In about 1978, while working at the Hughes Space Group, we developed a “single channel per carrier” modem for use in satellite voice and data communications. The idea of it was to use a small narrow band signal for each telephone or like signal, filling up a satellite transponder’s bandwidth with hundreds of small carriers rather than the single carrier for TV or multichannel multiplexed telephone signals.
I was delegated to visit the NSA to describe it and discuss it with their engineers, which I did. At that time, I became aware that NSA could easily listen in to any phone conversation in the USA or abroad that was not a wired local to a local nearby call, but perhaps going through a local telephone exchange center. Even then, it was not a new idea. It was a very simple matter of processing the multi-carrier signal from a satellite or terrestrial network by demultiplexing it down to the desired single call, no secrets there. They wanted to understand our modem in the event they later might have to listen in on it.
Later, I observed the mobile telephone signals on a standard laboratory spectrum analyzer with a piece of wire for an antenna and found that by adjusting it properly, one could listen in on the conversations, which were usually “I’ll be home soon, honey!”
Even on our trip to China in 1972, it was easy to plug in a headset to a multiplex rack and monitor telephone conversations to the USA, although I didn’t do it. That could have happened in any switching center for decades.
In the intervening 35 years, the NSA has vastly expanded their electronic listening capabilities with many new buildings in Washington and,
Virginia, perhaps largely to cover internet communications, cell phone calls, for terrorist surveillance, and financial transactions. Telephone calls are now a small part of their interests, I think. We, the public, simply don’t have access to the NSA or their facilities. Even in 1978, there were armed guards at the corridor intersections in the building in Maryland that I visited.
It is important to realize how the world has changed and that we should be careful what we put on the internet, what we say on the telephone, and what we do in public, etc. 1984 has come and gone and we are always on camera, as long as we are alive!
Good Wishes, Wes
https://optin.stopwatching.us/
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/04/martial-law-in-valley-springs-ca-after-9-year-old-girl-killed-2631996.html
LOL. Boston WAS just a trial balloon. Now the populace is conditioned, TPTB just have to announce some crime, real or fabricated, and all your rights (what are left anyway) are nullified by decree of ‘shelter in place”.
TPTB know that anything goes now and the people will cheer their oppressors.
[West Fertilizer Co. Explosion]
Will Congress and the Overlords exploit our fears and take away our liberty to use anhydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate? Are Libertarians who cherish Laissez Faire able to create and implement solutions to mitigate the risks of storing tens of thousands of tons of fertilizer?
Texas – Low Tax, Low Regulation [Business Is Booming]
http://newsbusters.org/sites/default/files/main_photos/2013/April/Booming%20427.jpeg?1367070288
The best Libertarian minds are skeptical philosophers whose skepticism tends to be directed at contemporary experts, rather than honorable traditions, which they tend to voluntarily follow as a default strategy. The Skeptics stand alone against the mobs of aggressors and the crowds of “experts”, the vast hordes infatuated with “expert” driven ideas, eager to eat free lunches next to piles of pillaged and looted innocents who were judged to be inferior and not in compliance with the Grand Plans of our Dear Leaders.
Anything written by government, institutions, marketers, and collective belief system “isms” should be dismissed wholesale out of hand. The writings of any who seek to use force or fraud against you are always written in CAPS LOCK, and are nothing more than LIES meant to be made more convincing the louder they are SHOUTED.
Wikipedia Article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion
Lamestream Technical
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-texas-fertilizer-plant-explosion-deadly
UK Muckraker
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/texas-fertiliser-plant-explosion
Anhydrous Ammonia Storage Safety
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ageng/safety/ae1149.pdf
Ammonium Nitrate Storage Safety
http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/documents/Code_of_Practice/DGS_COP_StorageSolidAmmoniumNitrate.pdf
Black Swan – First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.
Governments have 0% to contribute to Black Swan mitigation. Religious Institutions have 0% to contribute to Black Swan mitigation. Corporate shills and Mainstream Media have 0% to contribute to Black Swan mitigation. Crony Academics and Crony Organizations have 0% to contribute to Black Swan mitigation.
In these times of Idiocracy, were you to have some coherent actionable thoughts on fertilizer storage, you would overnight become “the smartest man in the world”, just like Not Sure in the movie Idiocracy.
Couldn’t fertilizer plants could be given permits for open pit mines adjacent to their plants. They could store most of their explosive inventories below ground next to their extracted resources in order to “save lives for the children” and all that. Doubtless there are many solutions, to those who are honestly concerned with solving a procedural-technical problem.
– Life is about execution, rather than purpose.
Oregon Gun Grabbers Served By Victim of Cuban Gun Grabbers
“You don’t know what freedom is because you never lost it!”
– Manuel Martinez, born in Cuba
Communism: Abolition of private property. Heavy progressive income tax. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. Confiscation of property of all emigrants and rebels. A central bank. Govt control of Communications & Transportation. Govt ownership of factories and agriculture. Govt control of labor. Corporate farms. Regional planning. Government control of education.
Fascism: Powerful and Continuing Nationalism. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause. Supremacy of the Military. Rampant Sexism. Controlled Mass Media. Obsession with National Security. Religion and Govt are Intertwined. Corporate Power is Protected. Labor Power is Suppressed. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts. Obsession with Crime and Punishment. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption. Fraudulent Elections.
What to do amid a rising brutal authoritarian police state?
doesn’t it seem like the “crash,” came about, which was a direct tax on millions of peoples incomes and savings and home values as trillions were lost, in order to further justify even more increased taxation?!!?? how do the clovers of the world wander around with their hands shoulder high and their heads half on still not understand that they are merely being pushed in any direction those want to push them…neither towards a salvation or a hell, but just in circles with merry music playing in the background.
For all you all getting sick of these “new” laws…please check out my newest writing:
How the Non-aggression principle works: http://rathbonezvizionz.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/how-the-non-aggression-principle-works/
Finally, a clear explanation.
Though, I always thought this:
” Internet corporations are authorized to hand over the private information of American citizens to federal agents, as long as they can justify the violation of your privacy…”
was already allowed and practiced.
I’m looking forward to the internet sales tax! Good times ahead. I love how everything has multiple taxes/fees incorporated into them. The so called privately owned vehicles have the most. “Thank you sir may I have another!”
Ha!
I recently learned that companies are actually taxed for paying their employees.
Its a miracle we aren’t taxed to breathe yet.
Brandonjin, they won’t tax you to breathe. That would be unconstitutional. No, the carbon tax would only be on exhaling.