OctopusishCommunist

state surveillance data tom-stoppard

"...The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live.

Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. Flying would be safer if airport security demanded body searches with no exceptions and the examination of every item in every piece of luggage. On the matter of surveillance in general we have, without much discussion, learned to live with almost blanket surveillance by CCTV in our towns and cities. As a result thousand of crimes, including murder, have been solved and perhaps many more prevented. But how many more would there have been if we doubled the number of cameras, or increased them tenfold, a hundredfold?

Between that and the surveillance we are now talking about there is a qualitative as well as a quantitative difference which hardly needs pointing out. The cameras are in public places, they are not in our houses or our cars or even in our gardens. By contrast, the world of surveillance operated by the people we pay to guard us exceeds the fevered dreams of the Stasi....""What in principle would justify the scope of the surveillance revealed by the Snowden leak? Would it be enough, for example, if it could be shown that a specific potential act of terrorism had been prevented by, and could only have been prevented by, the full breadth and depth of what we now have learned is the playing field of the security services? We should hesitate before we stray off the touchline... "

fearing communism:

“Know Your Communist Enemy” p.3 in Robert B. Watts (1977), “Our Freedom Documents”, The Supreme Council, Washington

"On December 5th, The National Reconnaissance Office launched a new spy satellite called NROL-39 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Its logo features a giant octopus engulfing the world with the ominous words “Nothing is Beyond our Reach” underneath. Is there a better way to portray a nightmarish, big-brotherish totalitarian government? No. In fact, this exact imagery was used to portray “evil communists” a few decades ago..."

The National Reconnaissance Office 

 is t his a hoax or an in your eye?

"...According to William Graham at spaceflight.com, NROL-39 will be used for radar imaging:

“it can be inferred that NROL-39 is the third satellite in the NRO’s current-generation radar reconnaissance fleet. It follows the NROL-41 mission, or USA-215, launched in September 2010, and NROL-25 (USA-234) which was launched by a Delta IV in April 2012.

The radar imaging program is believed to be a remnant of the NRO’s Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) program, which was intended to produce new-generation optical and radar-imaging surveillance satellites, replacing the earlier KH-11 and Onyx radar imaging spacecraft.”

In other words, the satellite will be used to spy on “enemies” and civilians alike with technology that can’t even be revealed to the public.

Some commented, in a lame attempt to rationalize the sinister aspect of the logo, that the NROL-39 patch aims to “poke fun at conspiracy theorists”. Really? Maybe we should point out that there is no “theory” anymore. All-encompassing governmental surveillance is a known and documented fact. The logo is slapped right on the equipment used to spy on people. There is no joke or “poking fun” going on here. The budget of the NRO is over 10 billion dollars per year. Billion. One billion is a THOUSAND millions. With this kind of money involved, nobody is joking around..."

More on Free Speech