Monday Miscellany On (Oops! Sorry!) Wednesday

• Kidnapped Abroad And Solitary Confinement: This Is What Due Process Looks Like For A Palestinian In Israel
  

  (Richard Silverstein at Shadowproof)

• Workers To Face Biosurveillance From Employers
  

  (Dan Wright at Shadowproof)

• A Texas Conservative Openly Calls For Violence Against LGBT People
  

  (Kossacks for Marriage Equality)

• The GOP’s deeply flawed field
  

  (Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation at WaPo)

• There was that time JEB! forced single mothers to post their sexual history in the newspaper...
  

  (SemDem at Kos)

• Krugman: Why All The Republican Candidates Are Attacking Social Security
  

  (Dartagnan at Kos refers to...)

• Republicans Against Retirement
  

  (Krugman at NYT)

Big Brother Hoover Is Watching You

This should surprise approximately 0 people who are paying attention:

FBI Runs Secret Air Force Posing As Fake Companies
To Spy On U.S. Cities

By JACK GILLUM, EILEEN SULLIVAN and ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes' surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge's approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found.

...

During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI's fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane aircraft. These included parts of Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Southern California.

...

Cessna 182T Skylane
Photo credit: Wikimedia
(aircraft ID photoshopped out)
(actually, GIMPed out!)

Houstonians: just remember: when you raise your middle finger at the FBI, be sure to point it high enough...

Clearing The Desktop

In fact, in Ubuntu Linux 12.04 with the Gnome 3 shell, the default desktop is completely clear, and many of us keep it that way in the interest of sanity. So I'm speaking only metaphorically...

• Tesla Announces New Product To ‘Fundamentally Change The Way The World Uses Energy’ (H/T ellroon. The new product is a battery.)
  
  
• Judge Halts Work On Maryland Pipeline Due To Environmental Concerns (Don't get your hopes up; the ruling is by a Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge, and I don't doubt the pipeline company has an appeals court judge securely in its pocket somewhere up the line.)
  
  
• Hawaii Will Soon Get All Of Its Electricity From Renewable Sources (Give me a few minutes to pack my bags, and a few more to earn another $1m or so to live on in Hawaii for a couple of years...)
  
  
• NSA Phone Data Collection Program Revealed By Edward Snowden Ruled Illegal (What a surprise! [/irony])
  
  
• French Lawmakers Approve Sweeping Expansion Of Spying Programs (Following in America's footsteps, despite all typical wisdom of the French...)
  
  
• Can Bernie Sanders Break Through the Status Quo?
  He may have already done it, with his unapologetic defense of social democracy and assaults on the “billionaire class.”
  
  

US Government Has Spied On Your Phone Calls For Longer Than Anyone Knew

Every time we think we've seen it all, reached the limit, learned all the bad stuff there is to learn about US government agencies engaged in illicit surveillance of American citizens, we are disabused of that comfortable notion with a metaphorical slap upside the head. This time it's Peter van Buren at FDL who administers the slap, and we should be grateful to him for doing so:

DEA Secretly Tracked Billions of Americans’ Calls a Decade Before 9/11

While the Snowden-NSA revelations continue to shock Americans on a daily basis, and illustrate how intrusive the government is in our lives, and how casually it violates our Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted searches, it just got worse.

It turns out the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was spying on Americans, gathering metadata on our phone calls, almost a decade before 9/11, and right up to 2013. With help from the U.S. military.

...

In an exclusive report, USA Today learned the U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed. The DEA spying only stopped, supposedly, in 2013, no longer needed due to the NSA.

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the DEA amassed databases of virtually all telephone calls from the U.S. to as many as 116 countries “linked to drug trafficking.” ...

...

(or substitute GeeDubya Bush)

I seldom talk on the phone with my American friends in Europe; international phone calls (apart from emergencies) are not in my budget. But you may be comforted to know that on the rare occasions I've spoken to them in earlier years, the DEA was on the "wire" assuring that we were not talking about drugs. Not that we talked about drugs when we were face-to-face decades ago in the US... you may be comforted, but I sure as fuck am not.

The notion that any government action is justifiable if it leads to the capture and trial of someone engaged in a criminal act is one that our nation's founders were familiar with: when enough acts are criminalized that government must eliminate all citizens' privacy to enforce the laws, the essence of America's Bill of Rights (especially the Fourth Amendment) is destroyed. And that's where we are today. Privacy is gone, and has been gone for at least two decades.

In my youth I was convinced of the superiority of America's form of government. Why do I now think that that "superiority" is a pile of rank, steaming bullshit?

If there is a god, and if that god can damn, then god damn the people who did this and continue to do this... god damn them.

WTF Would NSA NOT Do?

Apparently it's a short list, and this, from Bruce Schneier, didn't make it:

Last May, we learned that the NSA intercepts equipment being shipped around the world and installs eavesdropping implants. There were photos of NSA employees opening up a Cisco box. Cisco's CEO John Chambers personally complained to President Obama about this practice, which is not exactly a selling point for Cisco equipment abroad. Der Spiegel published the more complete document, along with a broader story, in January of this year:

...

Now Cisco is taking matters into its own hands, offering to ship equipment to fake addresses in an effort to avoid NSA interception.

...

Wassamatter, NSA guys; you not competent to collect what you want without physically installing sh!t on the router while you have it in your clammy hands?

I know no one gives a fv<k whether I approve of any given NSA activity, but c'mon, this is outside the pale. I find myself really tempted to violate Godwin's Law on this one...

‘CISA Isn't About Cybersecurity, It's About Surveillance’

It seems these days that no bad bill that's been killed (*cough* CISPA *cough*) stays dead, and these undead bills, in this case transparently renamed CISA, stalk the halls of Congress looking to give America's law enforcement entities surveillance powers over its citizens, powers unheard of in the entire history of the Republic. Here's some of what you need to know, from

• security expert Bruce Schneier (latest book, Data and Goliath, on this very subject) (H/T CTuttle at FDL),
• the ACLU, and
• an assortment of "civil society organizations, security experts and academics" writing in a letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (.pdf).

This bill as it stands is condemned by every one of these experts, yet is under consideration now by the Senate Select Committee. If CISA should pass and be signed into law, at least... at the very least... your Fourth Amendment rights will lie dead in the street, trampled by the forces who believe every American should be subject to surveillance, everywhere s/he goes, in every activity, at any time.

How little difference one letter makes!

How does that sound to you? Right... me too. Please read the linked articles and then HOWL to Congress, for all the good it will do...

Your Cell Phone: Hacked By Governments, Handed Back To You With ‘Enhancements’

(This is several days old, but I suspect it will be painfully significant for literally years. - SB)

Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley at The Intercept:

AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.

The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. ...

...

And now if you'll excuse me, I have to charge up my tracking device; otherwise the government might miss something I say or email or text or snap or...

‘I Never Metadata I Didn't Spike’: FBI Finds Ways To Broaden Internet Dragnet

emptywheel has such details as are available in her post "How Internet Dragnettery Got Way More Permissive Under PRISM". "Metadata" is being significantly redefined for surveillance purposes, and now includes some content. Welcome to our shiny new engine of internet freedom, folks...

NSA Report Must Have Been (ahem) An Oversight

Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept:

The National Security Agency on Christmas Eve day released twelve years of internal oversight reports documenting abusive and improper practices by agency employees. The heavily redacted reports to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board found that NSA employees repeatedly engaged in unauthorized surveillance of communications by American citizens, failed to follow legal guidelines regarding the retention of private information, and shared data with unauthorized recipients.

While the NSA has come under public pressure for openness since high-profile revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the release of the heavily redacted internal reports at 1:30PM on Christmas Eve demonstrates limits to the agency’s attempts to demonstrate transparency. Releasing bad news right before a holiday weekend, often called a “Christmas Eve surprise,”  is a common tactic for trying to minimize press coverage.

...

Read it all, if you think the gigantic equivalent of a typical Washington Friday press dump contains anything useful. I have other things to do in the next couple of days.

Elves On Shelves, Elves On Shelves — Children Who Surveil Themselves

The Elf on a Shelf™ is now a decade old, but I am only just now learning of it. Here's Kelly J. Baker at USC Annenberg's Religion Dispatches:

“I need to be good because of the elf that lives my room,” my five-year old explained.
“The what? Who lives where?” I ask.
“The elf that knows if I’m bad or good,” she replies.
 “There is no elf in your room,” I say.
“Yes, there is. He’s invisible,” she notes.
I sigh wearily.

...

Her imaginary elf is a version of The Elf on the Shelf ™, an androgynous, rosy-cheeked elf toy that monitors children as Christmas approaches. It is available in light or dark-skinned varieties. Accessories allow families to transform the elf into a boy or girl.

The elf emerged from The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition co-authored by mother and daughter, Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell. The book alone has sold over six million copies since it was released in 2005. For $29.95, parents can purchase the book and toy to start a new tradition. The story presents a “scout elf,” who journeyed all the way from the North Pole to watch children to find out whether they are naughty or nice. The elf surveils children during the day to uncover bad behavior, then it returns to the North Pole every night to report back to jolly old St. Nick.

...

These elves are ubiquitous. They can be purchased from bookstores, Target, and online retailers. ...

...

Yep, it's a Christmas tradition, all right:

He knows when you've been sleeping,
He knows when you're awake;
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness' sake!
— "Santa Claus is coming to town", Coots and Gillespie, 1934

The EotS does not talk, but kids are encouraged by this "tradition" to talk to it, to tell it secrets, etc. I do not know if the commercial version of EotS contains a recording device or not, but with ever tinier technology, surely it's only a matter of time.

The kid is forbidden, however, to touch the EotS: it would interfere with the Elf's "magic." (That's the word in the story, certainly not my word.) Some parents move the elf around the house so that it appears in a different room every morning. This teaches children a valuable lesson for later in their intrusively surveilled American lives: Always look for the "bug" — is the mic in the A/C vent? hidden behind the toaster? in the freezer, well-positioned to hear the obese child going through items, looking for a snack? in the garage, near the home workshop to catch any stray cussing by the adolescents using it? looking over the passenger seat of the car the teen uses for dates, to "see"/"hear" any back-seat activity?

Here's a picture of the Elf:

(Sorry; the Elf is invisible (except when it isn't), remember? Otherwise, the child might think s/he is not under surveillance when s/he can't see the Elf.)

Using the EotS from birth through, say, the last year of middle school should be sufficient to acclimate the kid to a world of constant surveillance under all circumstances... ALL circumstances. The federal government's three-letter agencies appreciate every parent's assistance with their children.

Cell Phone Spy-In-The-Sky Watches Americans For DoJ

Devlin Barrett at MarketWatch (and WSJ at greater length, if you have a subscription, which I don't):

The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of cellphones through fake communications towers deployed on airplanes, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations.

The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.

Planes are equipped with devices--some known as “dirtboxes” to law-enforcement officials because of the initials of the Boeing Co. ... unit that produces them--which mimic cell towers of large telecommunications firms and trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information.

...

... Justice Department agencies comply with federal law, including by seeking court approval, the official said.   [Q: What do they do if they don't get court approval? Yeah, right; that's what I think, too. - SB]

Just in case tapping your landline wasn't invasive enough of your privacy...

Voiceprints: Significant Threat To Privacy, Already Fully Implemented

... but we don't know all the agencies, police departments and private corp's that use them at this point. Peter Van Buren at FDL's The Dissenter has a sketch.

FBI Agent Impersonates AP Reporter

Chris Grygiel of AP via TPM:

...

In a letter Thursday to The New York Times, [FBI director James] Comey said the agent "portrayed himself as an employee of The Associated Press" to help catch a 15-year-old suspect accused of making bomb threats at a high school near Olympia, Washington. It was publicized last week that the FBI forged an AP story during its investigation, but Comey's letter revealed the agency went further and had an agent actually pretend to be a reporter for the wire service.

Comey said the agent posing as an AP reporter asked the suspect to review a fake AP article about threats and cyberattacks directed at the school, "to be sure that the anonymous suspect was portrayed fairly."

The bogus article contained a software tool that could verify Internet addresses. The suspect clicked on a link, revealing his computer's location and Internet address, which helped agents confirm his identity.

...

The AP of course responded by deeming the FBI's action in this case "unacceptable." Indeed it was, and is. Paraphrasing AP's executive editor Kathleen Carroll, not only must the government and the press be in fact distinct, but  the public must have confidence in the enforcement of that distinction for the press to fulfill its essential role as watchdog. We simply can't have secret government agents masquerading as members of the press, not if we want to keep whatever vestige we have of checks and balances.

Remember, in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, in reference to Sherlock's brilliant but reclusive brother Mycroft, who was a high official in the British government, it is said that Mycroft was the British government? Well, in today's America, our three-letter agencies (FBI, NSA, DHS etc.) are far less benign than Mycroft, but it has reached the point at which they are the American government. As certifiable motherlover Ari Fleischer said, Americans need to "watch what they say, watch what they do..."

(I know it has an ampersand in it and names a corporation, but can we lump AT&T in with the three-letter agencies?)

Terrorized... Really... By A ‘Smart’ TV

James Hepburn at Daily Kos has the particulars. The essence lies in the extensive 46-page privacy notice that comes with the TV, though "lack-of-privacy notice" might be a better term for it, coupled with some tracking technology from Hell. Hepburn quotes an article at Salon by Michael Price of the Brennan Center at NYU:

...

You would be [terrified to turn the TV on] too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy.

The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how and for how long you use the TV. It sets tracking cookies and beacons designed to detect “when you have viewed particular content or a particular email message.” It records “the apps you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content.” It ignores “do-not-track” requests as a considered matter of policy.

It also has a built-in camera — with facial recognition. The purpose is to provide “gesture control” for the TV and enable you to log in to a personalized account using your face. On the upside, the images are saved on the TV instead of uploaded to a corporate server. On the downside, the Internet connection makes the whole TV vulnerable to hackers who have demonstrated the ability to take complete control of the machine.

More troubling is the microphone. The TV boasts a “voice recognition” feature that allows viewers to control the screen with voice commands. But the service comes with a rather ominous warning: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.” Got that? Don’t say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV.

...

(Bolds mine. - SB)

There is a reason I keep my copy of Orwell's 1984 near my left hand...

Notice that much of the spying potential of such a TV is of use more to Wall Street, corporations and vendors than to government. Not that gummint wouldn't make use of it as well...

Fortunately, Stella's new TV is not "smart"; such things are out of our budget range. But it's only a matter of time before Orwell's vision of a TV that watches you is a reality in every household... if indeed the back-end hasn't already been implemented secretly. In any case, you might want to get in the habit right now of watching politically sensitive events on an older TV in a room well away from your newest, fanciest TV.

I believe the very newest TVs are capable of being powered by Orwell spinning in his grave...

Watch Lists In Post-Constitutional AmericaHow Ray McGovern Ended Up On A ‘BOLO’ List, Though He Engaged In No Criminal Activity, And What It Took To Remove Him From The List

Peter van Buren at FDL has the story; here's an excerpt from the middle to familiarize you with the basic concepts and the specifics of McGovern's case, how he ended up on a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) list, and how he got himself removed from it:

...

Watch Lists in Post-Constitutional America

McGovern’s case has many touch points to the general state of affairs of post-9/11 government watchlists, such as No-Fly.

Ray McGovern
(NOTE: hair, beard vary
greatly across photos)

The first is that it is anonymous interests, within a vast array of government agencies, that put you on some list. You may not know what you did to be “nominated,” and you may not even know you are on a list until you are denied boarding or stopped and frisked at a public event. Placement on some watchlist is done without regard to– and often in overt conflict with– your Constitutional rights. Placement on a list rarely has anything to do with having committed any actual crime; it is based on the government’s supposition that you are a potential threat, that you may commit a crime despite there being no evidence that you are planning one.

Once you are on one watchlist, your name proliferates onto other lists. Getting access to the information you need to fight back is not easy, and typically requires legal help and a Freedom of Information Act struggle just to get the information you need to go forward. The government will fight your efforts, and require you to go through a lengthy and potentially expensive court battle.

We’ll address the irony that the government uses taxpaying citizens’ money to defend itself when it violates the Constitutional rights of taxpaying citizens another time.

...

The concept alone is enough to curl your hair: anonymous lists, compiled in secret, involving Americans who are not accused of any crime except that of offending someone in a powerful position, but subjected to surveillance as if they were the most heinous criminal... indeed, traitor.

How much worse can it get? How many of us are on such lists for what many of us consider ordinary political activity and/or speech? The short answer: we may never know.

More Details About ‘Interceptor’ Cell Phone Towers

Not this one, I bet

... from weinenkel at Kos. Not that the details are useful to you personally... e.g., there's a cell phone that can identify and inform you if you're connected to such a tower; the phone costs you only $3500.

UPDATE: the "towers" may in reality be mobile devices. (H/T ellroon.)

Mysterious Cell Towers Infiltrate Phone Companies' Systems

Who built them? Who owns them? What might they do to your cell phone, and on whose behalf? Why are many of them near military bases? Peter van Buren at FDL: The Dissenter discusses the matter, in terms that are necessarily speculative given how little is known at present.

I can't help thinking of Sir Terry Pratchett's later Discworld novels and their clacks, a mechanical optical semaphore long-distance communication system that is the focus of many intrigues, plots and assassinations. If you're not reading Pratchett's Discworld novels, you're missing one of the most thoroughly enjoyable series out there. Call it s/f, fantasy or humor; you'd be correct with any of those categorizations. The first novel in which I remember the clacks appearing is Going Postal, and reading the later novels won't spoil the earlier ones if you choose to read about the clacks out of publication sequence. (Correction: Wikipedia says the first such novel is The Fifth Elephant.)

$4 Million Spy Software Spies On Computers In Many Nations Including US

Jeff Larson and Mike Tigas at ProPublica:

Software created by the controversial U.K. based Gamma Group International was used to spy on computers that appear to be located in the United States, the U.K., Germany, Russia, Iran and Bahrain, according to a leaked trove of documents analyzed by ProPublica.

It's not clear whether the surveillance was conducted by governments or private entities. Customer email addresses in the collection appeared to belong to a German surveillance company, an independent consultant in Dubai, the Bosnian and Hungarian Intelligence services, a Dutch law enforcement officer and the Qatari government.

The leaked files — which were posted online by hackers — are the latest in a series of revelations about how state actors including repressive regimes have used Gamma's software to spy on dissidents, journalists and activist groups.

...

It's more than just your government spying on you, though they almost certainly are as well. If you or your company ever had any secrets, you probably don't now. Or maybe you have need of someone else's secrets, and also have $4m to spare...

You know, not that long ago, when I said this sort of thing was happening, people called me a nut‑job. Maybe they were and are right about that, but universal surveillance is very real.

Greenwald: NSA Targets Five American Muslim Leaders For Surveillance, Apparently Because They Are Muslim

Via Kevin Gosztola at FDL's The Dissenter, we have Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept revealing yet more NSA activity in violation of the First Amendment's freedom of religion guarantee. Here's Gosztola's summary:

...

Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept have published a much-anticipated story revealing five prominent Muslim-Americans the National Security Agency and FBI spied upon. The surveillance, which primarily appears to have involved monitoring their emails, was conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The five individuals are: Faisal Gill, a former member of President George W. Bush’s administration and a Republican Party operative; Asim Ghafoor, a public relations consultant, lobbyist, lawyer and advocate for the rights of American Muslims; Agha Saeed, a professor who has mobilized American Muslims to become involved in the American political process; Hooshang Amirahmadi, founder and president of the American Iranian Council, who has done considerable work on American policy toward Iran; and Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is the largest Muslim civil rights organization in America.

The national legal advocacy organization, Muslim Advocates, reacted, “This report confirms the worst fears of American Muslims: the federal government has targeted Americans, even those who have served their country in the military and government, simply because of their faith or religious heritage.  The report clearly documents how biased training by the FBI leads to biased surveillance.”

...

Oh, and Gosztola notes this bit of raw, offensive incivility:

On a visceral level, The Intercept included a section from July 2005 instructions on how to format internal memos “justifying surveillance.” The NSA did not use “John Doe” in the place where the name is supposed to be. They used “Mohammed Raghead” instead.

And this from Greenwald and Hussain:

“I just don’t know why,” says Gill, whose AOL and Yahoo! email accounts were monitored while he was a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. “I’ve done everything in my life to be patriotic. I served in the Navy, served in the government, was active in my community—I’ve done everything that a good citizen, in my opinion, should do.”

Please read both articles. Apparently, in today's America, being both a Muslim and a civil liberties activist are enough in combination to ensure you will be spied upon by the most invasive arm of your government. If the Hobby Lobby case wasn't enough to signal to you the death of the First Amendment's establishment clause, this revelation should finish the job. If you're not Christian, as I am not, you have a choice: keep a low profile... or expect your government to spy on you. Once again, Thomas Jefferson turns in his grave...

DoD's Minerva Program: Why Do Pentagon/University Research Programs Conflate Nonviolent Activists With ‘Supporters Of Political Violence’?

This damned good question is posed by The Guardian's Nafeez Ahmed (H/T bobswern at Kos), along with related questions about why nonviolent activists are pigeonholed as "social contagions" and other questions aiming at Pentagon preparedness to beat the shit out of you, me and other nonviolent protesters in the coming conflict they see as both inevitable and violent. To me, it appears that's exactly what the DoD is seeking to justify in the coming decades, and it's paying universities large chunks of your tax money to study and crank out such justifications. Mr. Ahmed posed a version of my subject question to Minerva staffers and received essentially no response:

I contacted the project's principal investigator, Prof Maria Rasmussen of the US Naval Postgraduate School, asking why non-violent activists working for NGOs should be equated to supporters of political violence – and which "parties and NGOs" were being investigated – but received no response.

Similarly, Minerva programme staff refused to answer a series of similar questions I put to them, including asking how "radical causes" promoted by peaceful NGOs constituted a potential national security threat of interest to the DoD.

If you think I am unduly personalizing these programs and their targets, please read carefully:

One war-game, said Price, involved environmental activists protesting pollution from a coal-fired plant near Missouri, some of whom were members of the well-known environmental NGO Sierra Club. Participants were tasked to "identify those who were 'problem-solvers' and those who were 'problem-causers,' and the rest of the population whom would be the target of the information operations to move their Center of Gravity toward that set of viewpoints and values which was the 'desired end-state' of the military's strategy."

Such war-games are consistent with a raft of Pentagon planning documents which suggest that National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance is partially motivated to prepare for the destabilising impact of coming environmental, energy and economic shocks.

That's hitting pretty close to home, isn't it? (Bolds mine.)

This reminds me a great deal of another era in American history... you got it... that of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Oh, and COINTELPRO. Somewhere, Hoover's shade is grinning at us all.