When all other methods of imposing illegal legislation on its citizens to egregiously control them fail, the U.S. government repeatedly turns to fear-mongering and false flag activities committed by employees of the U.S. Government against its citizens to push their illegal agenda through and get it implemented.
In trying to get ‘legislation’ pushed through that would give the President power to shut down the Internet, the government has relied on former Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell to spread his lies and misinformation about impending doom and how America is losing the cyberwar.
Contrary to McConnell’s lies, the Chinese government, hackers, and greedy anti-net neutrality ISPs aren’t our biggest enemy. McConnell and the U.S. government are.
While directing national intelligence, McConnell pushed his tales of cyber doom on President Bush. Consequently, Bush signed yet another comprehensive — and most likely illegal — secret order wasting billions of dollars on the Military’s black budget to start creating firewalls and building malware into military equipment. Now McConnell is out of the government and back at his V.P. job with Booz Allen Hamilton, a large, secretive defense contractor.
In keeping true to form, McConnell is telling Congress and the media about a cyber apocalypse. According to McConnell, we need to re-engineer the Internet. Conveniently missing from McConnell’s rhetoric is how much he stands to profit while making it even easier for the government to illegally spy on its citizens.
McConnell Claims we Need to Re-engineer the Internet
According to McConnell, we need an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options within milliseconds.
More specifically, McConnell claims we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, Geo-locations, intelligence analysis and impact assessment — who did it, from where, why and what was the result — more manageable.
McConnell wants to further develop the technologies available to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same.
Really? Re-read the two paragraphs directly above. McConnell wants to change the Internet to make everything anyone does on the net traceable and Geo-located so the National Security Administration (NSA) can pinpoint users and their computers so the government can retaliate when they don’t like what’s written in an email, what search terms were used, what was downloaded, etc.
Former Bush Administration Cyberczar Involved in the Deceptions
In keeping with their tradition of acquiescing to the governments propaganda needs, the Washington Post let McConnell publish his fairy tale about losing the cyberwar on their pages.
McConnell argued that the U.S. needs a Cold War strategy, complete with ICBMs and secret-codenamed projects. According to McConnell, Google’s allegation that Chinese hackers infiltrated its Gmail servers to target Chinese dissidents proves the U.S. is losing the cyberwar.
McConnell’s lackluster record as director of national intelligence — as well his total lack of credibility is once again glaringly evident. If China hacked Google’s Gmail servers, that’s not warfare. That’s espionage.
McConnell implied that the U.S. was under an unstoppable attack by hackers using the Zeus virus. NetWitness, an alleged ‘security company’ run by former Bush administration cyberczar Amit Yoran, ran a masterfully deceptive propaganda campaign about the dangers of Zeus, but McAfee and Symantec, two of the world’s largest security companies, downplayed it.
As usual, those hell-bent on claiming America is losing a cyberwar didn’t bother to perform any fact-checking. They’re not concerned about the truth or the facts, only the endgame results that will prove extremely profitable for themselves and the corrupted power that comes with it.
Senate Plans to Give the President ‘Emergency’ Powers Over the Internet
McConnell advocated having the NSA take the lead in guarding all government and private networks. Unsurprisingly, the contractor he works for has numerous secret contracts with the NSA in that area. The group, which is owned by the Carlyle Group — part of the Bush cabal — rakes in $5 billion a year in government contracts, many of which are Top Secret.
It can be extremely difficult to determine the origins of a cyber attack. That’s why McConnell and the U.S. government want to ‘re-engineer’ the Internet. They want to make it easy to discern targets to play their war games and power trips on at the cost of the taxpayers.
From its inception, the nation’s Internet policy was to leave it alone in order to encourage its growth. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was designed ‘to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.’
Now the government wants to start being more active in allegedly preventing cyberattacks, privacy intrusions and copyright violations. While they’re ‘protecting’ you, they’re illegally spying on you and egregiously violating your rights. A bill being proposed by the Senate would give the president ’emergency’ powers over the Internet to selectively shut it down.
McConnell Wants to Give the NSA Full Control of the Internet
Since it’s easy to see where all this is headed, the past needs to be our guide.
For years the NSA has illegally spied on Americans’ emails and phone calls, allegedly to keep us safer. In July 2008 Congress voted to legalize the program, while illegally giving telecoms like AT&T that have made millions of dollars turning over its users Internet habits to the government, immunity for their actions.
As egregious as the illegal spying is and has been, it wasn’t enough for the government. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act — mandating surveillance capabilities in telephone switches — requires ISPs to build similar eavesdropping capabilities into their networks.
McConnell is calling for the NSA — which lost all credibility when they secretly violated American law by illegally spying on its citizens despite lying about it — to have full control of the Internet.
The private sector helps the NSA and controversial contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton while being paid megabucks in what Wired refers to as bloated contracts.
There is no Cyberwar and America is Not Losing it
With the constant fear-mongering, the government, particularly the military industrial complex, is trying to cower the public into turning control of the Internet over to it. Two illegal wars and sporadically invading three other countries isn’t enough. The government’s psychological warfare on the American public, aided by a complicit corporate media who continues publishing stories with no verifiable evidence continues.
Now the government is trying to to create enough fear to coerce Americans into turning over control of their open Internet so they can turn it into an Internet that is controlled and surveilled by the government.
Naturally, there are problems on the Internet…security issues, pirated movies, spam, and botnets designed to steal your personal and financial information, but a large part of that problem is a result of users not being educated on protecting themselves online. As also noted by Wired, there are cons and rip-offs in the real world, just as there are online.
You’re just as likely to get ripped off by a restaurant server copying your credit card information as you are having your card stolen and fraudulently used while shopping online. ‘Top Secret’ information is more likely to be handed over to a foreign government or entity through an employee-turned-spy than it is from a hacker. The NSA has repeatedly proven that it cannot be trusted, and that it will continue spying illegally on American citizens. Companies have no business giving the NSA access to their networks or giving the NSA information that it won’t share with the American public. The U.S. Government needs to start working for the people and stop scaring and screwing the people. The people need to hold the government accountable.
For years the government has made false and misleading claims about the Internet — among a plethora of other things — and despite the lies, the Internet has become more useful in spreading innovation, news, commerce, and healthy dissent, among other things. There is no cyberwar and America is not losing it. There is a war over control of the Internet that is being fought with lies and deceptions. If we let the government continue getting away with these lies and deceptions, we will lose that war, and our open Internet.
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