ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Just in time for Christmas<\/strong>, the Deep State wants to give America the gift that keeps on giving:\u00a0never-ending mass surveillance<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m not referring to the kind of surveillance carried out by that all-knowing and all-seeing Jolly Old St. Nick and his informant the Elf on the Shelf (although, to be fair, they have\u00a0helped to acclimate us to a world in which we\u2019re always being watched and judged by higher authorities<\/a>).<\/p>\n No, this particular bit of Yuletide gift-giving comes courtesy of the Deep State (a.k.a. the Surveillance State, Police State, Shadow Government and\u00a0black-ops spy agencies<\/a>).<\/strong><\/p>\n If this power-hungry cabal gets its way, the government\u2019s power to spy on its citizens will soon be all-encompassing and permanent.<\/p>\n As it now stands,\u00a0Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act<\/a>\u2014the legal basis for two of the National Security Agency\u2019s largest mass surveillance programs, \u201cPRISM\u201d and \u201cUpstream\u201d\u2014is\u00a0set to expire at the end of 2017<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cPRISM\u201d lets the NSA access emails, video chats, instant messages, and other content sent via Facebook, Google, Apple and others. \u201cUpstream\u201d lets the NSA worm its way into the internet backbone\u2014the cables and switches owned by private corporations like AT&T that make the internet into a global network\u2014and scan traffic for the communications of tens of thousands of individuals labeled \u201ctargets.\u201d<\/p>\n Section 702 has been used as an end-run around the Constitution<\/a>\u00a0to allow the government to collect the actual content of Americans\u2019 emails, phone calls, text messages and other electronic communication without a warrant.<\/p>\n Under Section 702, the government collects and analyzes over 250 million internet communications every year. There are estimates that at least half of these contain information about U.S. residents, many of whom have done nothing wrong. This information is then shared with law enforcement and \u201croutinely used for purposes unrelated to national security<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Mind you, Section 702 gives the government access to the very content of your conversations (phone calls, text messages, video chats<\/a>), your photographs, your emails.<\/p>\n So beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government\u2019s choosing. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead.<\/p>\n For all intents and purposes, we now have a fourth branch of government.<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n This fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n The government\u2019s \u201ctechnotyranny<\/a>\u201d surveillance apparatus has become so entrenched and entangled with its police state apparatus that it\u2019s hard to know anymore where law enforcement ends and surveillance begins.<\/p>\n The short answer: they have become one and the same entity.<\/strong><\/p>\n The police state has passed the baton to the surveillance state.<\/p>\n This hasn\u2019t fazed President Trump who, much like his predecessors, has thus far marched in lockstep with the dictates of the police state.<\/p>\n For months, the\u00a0Trump Administration has been actively lobbying Congress to reauthorize Section 702 in its entirety<\/a>. Now, according to\u00a0The Intercept,<\/em>\u00a0Trump is actively considering a\u00a0proposal to establish his own global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies and answer directly to the White House<\/a>.<\/p>\n If approved, this would be\u00a0yet another secret government agency carrying out secret surveillance and counterintelligence, funded by a secret black ops budget<\/a>\u00a0that by its very nature does away with transparency, bypasses accountability and completely eludes any form of constitutionality.<\/p>\n As if we weren\u2019t being spied on enough already.<\/p>\n On any given day, the average American is now\u00a0monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways<\/a>\u00a0by both government and corporate eyes and ears.<\/p>\n Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by the U.S. government\u2019s vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.<\/strong><\/p>\n Talk about a system rife for abuse.<\/p>\n Ask the government why it\u2019s carrying out this warrantless surveillance on American citizens, and you\u2019ll get the same Orwellian answer the government has been trotting out since 9\/11 to justify its assaults on our civil liberties: to keep America safe.<\/p>\n Yet warrantless mass surveillance by the government and its corporate cohorts hasn\u2019t made America any safer. And it certainly isn\u2019t helping to preserve our freedoms. Frankly, America will never be safe as long as the U.S. government is allowed to shred the Constitution.<\/p>\n Now the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from its mass spying program because they\u2019re only looking to get the \u201cbad\u201d guys who are overseas.<\/strong><\/em><\/u><\/p>\n Don\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n Warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens is wrong, un-American, and unconstitutional.<\/strong><\/p>\n Clearly, the outlook for reforming the government\u2019s unconstitutional surveillance programs does not look good.<\/p>\n