Amerika The Fascist Police State: How I learned to stop resenting the Patriot Act and started learning to love kissing the ass of the fascist in chief

First, the prophecy of Ben Franklin (paraphrased):

Those who trade freedom for security deserve neither.

After reading the anonymous editorial/column below, a streaming of consciousness emerged starting with a famous, controversial (naive) Beatles song, but the similarities end there:

Back in the USSR — Amerika.
Big Brother is here and
His names are George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Robert Mueller, Tom Delay, the FBI, law enforcement, credit card companies, corporate america, republican wingnuts, dittoheads, moral majority, evangelical christian, theocratic fervor, the health care system, insurance companies ....
and you Amerikkkan Lemmings stand by
sucking your thumbs and
Voting for your Amerikkkan Idols and
Praying to your imaginary fairy tale fathers
with flowing beards sitting on clouds.
If this does not scare the bejesus out of you and
tell you
how far down the fascist rabbit hole we have fallen ... then
you do not deserve democracy Amerika the lemmingful.
America that used to care about ideals and democracy and justice --
now Amerika the pathetic joke rapidly becoming a third world dictatorship.

One of the scariest editorials I have ever read. The implications are enormous.
Can you say AMERIKA the FASCIST POLICE STATE?

My National Security Letter Gag Order
I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government.

Friday, March 23, 2007

By Anonymous

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

Footnote by the WP:
It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

From the WashingtonPost.com

PS: Doesn't the guy on the left side of the movie poster eerily remind you of someone who currently occupies an ENORMOUSLY influential position in the white house -- in fact, maybe it looks like two of them, one elected, one not. Both dangerous.

Google Censors on behalf of Government! Who Me Paranoid? This blog was LOCKED immediately after I posted the most recent ANTI-Bush-Cheney posts!

BEWARE: Apparently any wing-nut who disagrees with your right to free speech in the form of opinionated or political blogs on the blogger.com/blogspot.com server — specifically Repugnacon-Bush-Cheney criticism — can click the FLAG-Blog bug on your blog and google will happily begin censoring and blocking any new posts, labeling your blog as a spamblog. You'll have to wait several days (or more) before your blog gets visited by a real google human who will then email you to say:

Hello,

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that
it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and
sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your
patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

BEWARE the growing FASCIST MONOLITH that is GOOGLE.

Wow. Somehow google's so-fucking-brilliant highly touted algorithm identified this as a spam blog? I don't think so. What a pile of horse-shit and another example of their corporate fascism. How convenient — all in lock-step with their ongoing acts as agents of the US Corporate Government through various censorship efforts and failure to promote free speech anywhere that their profits are potentially diminished — places like China for instance. But to be denied free speech here in the land of Bush Cheney Gonzales and the Patriot Act. Gee what a shock! Amerika the formerly free.

I can't wait to hear — if I ever do hear an explanation for this. All I can say for sure is F*CK YOU GOOGLE. F*CK YOUR FASCIST TAKEOVER OF THE INTERNET. AND GOOGLE CAN GO F*CK THEMSELVES YOU F*CK ING FASCIST CORPORATE SH*TEATING F*CK HEADS. CENSOR THIS YOU CENSORING F*CK WAD D*CKHEADS!

My Experience of Google's Censorship
By Zhang Lin
Translated from the Chinese edition
Oct 02, 2004


In the past, I always thought Google, the biggest search engine in the world, was also the fairest. So no matter what messages I needed to search, I always went first to the UltraReach Company’s UltraReach.Net [Editor’s note: UltrarReach.net is a web server designed to enable the user in mainland China to defeat the P.R.C.’s attempt to censor internet content], and then used Google. But a few months ago, I found there was something strange about Google.

For example, when I searched my own name “Zhang Lin” (the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] blocked my name long ago), to my surprise I found the first entry was a football player named Zhang Linbao. It is impossible for the compiler in Google’s Chinese Department not to have found such an obvious mistake a long time ago. Moreover, Google listed the entries related to “Zhang Lin” at 29,400 altogether. But when I checked the entries from the beginning to the end with patience, I found only 73 pages with 9 entries per page for a total of 657 entries.

When I searched to the last page, I suddenly found there was a link called “repeat the search with the omitted results included.” When I clicked to open it, I suddenly discovered that I was in a new world. The omitted entries included 100 pages, which were even more than the entries really listed. Moreover, nearly all of the omitted content was related to me. Apparently I was considered to be a main “deleted” person (whoever is interested can check this for him or herself). At that moment, the only thing I could think is that Google has been penetrated by an agent of the CCP.

So several months ago, I planed to write an article to expose that Google had been penetrated by an agent of the CCP. What I could not believe was that Google had openly cooperated with the autocratic regime of the CCP and destroyed the freedom of the network.

But recently I saw the series of articles that explained how Google really had started to cooperate with the CCP. At the request of the CCP, Google largely deleted the terms that the CCP intended to block.

This action has violated the basic principles of the network – free access and fair treatment. The Chinese people have been deceived and persecuted and their sources of information have been blockaded, by the CCP for a long time. Google is obviously suspected of helping a tyranny to do evil. Though Google remains the best Chinese search engine, we have the right to require that Google act justly, which is also good for Google’s own healthy development.

A company that compromises with or even flatters an autocratic regime may obtain a few benefits. Eventually, though, actions taken to help a tyranny will be condemned by the public and a cost will be paid. Generally speaking, such a company loses more than it gains. Swiss Banks cooperated with the Nazis, granted loans to make munitions, and swallowed up the Jews’ accounts. But eventually justice was served.

This should be a cautionary tale for Google. Unless Google’s current leaders just want to reap some money and walk away, Google should consider its long-term policy. Please, at the first sight of profits, don’t forget what is right and don’t abandon basic principles.

Editor’s Note: The filtering that Zhang Lin reports in this first person account is of a different kind than what Google News China, a service just begun on September 9, admitted to practicing in a statement the week before last. Google News China does not allow the client to see the “omitted results.” Zhang Lin was [not] able to see those results.

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