The more things “change” in politics, the more things stay the same. President Obama is installing measures to intimidate those who give the American people the “transparency” that was promised to them.
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The White House is launching a government-wide initiative known as the “Insider Threat Program,” which is already being panned by experts as a threat to transparency and accountable government.We’re talking everything from the postal service (yes, it’s tracking Americans, too) to what President Obama might call the “Peace Corpse.”
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The video above is from the Russia Today program “The Resident“; and it always wigs me out agreeing with RT, since it is funded by the Kremlin. Regardless, the host really nails several key points in appropriately sarcastic fashion. The left-wing outlets Democracy Now! and Young Turks also commented on the Insider Threats Program.
For those who prefer not to watch Kremlin-funded news (and trust me,the Russians know a little bit about domestic surveillance), McClatchy reports:
In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.
The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.
President Obama has prosecuted more people under the Espionage Act than all other presidents combined. Add recent Project PRISM leaker Edward Snowden to the list; although he wasn’t the first NSA whistleblower – there are at least three others, who generally support Snowden.
PRISM is more than is being reported by the mainstream media. It is not specifically directed at foreign threats, and it is much more than a periodical gathering of cellphone “metadata” (which is bad enough). The NSA monitors all sorts of data on an ongoing daily basis, and it even gushed it can do whatever it wants without public oversight or a warrant. Americans need to know about it.
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