2013 Ends on a Depressing Note — the NSA Is Indiscriminately Installing Spy Gizmos on Our Electronics — We Can’t Even Keep Trains on Track and from Exploding — and too Few Americans Seem to Care

© 2013 Peter Free

 

31 December 2013

 

 

Citations — to pertinent background material

 

 

Jacob Appelbaum, Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach, Christian Stöcker, Jörg Schindler, and Holger Stark, Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit, Spiegel Online International (29 December 2013)

 

Jacob Appelbaum, Judith Horchert, and Christian Stöcker, Shopping for Spy Gear: Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox, Spiegel Online International (29 December 2013)

 

Jason Mick, Report: NSA Intercepts PC Deliveries, Pays Cybercriminals to Spy on Americans, Daily Tech (31 December 2013)

 

Matt Pearce and Ralph Vartabedian, Explosive oil train collision triggers evacuation in North Dakota, Los Angeles Times (30 December 2013)

 

 

Two instances, reported this week, symbolize the New Un-American United States

 

First, the NSA intercepts people’s computers and electronics to bug them.

 

This, in addition to all the other Fourth Amendment-squashing BS that we apparently willingly put up with — so as to preserve our mostly cowardly (non-military) behinds against the grossly inflated threat of Dark Forces.

 

Second, America cannot even reliably keep its trains on track.

 

Which pretty well symbolizes our rotting national infrastructure.

 

 

Symbol One — 2013’s United States highlighted more than a decade of us pissing on the Spirit of 1776

 

The irony is that this now accustomed evidence for our callous laxity about Freedom comes from an alleged American traitor and a German newspaper:

 

 

Der Spiegel -- Germany's top newspaper -- has published a report based on analysis of NSA internal documents shared by leaker Edward Snowden, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst and NSA contractor.

 

Among the most shocking are reports that the NSA routinely intercepted consumer electronics shipments from "partners" like Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) (which coincidentally is vying for CIA contracts and lobbying for more spying behind closed doors) and installing James Bond-esque devices to spy on Americans.


 
One such program is dubbed "COTTONMOUTH" and involves the installation of a malicious USB "hardware implant". 

 

Other programs reportedly involved the installation of malicious firmware or software (malware).  COTTONMOUTH was among the expansions of the spying program by President Barrack Obama (D), having been instituted in 2009.

 

Further, two entire units of the NSA are devoted to hardware sabotage.  The first is referred to as the "TAO" (Tailored Access Operations) unit.  Der Spiegel reports:

 


According to internal NSA documents viewed by Spiegel, these on-call digital plumbers are involved in many sensitive operations conducted by American intelligence agencies… The documents reveal just how diversified the tools at TAO’s disposal have become — and also how it exploits the technical weaknesses of the IT industry, from Microsoft to Cisco and Huawei, to carry out its discreet and efficient attacks.

 

 

A second unit -- the Advanced/Access Network Technology unit -- was tasked with developing a set of sabotage procedures for virtually any consumer hardware target.

 

© 2013 Jason Mick, Report: NSA Intercepts PC Deliveries, Pays Cybercriminals to Spy on Americans, Daily Tech (31 December 2013) (extracts)

 

Germans apparently care more about Freedom and Privacy than spoiled Americans do.

 

And it took an alleged traitor to make clear exactly what the American Police State is doing to us behind our backs.

 

 

Symbol Two — we can’t even keep trains from running into each other, or falling off the railroad track

 

As in this instance:

 

 

A small town in North Dakota was being partially evacuated Monday evening after a train carrying crude oil collided with another train, setting off a large fire and explosions, according to the local sheriff's department.

 

Steven Forsberg, a spokeswoman for BNSF, said the accident occurred when a grain train derailed on a track parallel to an eastbound crude oil train. The explosions and fire erupted after cars from the grain train struck some of the oil tank cars, he said.

 

"A fire ensued, and quickly a number of the cars became engulfed," Morris said.

© 2013 Matt Pearce and Ralph Vartabedian, Explosive oil train collision triggers evacuation in North Dakota, Los Angeles Times (30 December 2013)

 

How many times do we have to see stories like this to wonder what happened to traditional American Can-Do-Ism?

 

 

The moral? — I doubt that ancestors from 1776 (Declaration of Independence) and 1789 (U.S. Constitution) would recognize our current crew of mall-going, liberty-trashing lackeys

 

The good news is that we can bury ourselves with a $5 shovel made in China and bought at Walmart.  The bad is that our tombstone cannot honestly pretend that we were historically genuine Americans.

 

No wonder that our adversaries are hopeful.  They have nothing moral or liberty-embracing to fear from our rotting state.

 

Happy New Year.