Weekend Economists Examine the Root of All Evil: February 28-March 2, 2014

[Demeter]

8. Is It Time for a New Church Committee?

PAST-TIME, IF YOU ASK ME...BUT NOBODY DOES.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/22103-is-it-time-for-a-new-church-committee



Earlier this month, Glenn Greenwald revealed details of how GCHQ (the British equivalent of the NSA) had a special "dirty tricks" intelligence gathering group known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group.

This week - Greenwald released more details on the group over at The Intercept, his new media venture.

The newly released details include a top-secret GCHQ presentation that sheds light on how the group, cooperating with the NSA, would go after, infiltrate, and in some cases ruin the reputations of, specific groups or individuals online.

And we're not just talking about terrorist masterminds here.

According to Greenwald, "Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable."

Greenwald goes on to say that, "To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: "false flag operations" (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting "negative information" on various forums."

According to the top-secret presentation, the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, would leak confidential information to companies and the press, post negative information on "appropriate forums," and actively try to stop business deals and ruin relationships.

And if JTRIG was going after a specific person it would do things like set up honey traps, using sex to lure people into compromising situations.

JTRIG would also write emails and texts to friends, family, and colleagues of the individual, and would also write blogs and messages pretending to be that person.

While this all sounds extremely disturbing and very creepy, it should also sound pretty familiar, because we've seen these kinds of covert government interference and manipulation efforts before.

These kinds of reputation-destroying smear campaigns and intentional sabotage missions were key parts of the Richard Nixon presidency....

If the NSA and GCHQ are actively using the Internet to destroy people's lives, manipulate political discourse and quash civic activism, as Glenn Greenwald puts it, they're "compromising the integrity of the internet itself."

But more importantly, they're attacking our very freedoms and way of life.

We can't continue to let them run amok, and trample all over our lives.

President Ford once referred to the Nixon era in America as this nation's "long national nightmare."

The out-of-control nature of our national security agencies today is our new "national nightmare."

And the only way to wake up from that nightmare is to create a new Church Commission, which will investigate the intelligence community, and put in place the reforms that are needed to protect our freedoms and way of life.


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