How are they supposed to know if parallel construction was used in their case or not?
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-chief-w...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/10/supreme...
Edit: To the user below, this is various arms of the government passing around information amongst it's branches to avoid accountability and exposure as much as possible. Rather monolithic.
Keep the ready made mantras out of this please.
In what sense? A government is a monopoly on violence. I find monopolies to be monolithic.
I didn't mention Nixon because for all his rhetoric his policies were pretty pragmatic, and he considered drug abuse at least partly a public health issue (as evidenced by his decisions). Reagan ran as a straight-up moralist and while I agree he'd probably be appalled at the militarization of police and abuses of power like this 'parallel construction' the DEA has been engaging in, this doesn't seem to have filtered through to his supporters. On the one hand he's portrayed as a selfless individual of almost god-like sagacity (I know this because I have ended up on the mailing lists of various conservative organizations, and this time of year I am the perplexed recipient of various Reagan calendars and suchlike), on the other he's almost invariably invoked in political debates in order to terminate discussion rather than broaden it.
SAIC fills the monitoring center fused with fusion center niche with their "Domain Awareness Center[3]" being built in Oakland California. DEA uses the NSA who pulls data from all the various private/government/corporate/infiltrated databases to forge investigation paths, aka "intel laundering[4]".
FBI assists in private digital forensics centers[5] run by Snowden's Booz Allen Hamilton which help all levels of law enforcement in things like intellectual and copyright prosecutions[6].
Endgame Systems uses illegal exploits and data harvested from botnets against whoever for a cool million or so at the whim of the NSA/others[7] while hackers come under further prosecution and filtering for their esoteric deeds[8].
All the while SAIC[9] managed drones continue to spread across the US[10] and elsewhere.
Monolithic by choice, the whole lot.
I would honestly appreciate those affiliated with ATT, Comcast, Blue Coat, Endgame, Booz, Hunton & Williams and others to halt their profiteering endeavors. This of course should apply to all functionaries of the various arms of the world's governments that are complying in exchange for their salary as well.
[1] http://www.alanco.com/news_040104.asp
[2] http://www.dhs.gov/fusion-centers-and-joint-terrorism-task-f...
[3] http://oaklandwiki.org/Domain_Awareness_Center
[4] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/us-dea-irs-idUSBRE...
[5] http://whois.net/whois/chicagorcfl.org
[7] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems
[8] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/27/pornwall
[9] http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/06/14/news-saic-wins-95-mil...
[10] http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/coming_soon_t...
- That a majority of people connected with government commit crimes (unless your belief is that government is by definition a criminal enterprise, I don't think this assertion makes sense.)
- That a majority of criminals with government connections never face a penalty (the number of perp walks I've seen for mayors, senators, congressmen, etc would seem to suggest that while, yes, money and politics do go a long way in terms of abrogating justice, that sort of phenomenon isn't exclusive to politics nor is it universal.)
- That some malice of forethought exists within the legal system in regards to disproportionately punishing civilians, presumably because the judiciary is also part of the same conspiracy of corruption. I believe the unjustness of the court system has more to do with economics and race than it does whether someone is connected to politics, although certainly the politics of appearing tough on crime have an effect.
The argument that the government be 'monolithic' requires it to be both efficient and non-adversarial, neither is true. It also requires almost everyone to be amoral sociopaths, perfectly willing to go along with even the darkest and most depraved violations of civil liberties. To me, it's a step below invoking the Illuminati, it's wanting order in a system which is fundamentally chaotic for the sake of some grand narrative of good versus evil.
Ignoring or rationalizing the abuses of government while invoking the Illuminati is no way to go through life, son.
I don't think this is what everyone is worried about. It's not that the entire US government is conspiring against us. It's more that each agency has evolved ideologies and practises that, when taken as a whole, form an oppressive machine. No-one designed that machine, and no-one group controls it. It simply is a function of the increased cooperation of individual agencies who each have their own set of norms and values that fail to align with the true interests of the populous. The US government is becoming more monolithic because of a systemic problem - that is, increased incentives for agencies to cooperate and share information.
- It also requires almost everyone to be amoral sociopaths, perfectly willing to go along with even the darkest and most depraved violations of civil liberties.
This argument assumes that the people who work in the US government have the same social norms and values as the rest of the population. It seems more likely to me that each agency forms its own little closed society, that has drifted away from mainstream society due to the unique freedoms and pressures that agency experiences. The "Blue Code of Silence" is an example of this within the police. Few people are amoral sociopaths, but the vast majority of people will accept the values and norms of their peers without question.