Obama orders federal workers to spy on each other

Tuesday, July 16, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Obama, federal workers, spying

(NaturalNews) President Obama likes to promote freedom and democracy around the world, but time and again he has proven he doesn't believe these same principles should apply to Americans.

The evidence is clear in policy after policy, decision after decision, action after action that this president has either made or taken during his time in office.

He orders his National Security Agency to spy on Americans. He orders his Justice Department to ignore duly passed laws like the Defense of Marriage Act and parts of Obamacare. He permits his federal agencies to conduct questionable operations like "Fast and Furious" which have resulted in the deaths of federal agents. He has permitted the FBI to intimidate and investigate journalists while collecting reams of meta data on virtually all Americans.

And now, he's directing federal employees to spy on each other. Through his actions, not his words, Obama is behaving less like an American president and arbiter of liberty than a third-world dictator whose tyrannical rule suppresses fundamental rights.

Government-wide 'neighborhood watch program'

Per McClatchy Newspapers:

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.

According to internal documents unearthed by McClatchy, Obama ordered the program in October 2011, amid reports that Army PFC Bradley downloaded and distributed thousands of classified documents and turned them over to WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy organization. The order is pervasive in that nearly every federal agency - including the Department of Education, the Peace Corps and others that have no direct national security role - is covered.

The program, which was ordered and implemented largely in secret - which is, in itself, ironic - allows security investigations to be launched against "suspects" practically at the drop of a hat. The quantifying metric is vague and the bar may be set (intentionally) low: Government employees being targeted need only show "indicators of insider threat behavior" to be reported by co-workers. Think East Germany and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and communist China today.

"Investigations also can be triggered when 'suspicious user behavior' is detected by computer network monitoring and reported to 'insider threat personnel,'" McClatchy reported.

Modern-day Gestapo?

Critics of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of murdering Florida teen Trayvon Martin July 14, called him a hero wannabe for trying to protect his neighborhood; let's see if some of these same critics now turn their angst against Obama for essentially establishing a federal bureaucracy-wide neighborhood watch program. Per McClatchy:

Federal employees and contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors - like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel - of co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do "harm to the United States." Managers of special insider threat offices will have "regular, timely, and, if possible, electronic, access" to employees' personnel, payroll, disciplinary and "personal contact" files, as well as records of their use of classified and unclassified computer networks, polygraph results, travel reports and financial disclosure forms.

The problem is, historically, such employee "spying" programs don't work. Numerous studies of public and private workers who have been caught spying or leaking sensitive information have ostensibly identified certain behaviors, traits and characteristics that spies generally demonstrate, the administration contends - hence the basis of Obama's order. Only, say real experts, the value of such behaviors are debatable because they are difficult to spot, even by trained personnel - let alone the co-worker in the next cubicle.

"There is no consensus in the relevant scientific community nor on the committee regarding whether any behavioral surveillance or physiological monitoring techniques are ready for use at all," concluded a 2008 National Research Council report on detecting terrorists.

The Nazi Gestapo lives on through the policies and actions of Barack Hussein Obama.

Sources:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com

http://www.sacbee.com

http://www.mcclatchydc.com