Originally published June 17 2013
Obama massive spy apparatus intended to destroy all privacy nationwide
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Amid news that the National Security Agency, or NSA, has data-mined the information of millions of Americans with the help of telecom Verizon and has built the capacity to gather all electronically transmitted data on every single American at any time, comes news from the reporter who initially broke the story that we are merely seeing the tip of the anti-privacy iceberg.
In fact, according to The Guardian newspaper's Glenn Greenwald, Americans - and citizens of every nation around the world, for that matter - will be aghast when they fully realize that the real goal of the Obama Administration's spy agency is to obliterate privacy the world over.
"There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States but around the world," Greenwald told CNN's Piers Morgan following the publication of his initial story. "That is not hyperbole. That is their objective."
'They can beat their chests all they want'
Morgan, by the way - who has angered tens of millions of Americans with his anti-gun stance in the wake of the Newtown shootings - just recently had an epiphany that, indeed, the U.S. government could actually behave tyrannically, hence the claim by many gun owners that the Second Amendment is not about hunting, but self-defense, especially from an overreaching central government (http://www.nationalreview.com).
What should be even more angering to Americans is the way some establishment politicians are defending the NSA's clearly unconstitutional actions (yes, unconstitutional, even though they were approved by a "secret" federal court). Some of those who are blaming whistleblower Edward Snowden, 29, instead of the NSA are Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., head of the Senate Intelligence Committee (which is supposed to serve in an intelligence oversight capacity), Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. But Greenwald dismissed such charges.
"So whatever the Justice Department wants to do, they can beat their chests all they want," he said. "People like Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss can have press conferences threatening people for bringing ... light to what it is they're doing, but the only people who are going to be investigated are them. It's well past time that these threats start to be treated with the contempt that they deserve. That's certainly how I intend to treat them moving forward, with more investigation and disclosures."
Greenwald also criticized the Obama Administration in general for issuing "threats."
"The Obama Administration has been very aggressive about bullying and threatening anybody who thinks about exposing it or writing it or even doing journalism about it, and it's well past time that come to an end," he said, alluding to the fact that Obama - who once denounced such behavior in previous administrations.
In a separate interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Greenwald said the Obama regime has a "warped and distorted" view of the PATRIOT Act, the immediate post-9/11 law that authorized some types of secret surveillance that were specifically related to terrorism and terrorist threats. Blanket surveillance of American citizens doesn't fit that narrow description, as the law's chief architect, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., has said.
"What the Obama Administration is doing in interpreting the PATRIOT Act is so warped and distorted and it vests themselves with such extremist surveillance powers over the United States and American citizens that Americans, in their words, would be stunned to learn what the Obama Administration is doing," he said.
And later still, during an interview with MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, Greenwald essentially dared American lawmakers to investigate how the NSA's surveillance was leaked, as Feinstein says should happen.
"Let them go and investigate," Greenwald said.
Subverting the individual and empowering the federal government
Continuing, he said, "There is this massive surveillance state that the United States government has built up that has extraordinary implications for how we live as human beings on the earth and as Americans in our country, and we have the right to know what it is that that government and that agency is doing. I intend to continue to shine light on that, and Dianne Feinstein can beat her chest all she wants and call for investigations, and none of that is going to stop and none of it is going to change."
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of our nation's founding principles knows that the framers were most concerned about protections for the individual from an all-powerful state. The Bill of Rights - the Constitution's first 10 amendments - specifically empowers the individual by devolving power from the federal government, even in times of crisis.
By the same token, those who seek to destroy the intent of the framers - think Feinstein, Boehner, Chambliss, McCain, et al - know just the opposite: That to empower themselves and the government is to subvert the individual.
This is precisely what the NSA and its enablers are doing, and of course, it's all in the name of "national security."
Sources for this article include:
http://www.politico.com
http://www.ibtimes.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
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