World Wide Wiretap
Recent cyber attacks provide pretext for sweeping internet snooping by US government
Last Friday, while most Americans were preparing for a weekend of fireworks and hot dogs, the Obama Administration had an ominous message: they are going ahead with a Bush-era plan to allow the NSA even more power to invade, intercept and analyze the data of anyone visiting a government website, ostensibly to help prevent a major cyber attack.[1] The timing of the announcement, the day before a holiday long weekend, seemed unusual, but less than 24 hours later just such an attack began to unfold on a series of websites in America and South Korea, including those of the White House, Pentagon, New York Stock Exchange, Treasury Department, Secret Service and The Washington Post, amongst others.
The attack itself turns out to have been fairly innocuous[2]--a run of the mill DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack that did not even employ the latest malware--but you wouldn't know that from reading the sensational reporting in the controlled corporate media. The VOA reports that the 'internet attackers' have struck again.[3] "US State Department under cyberattack for fourth day" blares a headline from the AFP.[4]
Blame for the attack is now falling on North Korea, but what North Korea has to gain by taking down The Washington Post's website is anybody's guess (perhaps Kim Jong-il was giving his own pronouncement on the recent revelation that the Post was selling access to high-level politicians to lobbyists for $250,000 a pop[5]). The big winner in this attack, it seems, is the federal government, which has been preparing to unveil an Internet surveillance spy grid for years, but have virtually no mandate to do so from a public that has become tired of invasive government snooping.
The attack itself turns out to have been fairly innocuous[2]--a run of the mill DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack that did not even employ the latest malware--but you wouldn't know that from reading the sensational reporting in the controlled corporate media. The VOA reports that the 'internet attackers' have struck again.[3] "US State Department under cyberattack for fourth day" blares a headline from the AFP.[4]
Blame for the attack is now falling on North Korea, but what North Korea has to gain by taking down The Washington Post's website is anybody's guess (perhaps Kim Jong-il was giving his own pronouncement on the recent revelation that the Post was selling access to high-level politicians to lobbyists for $250,000 a pop[5]). The big winner in this attack, it seems, is the federal government, which has been preparing to unveil an Internet surveillance spy grid for years, but have virtually no mandate to do so from a public that has become tired of invasive government snooping.
continue reading -http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14306
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