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Death of a High Trust Society: The ‘Circling the Drain’ Edition
In addition to a more recent post titled Or, the FBI Is Lying, the critical reference material for this offering comes from a post here three years ago titled Death of a High Trust Society: Rampant Lawlessness in our Executive where part of the focus was on this article:
Report: Obama’s Spying On The Press Was Far More Extensive Than Previously Thought (H/T Instapundit)
Perhaps more important than the title topic was my footnote:
What if they did more than just spying? One of the great stories of the last decade left largely untouched by our reliably incurious press is the “tampering” done to Sharyl Attkisson’s computers:
When Attkisson had her computer examined by an independent computer forensics expert, evidence was found showing that it had been “accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions” and that “this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts,” according to a report from CBS in 2013. Furthermore, “forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.” The traces of software left behind after the attack were shown by the expert who examined the computer to be “proprietary to a federal intel agency,” according to Attkisson.
Not only that, but buried in the system files of her operating system (where she would be almost certain never to look) were three classified government documents. Attkisson could have been charged under the Espionage Act for possessing those documents. …
I return to this today because of this link provided earlier this week on OffThePress.com:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1524487796458729472
“That’s a nice family you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.” There is nothing funny or amusing about that…it is simply and absolutely chilling. Yet…
<< CRICKETS >>
Standard operating procedure? Handy tool in every bureau toolbox? Surely before going down that path they have to go through some trustworthy higher authority like a FISA Court…cough, choke, cough...yeah, I almost got that out with a straight face. But I digress.
Maybe we can at least take comfort in knowing that they were only going after some uppity journalist that was probably getting up into their righteous business. Surely they would never overstep the bounds of trust with Joe and Jane Citizen. Or would they?:
FBI INVESTIGATED CONCERNED PARENTS
You all remember the story: the Biden Department of Justice coordinated with the National School Boards Association to arrange for FBI investigations of parents who are unhappy about their local schools teaching racism and anti-Americanism (Critical Race Theory) and gender confusion, and requiring masks. The episode was so sordid that many state school board associations dropped their affiliation with NSBA, and most people doubted that the FBI would be craven enough to follow Attorney General Merrick Garland’s patently unconstitutional directive.
But follow it they did.
…
These “investigations” were ridiculous and could only have been intended to intimidate conservative parents from being involved in their public schools. One might note that these parents merely attended public school board meetings to express their opinions. I am not aware of a single case where they demonstrated outside the home of a school board member.
I posit that one of the important questions here (since the reliably incurious American media most likely will not ask) is: At what point in these investigations do they plant that child porn on the computers of these insurrectionist parents just in case it is needed later?
More:
The congressmen also claimed that the FBI began an investigation into Republican elected officials in a certain state because a Democratic state-party official claimed that the Republicans “‘incited violence’ by expressing public displeasure with school districts’ mask mandates.”
Contemplate that: a complaint by a “Democratic state-party official” was enough to trigger an FBI investigation of “Republican elected officials” who opposed mask mandates. What country are we living in?
Another good question here: How many “Republican elected officials” at any level have child porn already preemptively planted on their computers just in case it is needed later?
Again, simply and absolutely chilling.
I repeat from my May 2019 post referenced above: By the way, the opposite of a high trust society is a fear-based society. Are you scared yet?
Into the abyss…
___ ___ ___
EXTENDED COMMENTARY
I realize that many of you are still (or always) skeptical and/or overly comfortable in your undying trust in government and “democratically” derived authority. It is to you I offer a favorite passage from Solzhenitsyn in Volume I:
There was a rumor…that the Petrograd Cheka…did not shoot all those condemned to death but fed some of them alive to the animals in the city zoos. I do not know whether this is truth or calumny, or, if there were any such cases, how many there were. But I wouldn’t set out to look for proof, either. Following the practice of the bluecaps, I would propose that they prove to us that this was impossible. How else could they get food for the zoos in those famine years? – Page 174
[Emphasis added]
I suggest that if we are not well past it already, we are rapidly approaching the time that, as these cases arise, the FBI needs to “prove to us” that such charges regarding their corruption are not possible. If they will not…or can not…then maybe other corrective actions are going to be required.
Published in General
NOTICE: This post has been edited to add the EXTENDED COMMENTARY. Those who have supplied a “like” may wish to review the edits and rethink your position. Thanks.
I suspect any response we’ll get will be the old “can’t divulge sources and methods” stiff-arm.
John Ringo wrote an interesting book a while back that artfully illustrated the concepts and costs of high-trust vs low-trust societies.
I usually illustrate it using a similar description about driving. In the US, we trust the person who is driving the other car to follow the basic traffic guidelines like staying in their lane, stopping at an intersection, yielding right of way, but anyone who has driven in parts of Europe, or better yet a third world country knows that such trust cannot exist. It means in the US that I can reasonably expect to maintain a speed of 60mph when travelling long distances in the US and expect that I will find a gas station with fuel, and that everyone will be going roughly the same speed in the same direction. In a third world, and even in Europe, such expectations do not and cannot exist. That is the cost of the destruction of trust, and the path that we are on in the US where trust is evaporating rapidly for most institutions. I honestly think that one reason that a Tesla vehicle is so valuable is because Tesla has built the network of charging stations for their vehicles and then when you plan a trip, it automatically guides you to the charging network and includes the wait time in your trip analysis. I remember an interview with Thomas Edison about the light bulb saying that inventing the bulb was relatively easy, the hard part was that they had to invent the electric companies at the same time.
As someone who had been illegally wire tapped back in the 90’s, I find Attkisson’s experience chilling. (Not that I consider my former journalistic endeavors anywhere near her levels of excellence.)
I knew my phone was tapped, but had it not been for a relative with ties to an FBI agent who confirmed the matter, I couldn’t have proven it.
But now in the 21st Century, how does the average person protect themselves? Most of us wouldn’t know how to even find an expert computer forensics analyst.
The “anti virus” anti spam blocking programs sold to the average computer user are a joke. For instance, Avast warns me not to visit my husband’s website which our business depends on as “it is insecure and could provide problems” for you.
Whether this comes up due to the book on 9/11 my husband wrote, or simply because Avast is not advanced enough to realize the site’s “insecurity” results from our using a mid level hosting service which bundles a certain number of its user websites all on the same server, I have no idea.
If the source of the warning is from the latter situation, then I suspect only larger media firms and not small publishing firms could get a seal of approval from Avast. So The Chicago Tribune would be fine. Ditto CNN, MSNBC, etc.
And I doubt the large media firms would ever cover this dilemma that harms smaller firms. After all, it clearly is to their advantage, not only in terms of knocking out competition and therefore ensuring its bottom line, but also because this way it is easier to fill its charter mission of helping CIA-developed propaganda hit the masses.
That sounds like a certificate error message. It means you do need to buy and install a third party certificate proving you are who you say you are. Cost around $100 for a year or two.
It is past time to “reimagine” the F.B.I. and the accountability of our national agencies, most of them now having policing powers of their own. Years and years ago a person was arguing to me in favor of the draft and said that one of the positives was that you constantly had an element in the military from what he called the “regular population” and that it was important that “the people with the guns” were as much like the nation’s population as possible.
Unaccountability breeds concept for others, allows an agency to develop a culture completely apart from the nation’s as a whole. The list of abuses now known from just the F.B.I. is too large to ignore any longer. But all this applies to all arms of governmental power. They are they to reflect the culture of the nation’s people.
Or they can’t comment on an on-going investigation that will be on-going for decades, or until no one is paying attention any longer.
And for all the doubters who say that “we’ve suffered through worse, so these political crises is all historically par for the course” and all the accusations are just the conspiracy hysteria of sketchy, low-viewership, alt-information, click-bait sites, it has been alleged by whistle blowers for years on such sites that planting both child pr0n and evidence of financial illegalities on troublesome people’s computers has been not only threatened but actually carried out.
Every time I hear a non-descript guy gets charged with child pr0n, I remember this. And just for the visible tip of the iceberg, look at the sexual accusations and forgeries made against Judge Roy Moore, forged romantic note and forged signature included.
And of course there, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the Coptic Christian whose short video “The Innocence of Muslims” for which he was blamed for the Libyan embassy assault.
They “will get you six ways from Sunday”.
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(Somewhere along the line it seems we – or I – stopped getting notifications about promotions. For what it’s worth, that is/was an important feature to at least one of us.)
I have hoped for advice like this for the past 18 months. Do you have any rec’s regarding where I go, what company to employ, to obtain the certificate? (Plus huge thank you!)
But you can be damned sure that the GOP will continue to ignore them.
Philo, Great Post.
I realize that many of you are still (or always) skeptical and/or overly comfortable in your undying trust in government and “democratically” derived authority.
I don’t think those people are overly comfortable in their undying trust in government. I think too many realize that at some level their livelihoods are linked to this now pervasive corruption and abuse of America by our government, and don’t want to be fingered by our trusted FBI if they come knocking at their door. They want to save their own shirt rather than stand up for America.
I repeat from my May 2019 post referenced above: By the way, the opposite of a high trust society is a fear-based society. Are you scared yet?
Every Patriotic American should be beyond scared but white hot incensed by the ongoing, terrible abuse of America by our government and our political class. We need a good cleanse of our bureaucracy.
The link in the OP was broken:
The very idea that the government will plant child porn on a computer is beyond belief.
Yet I believe every word.
You mean Obama (and VP Brandon) were corrupt??? Knock me over with a feather!
The only truly proper response to the problems identified in the OP is not CoC compliant. Fury is too understated a word for what our national response should be.
Would it be too much to ask for proof that there weren’t 2,000 mules?
Or how about some proof that Biden wasn’t the Big Guy who got 10 percent?
The FBI needs to be reformed from the ground up or disbanded forever. We need President Trump 2.0 (Or DeSantis if you prefer) to appoint someone like Matt Gaetz as FBI director for this purpose.