Uninterrupted Me. @davidianrobin - Tumblr Blog

We Have to Stop the Machine

It's been 50 years since the Free Speech Movement began on the UC Berkeley campus. This speech by Mario Savio is still very relevant today:

“There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”

America has been shifting into a corporate state for the past 30 years and we see the effects all around us. The financial crisis in 2008 resulted in massive bailouts and bonuses for the power elite, and austerity for the rest of us in the form of drastic cuts to education, healthcare, and other social services. Meanwhile, wages have been stagnant during the past 25 years for a majority of Americans and our youth are drowning in student loan debt, as tuition continues to skyrocket. Neoliberalism has turned all of our public goods into businesses which only cater to those with capital and property.

Our earth is being ravaged by huge oil companies who are immune to prosecution or even feeling the effects of the damage they wrought around the world. Half of the earth's wildlife has disappeared in the past 40 years and if current projections hold up, we are headed for a climate catastrophe. Our entire government is ineffective because corporations with billions of dollars in profits are somehow considered human beings and money is in some bizarre way equal to free speech. Enough is enough.

How can you sit around and just accept these issues intensifying around you. There are no saviors in Washington, the ballot box is not the lifesaver which will pull you from the rough seas of 2014 America.

The operation of the machine has only become more odious since Mario Savio stood in front of Sproul Hall on that December day. Personally, it makes me very sick at heart. I have been involved in activism ever since the first chants of 'All day. All week. Occupy Wall Street.' but I have never had the opportunity to engage in civil disobedience. Yet.

We have tried voting. We have tried holding rallies with hundreds of thousands of people. We've tried calling our senators, our representatives, our governors, our president. We have tried signing petitions, putting our names next to thousands of others from around the world. We have tried marching through streets, holding signs, chanting slogans.

Now we have to put our bodies upon the gears, the levers, the apparatus.

We have to make this sick machine stop.

How the Right-Wing Attacked the "Dirty, Unwashed Hippies" of #FloodWallStreet and #PeoplesClimate

Countless journalists and social theorists have postulated a link between Twitter and democracy, ever since Bouzazi sparked the flame which burned him to death while igniting a wave of protest which quickly engulfed the Middle East in early 2011. Revolutions obviously aren't new, they have occured throughout the course of human history, but never has the contagion been as quick as 2011, with movements spreading across populations in months, sometimes even a couple of days. Theorists like Lotad, Boyd, and others explored the information flows of these short-form messages networked to the twitterverse via mentions and hashtags, and hyperlinked to a multitude of other locations on the world Wide Web. They examine who was tweeting with the #tunisia and #egypt hashtags as the revolution spread, and demonstrate how these messages and articles flowed throughout the world in minutes.

This spread of communication across long distances can certainly have a positive effect on democracy. individuals have the ability to seek a dizzying range of information quicker than ever before, as decentralized Web 2.0 technologies facilitate the bottom-up production of information with a much lower participation cost. A television studio, millions of dollars, and a contract with a cable network are no longer required for producing content which has the ability to go viral and spread through global networks. As Castells wrote in "Networks of Outrage and Hope", virtual social networks facilitate spaces of autonomy which are "largely beyond the control of governments and corporations that had monopolized the channels of communication as the foundation of their power, throughout history." The increased ability of marginalized populations to communicate instantly, with only an Internet connection can subvert governments, as state control of media discourse becomes much more difficult to maintain. Social movements which used to be suppressed by the state-controlled media now have participants chanting 'the Whole World is Watching'. We live in a global village, and social networks such as Twitter cam be seen as facilitating a new global democracy, beyond the traditional structures of state and corporate media.

Tweeting From the Barricades: The People's Climate March and Twitter

When the C train slowed to a halt at Fulton Street station on last Sunday morning, I saw an assortment of anti-Tar Sands and anti-Keystone XL signs. As I boarded the train, I quickly realized that almost each passenger on the quick ride uptown with me were also heading to Central Park West, to protest against the climate inaction of the past twenty-five years. Seeing floods of protesters walking onto the train as we ventured uptown confirmed what I suspected, that the People's Climate March would be larger than any protest I've been to in my whole life. When getting off at 72nd Street around thirty minutes later, the conductor said 'have a good day at the march, make it count' over the intercom. This wasn't anything resembling a normal New York City demonstration. Concerned citizens from all over the United States were in Manhattan and it wasn't for an over-hyped award show or fashion week. The people were here to save the climate.

At over 310,000 people, the People's Climate March was the largest protest in the Big Apple since the Democratic National Convention in 2004. It was also touted as the largest climate protest in history, achieving the goal set by 350.org, Avaaz, and hundreds of other participating organizations. Even with established groups bankrolling the outreach for the event, including advertisements on ten percent of the subways in New York City in the weeks leading up to the march, the historic day came together from the ground up, via decentralized hubs which featured listservs, weekly conference calls, and frequent planning meetings. While thousands of people were lining up next to Central Park, thousands more were following the event on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.

Crisis

Time is running out The co2 is rising like our income inequality The oceans acidify like our hopes after graduation day The polar caps are melting, like our real wages, Our pensions, Our future. Save the planet The clock is ticking The temperature is rising like our student loan interest rates The plankton is dying like our chances of economic stability The fossil fuel reserves are dwindling, like the chance of our children surviving We are being threatened by ourselves We can't just focus on one issue The same fossil fuel funding, also fuels the military industrial complex All of our injustices are caused by the evil leaders of the faux democracy

peopleforteachout

Photos from TruTalkTV on Facebook

Vote on September 9th.

Go to TeachoutWu.com

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#NMOS14 - How Ferguson Became a Nationwide Movement

The small city of Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, has been all over the news ever since Darren Wilson fired six shots into Michael Brown, leaving the seventeen year old lying face down on the pavement in broad daylight. Residents gathered at the site of a the incident soon after, and the protests, riots, and looting have been playing out ever since, with protesters on the streets since August 9th. For the first couple of days, the news unfolded primarily on Twitter, through vines posted by St. Louis alderman, @antoniofrench and others who live tweeted information, pictures, and video from the scene. The local media also covered the events early on, including Fox 2 Now (KTVI) who had a live feed as well as frequent Twitter updates.

As the story of what happened on that fateful Saturday afternoon developed, and the protests continued to play out on the streets of Ferguson, the mainstream media began to arrive in the St. Louis suburb to cover the story from the ground. Ryan J Reilly of the Huffington Post, Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post, and Julie Bosman of the New York Times were some of the first mainstream sources on the ground, writing articles about what was taking place for a larger audience while also providing up-to-the-minute live-tweeting on their Twitter accounts. On Wednesday August 13th, the police escalated their response, and Reilly and Lowery were assaulted and arrested in a McDonald's after taking pictures of the police, refusing to show their identification, and not packing up fast enough. The news first broke through their Twitter accounts:

#nmos14 #ferguson #mike brown #feministajones #handsupdontshoot #sociology #social media #twitter #facebook #new york times #huffington post #washington post #st louis #antonio french #ryan reilly #wesley lowery #julie bosman #ktvi #google

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Tactical unit assembles under church message in Ferguson. #MikeBrown http://t.co/GwwMKTzoom

#MikeBrown #Ferguson

How Did the Mainstream Media Cover the Fight For $15 Convention?

Two weekends ago, over 1300 people convened in Chicago for the first ever Fight For $15 convention. While the low-wage worker strikes have been escalating over time, with an increasing number of workers and cities involved during each wave, and solidarity among the participants displayed on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, this was the first time that workers-turned-activists from different cities traveled to one location to discuss their experiences and plan for future actions. It could prove to be a major event which unifies the movement as they prepare for escalation in the form of civil disobedience and store occupations.

Due to the importance of this event, I decided to study how the mainstream media covered the gathering, if they even provided coverage. Using Google News, I searched for the term “Fast Food Convention”, which provided over 300 articles, all between July 25th and 28th. After analyzing the first 20 articles, I noticed an emerging pattern: A large majority of these articles were correlated from two Associated Press articles, one which previewed the event [example], and another which provided a recap. [example]

#fightfor15 #15now #raisethewage #min wage #us #politics #seiu #1u #new york times #chicago #mainstream media #obama #seattle #mcdonalds #wendys #nra #ap

An Urgent Letter to the Silent Majority

I am writing this letter to you.

Not those who already take the streets chanting 'What do we want? Climate Justice! When do we want it? NOW!'. This post isn’t directed at the brave activists who are blocking the Keystone XL and Enbridge pipelines with their bodies. Nor is this addressed to those rebuilding the lives of residents in the Rockaways, Staten Island, the Jersey Shore, and other areas devastated by Superstorm Sandy. I am not trying to reach those who block the water shutoff tanks in Detroit to prevent poor residents from being denied their basic human right to running water.

No, these people already understand the urgency that we face as the global temperatures rise and extreme weather patterns intensify. The activist networks that comprise the climate movement already realize what is at stake, and truly understand that protests and direct action are the most effective forms of resistance to these threats.

In the late 1960s, Nixon campaigned and won the presidency, in part due to appealing to what he called the 'silent majority', those who weren't active in the anti-war and civil rights movements, and took a much more moderate stance. Today, I am writing for a different 'silent majority': the two-thirds of US residents who believe that the effects of global warming will occur during their lifetimes. Those who are aware of the issues of climate change, and believe that it needs to be solved, but don’t fully understand the crisis unfolding in front of us.

You might read articles in the Climate section of ThinkProgress and sign petitions on MoveOn, urging our politicians in the United States and throughout the world to act on climate issues. When Election Day approaches, you scan campaign websites, researching the environmental positions of each candidate. You might feel like you are doing your part, participating in the democratic process. Maybe you even recycle, or bring reusable bags when you shop, or donate money to organizations that are fighting for climate action. But we are at a point where this alone is truly not enough.

While you are looking at scientists and politicians for the answers, contributing donations, votes, and petition signatures, they are gazing back hoping that you raise your voices. The truth is, we don't have as much time as you might think. We already see pictures of the polar ice caps liquidating, buildings being destroyed by the strongest storms we've seen in centuries, and reports of temperatures rising all over the world.

The National Climate Assessment released in May by the White House, states that we need to take action now, as the climate has already changed significantly, with strong storms like Hurricane Sandy and serious droughts like what we are witnessing in California signaling the beginning of the end. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also released a report last September that we only have 30 years left before our “carbon budget” is spend. A third report, from the Canadian group Our Horizon, states that we only have 16 years before greenhouse gases lead us to a tipping point that will be impossible to recover from. Whether or not we agree on exactly how long we have left, there is consensus that this process is intensifying and will not be stopping anytime soon, which will be devastating for our entire planet.

Despite what you might think, there is no opposition. The only groups and scientists releasing reports that counter these claims are funded by the Koch brothers and big oil interests like ExxonMobil, whose economic interests are directly threatened by the fight against climate change. In fact, a study released in January 2014, found that only .01% of peer-review authors reject that global warming is man-made, and a significant threat to our way of life.

Does this scare you? Good. You need to be alerted of the urgency of this issue because if you continue to simply contribute from a distance than our time on this planet is over.

I want you to close your eyes. Now think deeply about what you are thankful for. What do you care about more than anything else? Why do you wake up in the morning? What keeps you going, even through the tough days?

Still thinking? Is it your friends? Your family? Your career? The trees and air around you? The Internet? No matter what you cherish, it is all being threatened and if you don't act, you will lose it all. We will lose EVERYTHING.

What can you do? Speak up and get active in the climate movement, because mass resistance is the only way that we can defeat the millions of dollars spent by the most powerful lobbyists in the world.

As you may have heard, there will be a huge UN summit of world leaders meeting on September 24th in New York City. Three days before this meeting, Avaaz, 350.org, and hundreds of organizations, including unions, faith groups, students, environmentalists, and many others are planning the People’s Climate March, the largest in US history. We will march through Manhattan with thousands of people, sending the message that we need climate action. Not in a decade. Not five years from now. RIGHT NOW.

As the promo video states, “To change everything, It takes everyone." Silence is no longer an option.

Join us in New York City on September 21st. Bring all of your friends! Volunteer to help spread the word. Share the message on social media as often as you can and spread it to every person you know.

It's up to you. It's up to all of us.

We can't afford to lose.

fuckyeahmarxismleninism

Detroit: Palestine solidarity demonstration, July 13, 2014.

"The demonstration in Detroit today drew links between the shut-off of water in the city and the denial of water resources to the people of Gaza and Palestine in general. The crowd of more than 1,000 marched up Woodward Ave. for a rally at the park located at the corner of Warren Ave. in Midtown."

Photo and report by Abayomi Azikiwe

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By now I hope at least some of you have heard of Javier Payne, a 14-year-old black boy from the Bronx who was attacked by the NYPD last weekend as he was walking home from a hookah shop in his neighborhood.

Cops said he was fighting with another boy, a 13-year-old neighbor in the area.

So what do you do when two boys are fighting?

Well, if you’re the NYPD, and the boys in question are black, you throw one of them through a window, puncturing his lung. As he lies there with blood filling his lungs, you handcuff him and refuse to call an ambulance. When you do call an ambulance, you enter the protocol for an adult drunk, instead of a dying child. When the ambulance comes, you refuse to let the paramedics uncuff him. Even as the paramedics explain that this boy is dying, you argue that he’s faking it and that he deserves to die there on the street for fighting with another boy. When you finally do let the paramedics uncuff him and take him to the hospital, you fail to report that you threw him through a glass window despite dozens of eye-witnesses reporting the opposite. When you are called upon by the community to account for your actions, you decide to do an “internal investigation” - therefore being accountable to no one outside your division. You encourage the deregulation of police conduct and refuse to let outsiders investigate how you train your officers.

And what do you do, if you’re a concerned citizen who is tired of seeing this? You write Bill de Blasio and you ask him to start an outside investigation into police brutality. Or at least that’s what I did. And if you want to cosign what I wrote him, you can do that here. And if you want to signal boost that for Javier Payne, you can do that too. You can sign my petition letter here.

(Photo Credit to Enid Alvarez for the New York Daily News)

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[The] aim of the ethnographer’s work is that it be as objective as possible. This is not easy or simple, since it requires researchers to try to set aside their own values and assumptions about what is and is not morally acceptable — in other words, to jettison the prism through which they typically view a given situation. By definition one’s own assumptions are so basic to one’s perceptions that seeing their influence may be difficult, if not impossible. Ethnographic researchers, however, have been trained to look for and to recognize underlying assumptions, their own and those of their subjects, and to try to override the former and uncover the latter.

Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Code of the Inner City, 1999, pg 11. (via literary-ethnography)

Documenting Resistance: Striving for a Living Biography of the Climate Movement

I think that when organizing successful movements, especially for an issue as urgent as climate change, there is one golden question which is the key to mobilizing large segments of the population:

How do you spread your message to people who aren’t currently engaged in your movement?

How do you reach the segments of the population who didn’t sign the Keystone XL petition, the passive public who are waiting for Obama and other world leaders to make the decisions that will prevent this crisis of our human species? How do you shift the paradigm so that instead of people asking ‘What are the environmental groups and government organizations doing?’ they will be asking ‘What can I do to contribute?’

Two weekends ago, my friend Moumita and I did some impromptu subway canvassing for the People’s Climate March to determine the effectiveness of direct engagement tactics, which provide information about the People’s Climate March and surrounding issues such as property destroyed during Hurricane Sandy that still hasn’t been rebuilt, and the water shutoff crisis in Detroit. After speaking to strap hangers in multiple subway cars, we realized that our experiment was successful, as there were a few people in each train who didn’t know about the march and were engaged by the issues we mentioned. However, there were many others who were listening and told us that they felt it was important, but simply complemented us for our commitment, stating that they were glad that there were ‘People Like Us’ willing to spread the word.

This seems to be a common problem of movements in which there exists a general consensus about the aims but yet only a small percentage of the population desire to actively participate. There could be many reasons for their non-involvement, including the perceived inability of effecting change in the system, the rise of slacktivism on social media, and the fear of state retribution or surveillance. Facebook likes and retweets won’t be enough to halt this process of catastrophic climate change, so the movement as a whole must think consider two strategies:

How to mobilize people who already agree with the cause but don’t actively participate.

How to disseminate information to educate those who disagree.

While Ed Haas and I are still working on a documentary, we decided to initiate our project through YouTube, a medium which allows us to post short videos which tell the story of the climate movement in 2014. In the spirit of autonomous virtual space, we have decided that this project won’t be only the perspectives of two people with a deep passion for preventing climate change. Rather than just recording scenes from planning meetings, rallies, marches, and one-on-one interviews, which are important undertakings in themselves, we want to capture the stories of the people who comprise this expanding movement as we fight against time and the most powerful corporations on the planet Earth.

We want to hear YOU. How? We are asking that you create a short, 5-10 minute video where you tell your story while keeping in mind the following questions:

Why are you participating in the People’s Climate March? What first motivated you to get involved in the climate resistance movement?

How do you contribute to the cause? What events have you attended?

If you were a world leader attending the UN summit on September 24th, what policies would you propose?

We are working to create a living biography of the climate movement, and we hope that the project will grow with the numbers of people taking the streets demanding climate action.

In order for the movement to better mobilize supporters as well as educate opponents, which will answer the golden questions posited above, there needs to be an understanding of:

WHO is involved with the climate movement?

WHY do they choose to participate?

WHAT goals are they hoping to achieve?

As a sociologist, there is much that can be learned from these stories. Each piece of this project provides unique insight into the character of the climate movement. If we can discover how participants first became involved, it will uncover the mobilization structures that draw individuals into becoming active members. Hearing narratives describing what engages people to start attending meetings, rallies, and protests will provide a unique understanding of what frames motivate the public to take action. Listening to how individuals describe their involvement will provide perspective on the different levels and methods of participation. Finally, the solutions expressed by participants will better assist our understanding the aims of the movement, which likely aren’t as homogenous as some would expect.

As an activist, I want to state that while this is a blog centered around the sociological study of social movements, which strives to maintain neutrality, but this climate project is not a sociological study per se. We want these videos to spread virally to diverse elements of the climate resistance movement, which will provide organizing opportunities and foster a sense of community, as well as others who are either on the periphery, or aren’t involved at all, whether or not they agree with the messaging. Hopefully, these snapshots of the human experience of resistance will break through the mass media disinformation, showing that this isn’t a movement of “radicals” or “environmentalists”, but neighbors, friends, and co-workers.

We are running out of time and there are very powerful forces continuing their assault on both the environment and human rights as we speak. The only way that we are going to force reform and systemic change is through spreading the idea that simply knowing about the issues is NOT enough. Direct participation is needed before it is too late.

There will be information on this project coming very soon. Stay tuned!

#climatemarch #nokxl #climate crisis #frack #politics #sociology #youtube #video #biography #divest #occupy #ows

Reflections from the People's Climate March Planning Meeting

Two weeks ago, after coming across the meeting invite, I imagined a large auditorium filled with organizers raising their hands in the hopes of expressing their opinion about how the People’s Climate March should be organized. My first perception was that one speaker, or multiple individuals at a table, would be on a raised stage in front of the crowd, calling on people to participate and weighing each suggestion. However, after walking through the front door of the Tishman Auditorium, recognizing the inside from my time as a New School student, someone handed me a packet which included the plan for the upcoming meeting. I soon realized that my initial thoughts were completely incorrect. Even though I had been participating in networked social movements since September 17th, 2011, I applied an old frame of thinking to the new formation of social movements.

After picking up some posters, which were being freely distributed, the event began with different speakers, who expressed why they were getting involved in the People’s Climate March, in front of a large crowd gathered in the auditorium. This section comprised a small portion at the beginning of the night because, as one of the main organizers said, this wasn’t a rally and we had work to do. After explaining how the website worked, we split into breakout groups featuring different segments of the population, including students, labor, social media, teachers, youth, and many others, which were meeting in different classrooms throughout the building.

Bill McKibben made the initial call in Rolling Stone for the People’s Climate March, and 350.org are major march organizers, but this movement has a minimally hierarchical structure. There is not one single march plan laid out by a group of environmental organizers in New York City who made all the decisions among their small cohesive group. This project has no leader who must approve all ideas before they are posted on the website or added to flyers. At the meeting, I felt the familiar notion that the ideas for mobilization, messaging, and community building come straight from the people, comprised of any of those interested in coordinating with others to plan the march. There are no dues to be paid and the participation opportunities aren’t limited to filling out the Contact Us form on a website.

Since we are working on a documentary, I really wanted to get a feel for how the march was being organized, and connect with other participants to hear their discussions about the People’s Climate March. Thus, we attended the 'New Ideas' group, which was for those who didn't consider themselves part of any of the other breakout groups or had innovative ideas for mobilizing. As I entered the classroom with Ed Haas, people were introducing themselves, and we gained an immediate understanding of how diverse the planning process really was. The group in that fourth floor room included activists from upstate NY who are deeply entrenched in the fight against fracking, a woman who helped organize in the projects of Lower East Side and East Harlem after Hurricane Sandy, a few people from Occupy Wall Street’s alternative banking group, an artist who was hoping to facilitate a day of action for other artists around the country, and others who were part of groups focused on climate justice. As the flow of ideas began I realized why these breakouts were important.

When you attend a community forum or other meeting and there are even only 100 people in the room, what is your chance of being heard? Will you be able to express your ideas and extensively deliberate with others? While some might contend that a more centralized structure is better organized and more focused, with a streamlined agenda, their framework can have a detrimental effect on marginalized voices and other individuals who might feel more comfortable expressing their ideas in smaller groups. Every perspective is important, and while a decentralized structure of multiple breakouts might lead to arguments and consensus building might become complicated, this structure is absolutely necessary as the voices of all participants need to be considered. The People’s Climate March, like Wikipedia, Indiegogo, and the constitution of Iceland, is being crowdsourced, reflecting the autonomous spaces of the Internet’s current formation.

Consider if this meeting had taken place before the spread of mobile phones, personal computers, and the World Wide Web. This type of structure would likely have been far more problematic before the spread of these instantaneous communication platforms. Having so many clusters of smaller numbers of people focused on different aspects of the march planning would have been far more complicated, as people would only be communicating via landline phone, sending mail, and meeting in person. Even though organizing the march would certainly still be possible, the diffusion of information would be much slower and visible to a far smaller subset of people.

One very interesting aspect of the planning process is that each of these breakout groups will have virtual spaces, “hubs”, where anyone with an internet connection can directly contact these groups and get involved, providing their own perspective and contributing their individual labor and power. At the meeting, each breakout group had a sign in sheet where participants added their contact info, so that the hubs could reach out to them and plan further meetings. I predict that these hubs will form many weak ties which have the ability to transform into strong ties over time, and these are needed for all social movements looking to take decisive action toward goals. I will be watching how these hubs form, likely discussing their structure and formation in future writings.

The networks of hubs are comprised of networks of participants, and they have a hybrid structure. Small, focused groups of organizers who meet in person and discuss ideas for planning the People’s Climate March, are also likely having conversions about the structure of the online hubs, which are in turn, visited by other individuals who are either solely interacting virtually, or will be drawn into physically attending these meetings in offline public space. There is no more distinction, these online and offline networks are interconnected and horizontal.

My belief is that this structure will have certain fissures, possibly surrounding the topic of systemic change. The familiar question arises: How far are people willing to go to save the climate? However, the structure is very also flexible and heterogeneous, so I expect the message to spread quickly, especially since it’s focused on one major issue: the climate.

While in the “New Ideas” breakout group, I noticed the people around me handing out business cards to each other, while others exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses. I soon recognized that weak ties were being formed right in front of my eyes, and many of these connections are likely bridging real and imagined communities who are all fighting for one cause: protecting the climate and forcing policy changes on all levels before we run out of time.

#sociology #activism #climate change #peoples climate march #documentary #crowdsource #350.org #noKXL #occupy #nyc

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America’s National Security Agency gathers unfathomable mountains of Internet communications from fiber optic taps and other means, but it says it only retains and searches the communications of “targeted” individuals who’ve done something suspicious. Guess what? If you read Boing Boing, you’ve been targeted.

In a shocking story on the German site Tagesschau (Google translate), Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum and John Goetz report on the rules used by the NSA to decide who is a “target” for surveillance.

Since the start of the Snowden story in 2013, the NSA has stressed that while it may intercept nearly every Internet user’s communications, it only “targets” a small fraction of those, whose traffic patterns reveal some basis for suspicion. Targets of NSA surveillance don’t have their data flushed from the NSA’s databases on a rolling 48-hour or 30-day basis, but are instead retained indefinitely.

The authors of the Tagesschau story have seen the “deep packet inspection” rules used to determine who is considered to be a legitimate target for deep surveillance, and the results are bizarre.

According to the story, the NSA targets anyone who searches for online articles about Tails or Tor Anyone who is determined to be using Tor is also targeted for long-term surveillance and retention.

Tor and Tails have been part of the mainstream discussion of online security, surveillance and privacy for years. It’s nothing short of bizarre to place people under suspicion for searching for these terms.

One expert suggested that the NSA’s intention here was to separate the sheep from the goats — to split the entire population of the Internet into “people who have the technical know-how to be private” and “people who don’t” and then capture all the communications from the first group.

http://boingboing.net/2014/07/03/if-you-read-boing-boing-the-n.html

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