To be used for coups.
"US, dissidents in stealth venture; System stymies repressive acts" by James Glanz and John Markoff, New York Times / June 12, 2011
NEW YORK — The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow’’ Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.
Related: Internet 'Kill Switch' Approved By Senate Homeland Security Committee
Is it just me, or does the hypocrisy smell like s***.
The effort includes secret projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.’’
Related: Intelligence Agencies Inspire Hacking
Who are the hackers again?
Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the Internet.
That's YOUR TAX MONEY HARD at WORK!
And when does the FALSE FLAG OPERATION carry over a SUITCASE NUKE, huh?
The US effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents, and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost, and sophistication.
Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a “liberation technology’’ movement sweeping the globe.
Yes, ONCE AGAIN the GOVERNMENT must run a CO-OPTING COINTELPRO PROGRAM to JU$TIFY more $ECURITY MEA$URES!
The State Department, for example, is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries such as Iran, Syria, and Libya, according to participants in the projects.
Well, NOW WE KNOW where are the CIA-inspired protests!
In one of the most ambitious efforts, US officials say, the State Department and Pentagon have spent at least $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country. It is intended to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services.
The effort has picked up momentum since the government of President Hosni Mubarak shut down the Egyptian Internet in the last days of his rule. In recent days, the Syrian government also temporarily disabled much of that country’s Internet, which had helped protesters mobilize.
The Syrians turned it back on a day later.
So why would the U.S. want to shut down free speech?
The Obama administration’s initiative is in one sense a new front in a longstanding diplomatic push to defend free speech and nurture democracy.
It's always within a war context, and it almost makes you want to puke seeing the rationale.
For decades, the United States has sent radio broadcasts into autocratic countries with Voice of America and other means. More recently, Washington has supported the development of software that preserves the anonymity of users in such places as China and the training of citizens who want to pass information along the government-owned Internet without getting caught.
Unless they are a whistleblower here; then Obama will slam them to the wall.
Also see: Say Hi to the FBI
Didn't you elect Obama to stop the torture and spying? And here he has institutionalized them. Some change.
But the latest initiative depends on creating entirely separate pathways for communication.
It has brought together an improbable alliance of diplomats and military engineers, young programmers and dissidents from at least a dozen countries, many of whom variously describe the new approach as more audacious and clever and, yes, cooler.
Yes, let's all hail the new Nazi state.
Sometimes, the State Department is simply taking advantage of enterprising dissidents who have found ways to get around government censorship. US diplomats are meeting with operatives who have been burying Chinese cellphones in the hills near the border with North Korea, where they can be dug up and used to make furtive calls, according to interviews and the diplomatic cables. The initiatives have found a champion in US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones, and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations,’’ Clinton said.
I take that to mean THIS BLOG will ALWAYS BE HERE FOR YOU, readers!
“There is a historic opportunity to effect positive change — change America supports,’’ she said. “So we’re focused on helping them do that, on helping them talk to each other, to their communities, to their governments and to the world.’’
And if they don't support your aspirations like in Bahrain?
Developers caution that independent networks come with downsides: Repressive governments could use surveillance to pinpoint and arrest activists who use the technology or simply catch them bringing hardware across the border.
Oh, like the SPYING and TRACKING CELLPHONES that you all carry, American?
But others believe that the risks are outweighed by the potential impact....
Unless you are a U.S. agent caught using this stuff in said target country.
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