Fiction

PRISM Schism

/ L. M. Walker / 1 Comment

Heads or Tails?

– By: Larry Walker II –

Carla Dean: “Well, who’s gonna monitor the monitors of the monitors?” – Quotes from Enemy of the State

PRISM is allegedly a covert collaboration between the NSA, FBI, and nearly every tech company you rely on daily. PRISM has allegedly allowed the government unprecedented access to your personal information for at least the last six years. I say allegedly because every tech company in question denies its existence.

According to the Washington Post:

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets… Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

However, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have all given full-throated denials of any involvement whatsoever. According to Google (emphasis mine):

You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google’s CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.

First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

Schism

Now we hear that the federal government may be launching an investigation in order to find the person who leaked details regarding PRISM to The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. In other words, the government wants to know who, within its ranks, blew the whistle. Sounds like another government-manufactured conundrum to me.

Great, so now the government is going to waste time and resources finding out who leaked the details of a program which never existed. Seems to me like the White House would be a great place to start, especially since its Deputy National Security Adviser, Ben Rhodes, has a master’s degree in fiction-writing from New York University. What’s up with that? I mean, in the mind of a fiction writer, wouldn’t it seem like one of the best ways to deal with a series of scandals would be to manufacture an even bigger one, and then quash it?

By that time won’t everyone have forgotten about Benghazi, the IRS Scandal, James Rosen, Eric Holder, Verizon, the Budget Crisis, Illegal Immigration, the Secret Kill List, Obamacare and everything else? Well, not in the real world. Nevertheless, for my two cents, if there is a leak investigation, in an effort to save both time and precious taxpayer resources, it should be performed by a Special Prosecutor, and should begin and end at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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Addendum

I’ve actually known about Comverse Technology, Inc. since around 1994. The company merged with Verint Systems, Inc. early this year. This video discusses how the Verint Communications and Cyber Intelligence products and solutions help make the world a safer place (i.e. a less private place).

Verint CIS Solutions from Verint on Vimeo.

Obamacare: The 2nd Decade (Fiction)

/ L. M. Walker / Leave a comment

A Fictional Account –

by: Larry Walker, Jr. –

We are now in the 2nd decade after the passage of what many Americans deemed to be comprehensive health care reform, Obamacare. The creator of Obamacare, Barack Hussein Obama, died shortly after it’s passage in the year 2010 of unknown causes. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have long since passed. All of the Congressional leaders from the year 2010 are now deceased.

Obamacare did not work out as promised. From the moment it was signed into law it increased the U.S. budget deficits each and every month. Medicare and Social Security became insolvent in the year 2012. All of the surpluses in these programs were borrowed and spent on Obamacare. Millions of Americans lost their health insurance as soon as the bill was passed. Nearly 50% of private practitioners closed their practices almost immediately.

Through the law of supply and demand, with the increased demand for medical services and the lower supply of practitioners, health care costs skyrocketed. Health insurance premiums increased by 100% on average each year until no one in the country could afford it. Income and excise taxes, fines and fees were imposed, but people were unable to pay these levies and their living expenses. Unemployment continued to rise as employers, being overburdened with taxes and regulations began to fail.

The national debt had actually reached the point of no return just before the passage of Obamacare, but only a handful of people knew it at the time. The only way for the government to reverse the negative effects of this erroneous legislation was to print more money. As the Federal Reserve began to print money in 2011, the rate of inflation went off the charts. Inflation reached 17% by the year 2012. The cost of gasoline soared to $10 per gallon in 2012. States began to declare bankruptcy and the most fiscally sound States began to acquire the weaker ones.

The Republic of Texas now consists of the entire southern half of the old United States, stretching from Southern California to Virginia. The old United States now consists of only a few states in the Northeast. The others declared themselves to be sovereign republics in the year 2013. The Republic of Texas seceded from the Union in the year 2013. This time there was no civil war, and the issue was not slavery.

The city of Washington, DC was destroyed in the year 2013 by a nuclear missile attack launched by Iran. No one came to the rescue. No one cared. The blight had been removed. The culprits were dead. The problem had been solved.

Now I tell the story from the year 2030. I am one of the survivors. I saw it coming. I tried to warn others. Most wouldn’t listen. They believed that big government was the solution. They relied upon government entitlements for their health and well being. Now they are simply wards of the old country, for all practical purposes, slaves. The United States of America is no more. And it all came to a crashing halt, in the year 2010.

See the Factual Account at: Final: Obamacare | The Macro View