The Surveillance State is in a Hobbesian state of nature, according to a fresh Bloomberg article.  But should it be feared more or less once it emerges from that state?

An NSA Breach and the New Hobbesian War on on Our Privacy

“Aside from puncturing the aura of the NSA as an all-seeing eye, the Times story also shows that today the greatest threat to our privacy is not an organization with a monopoly of surveillance power, but rather the disaggregation of surveillance power. It is not the citizen versus the state. Rather it is a Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all. Today, foreign governments and private hackers can use the same tools we all feared the U.S. government would use.”

This is a most interesting piece, ascribing to total surveillance the qualities of a virus, rather than a centralized, top-down government program.  With the theft of digital CIA spy tools, total surveillance is likened to a plague for which there is currently little in the way of a cure.  We are the surveillance state, and we are the surveilled. We are the architects of our own Panopticon.

The recent NYT story, Security Breach and Spilled Secrets Have Shaken the NSA to Its Core, the Bloomberg piece links to paints a damning portrait of the NSA: an agency powerful enough to create extremely potent cyber weapons, but not the means to keep them safe.  Once the theft occurs, the thieves then taunt the agency as it descends into culture of wide-eyed paranoia about who may be leaking.

Despite all this, I’m an optimist.  I believe a shield, a vaccine, can be developed and widely distributed just as easily as the surveillance virus has been.  But it pays, I think, to question the wisdom of a government agency creating powerful spy tools, without a care as to what Pandora’s Box they’re opening.

3rd year running. 

Reason: Is Silicon Valley Building the Infrastructure for a Police State?

Lawmakers need to get control of the use of drones by the police

Slate: The Fragmented Surveillance State. Most important read of the day.  We often think of Big Brother surveillance as far off, deep within a high-tech NSA bunker, when it’s really down the street in your police department.

Mass internet surveillance as art

High Times: DEA says it won’t arrest CBD oil users. A voice of reason from the agency thinks their resources would be better used by targeting the opioid crisis rather than cracking down on people treating their illnesses with a harmless oil.

Time: The Real Risk of Buying Medical Marijuana Online. Study finds that only 30% of online cannabis products contain amount of CBD oil stated on label.

Study shows that over-the-counter pain medication just as effective as opioids in the ER

Contrary to the admonition of every wretched Drug Warrior that ever spoke at your school, marijuana is most certainly not a “gateway” to harder drugs.  The lack of availability of a safe high is what drives people to use harder drugs.  Marijuana, on the contrary, is an “exit” drug that can wean addicts off heroin, meth, crack, and other deadly substances.

At this LA rehab center, cannabis is an “exit” drug:

“Substituting cannabis for drugs like heroin, alcohol, and prescription opioids is a type of “harm reduction,” Schrank explains, a recovery paradigm that prioritizes reducing the negative consequences of drug use rather than stopping patients from using completely. High Sobriety is aimed at patients who haven’t responded to traditional rehab programs—and there are a lot of them. According to recent estimates, AA is only successful for 5% to 10% of people. Some experts even say it can even be detrimental for a number of reasons.”

Consider the headlines.

Could psychedelic drugs be the ticket to improved mental health?

Psychedelic drugs saved my life.  So why aren’t they prescribed?: “A group of drugs long considered taboo is poised to transform the way we treat mental health. Recent research suggests that psychedelics – once regarded as a relic of the hippy-dippy 60s – could prove powerful tools not only to treat, but also potentially cure, many mental health problems regarded as chronic.

Psychedelics do something that our current go-to psychiatric drugs cannot: transform hardwired neural patterns to reroute the very architecture of the brain, sometimes in a single dose. Roland Griffiths, a professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, has likened psychedelics’ ability to bring about neural rerouting as akin to a “surgical intervention”.

Take psilocybin, better known as magic mushrooms. A single dose of the drug can do “in 30 seconds what it takes antidepressants three to four weeks to do”, according to David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.”

The report also states that the Saudi military, armed with First World weaponry, deliberately destroyed 28 schools and leveled critical civilian infrastructure.

“The chief author of the confidential draft report, Virginia Gamba, the U.N. chief’s special representative for children abused in war time, informed top U.N. officials Monday, that she intends to recommend the Saudi-led coalition be added to a list a countries and entities that kill and maim children, according to a well-placed source. The decision will have to be taken by Guterres, who will make the final report public later this month.

The Saudi-led air coalition was responsible for inflicting the largest  number of child casualties, 683, with Houthi rebels killing or injuring 414. In contrast, the Islamic State was responsible for six child casualties and Al Qaeda one.”

This is happening under the auspices of our government.  Ten million Yemenis will more than likely be dead one year from now as a direct result of the barbaric blockade and strafing of the poor nation.  To understand what the survivors of this atrocity will do, you only have to ask yourself: what would you do when a powerful foreign nation starved and murdered your family, your friends’ families, decimated your country and your way of life?

Australia, in terms of its power to indiscriminately collect metadata on its citizens, is a far more encompassing Surveillance State than either the US or UK:

“All data, like IP addresses visited and location information for phones, must be retained for at least two years—and is accessible without a warrant. But more data is available with a judge’s permission, and so Australian magistrates have duly issued more warrants authorizing data collection than their allies in the war on terror…

But as reviews by academics and by the national attorney general’s office have revealed, the vast majority of data request have nothing to do with extremism lurking on the internet or online-bred terrorism. Instead, Australian police are monitoring citizens’ web browser histories and cellphone records to pursue drug dealers and drug users…

Metadata surveillance and collection programs have been sold as measures to fight terrorism and extremism by every Western government since 9/11/01.  In practice, these tools of total surveillance are being used for everyday drug crime, with matters of “terrorism” taking the backseat.  Why sell it as a national security matter rather than a tool to fight drug crime?  It more than likely wouldn’t get legislative approval.

The destruction of Yemen by US-backed Saudi Arabia is escalating, with 5,676 airstrikes in 2017 alone.  Total airstrikes for all of 2016 totaled 3,936.

The world’s worst humanitarian disaster is being caused by a US-backed Saudi blockade and strafing of the country.  The blood of the entire nation will be on the hands of US policymakers who choose to continue the flow of weapons to the Saudis.

Reason: “Trump’s Opioid Emergency Response”

Cracking down on doctors and pharmacies will do nothing more than deliver addicts into the hands of black market heroin dealers, dramatically increasing the deaths from fentanyl-laced heroin.

Thanks, socialism.  And, poor tapirs.

Millions of Venezuelans are eating from garbage

Venezuela’s socialist-run “truth commission” to investigate opposition

Thieves stealing Venezuelan zoo animals to eat them, police say

The collapse of Venezuela is policy-induced, and the tragically comical result is a devastation that not even an outside attack by a foreign power could accomplish.