• We Just Got a Rare Look at National Security #Surveillance. It Was Ugly. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/politics/fisa-surveillance-fbi.html

    La #FISA ne refuse rien au #FBI, ce qui confirme plus que jamais que sa principale fonction est de lui servir de couverture, et le FBI en profite pour abuser très largement de son pouvoir. Rien de nouveau (https://seenthis.net/messages/153964) sauf que ces abus ne concernent plus que le seul citoyen lambda (notamment de religion musulmane) mais également les membres de l’#establishment.

    WASHINGTON — When a long-awaited inspector general report about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation became public this week, partisans across the political spectrum mined it to argue about whether President Trump falsely smeared the F.B.I. or was its victim. But the report was also important for reasons that had nothing to do with Mr. Trump.

    [...]

    The Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, and his team uncovered a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process in how the F.B.I. went about obtaining and renewing court permission under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.

    [...]

    Civil libertarians for years have called the surveillance court a rubber stamp because it only rarely rejects wiretap applications. Out of 1,080 requests by the government in 2018, for example, government records showed that the court fully denied only one.

    Defenders of the system have argued that the low rejection rate stems in part from how well the Justice Department self-polices and avoids presenting the court with requests that fall short of the legal standard. They have also stressed that officials obey a heightened duty to be candid and provide any mitigating evidence that might undercut their request.

    But the inspector general found major errors, material omissions and unsupported statements about Mr. Page in the materials that went to the court. F.B.I. agents cherry-picked the evidence, telling the Justice Department information that made Mr. Page look suspicious and omitting material that cut the other way, and the department passed that misleading portrait onto the court.

    [...]

    Mr. Horowitz also said senior-level supervisors bore responsibility for permitting systemic failures to fester, and his office has begun a broader audit of unrelated FISA applications.

    His exposé left some former officials who generally defend government surveillance practices aghast.

    [...]

    #deep_state #état_profond

  • The Biggest Nunes Memo Revelations Have Little To Do With Its Content — Steemit
    https://steemit.com/politics/@caitlinjohnstone/the-biggest-nunes-memo-revelations-have-little-to-do-with-its-content

    In their rush to win a partisan battle and shield their president from the ongoing Russiagate conspiracy theory, the Republicans may have exposed too much of the #establishment foundation upon which both parties are built.

    The term “#deep_state” does not mean “Democrats and Never-Trumpers” as Republican pundits would have you believe, nor does the term refer to any kind of weird, unverifiable conspiracy theory. The deep state is in fact not a conspiracy theory at all, but simply a concept used in political analysis for discussing the undeniable fact that unelected power structures exist in America, and that they tend to form #alliances and work together in some sense. There is no denying the fact that plutocrats, intelligence agencies, defense agencies and the mass media are both powerful and unelected, and there is no denying the fact that there are many convoluted and often conflicting alliances between them. All that can be debated is the manner and extent to which this is happening.

    The deep state is America’s permanent government, the US power structures that Americans don’t elect. These power structures plainly have a vested interest in keeping America’s Orwellian #surveillance #structures in place, as evidenced by the intelligence community’s menacingly urgent demand for FISA renewal back in December. If there’s any thread to be pulled that really could make waves in the way Official Washington (hat tip to the late Robert Parry) operates, it is in the plot holes between the bipartisan scramble toward unconditional surveillance renewal and the highly partisan battle over exposing the abuse of those very powers.

    If we’re going to see a gap in the bars of our cages, that’s a great place to keep our eyes trained, so keep watching. Watch what happens in a partisan war where both parties have a simultaneous interest in revealing as little of the game as possible and exposing the other party. Things could get very interesting.

    #pouvoir #etats-unis

  • The Term “#Deep_State” in Focus: Usage Examples, Definition, and Phrasebook
    Posted on February 20, 2017 by Lambert Strether
    By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/02/term-deep-state-focus-usage-examples-definition-phrasebook.html

    Readers know that I’ve been more than dubious about that incredibly virulent earworm of a term, “deep state” (December 1, 2014). However, in the last week or so, “deep state” is all over mainstream discourse like kudzu, and so it’s time to look at it again. As we shall see, it’s no more well-defined than before, but I’m hoping that if we aggregate a number of usage examples, we’ll come up with a useful set of properties, and a definition. Following the aggregation, I’ll propose a number of phrases that I hope can attenuate deep state‘s virulence, and render it a sharper and more subtle analytical tool in posts and comments.

  • Danielle Brian on Legalized Corruption
    http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/danielle-brian-on-corruption

    The ideological gridlock that grips Congress might make you angry. But as Lofgren points in his professorial manner, what should really get your blood pumping are the strings being pulled by the real decision makers: the executives on #Wall_Street, in #Silicon_Valley and in the military-intelligence industrial complex surrounding the #Beltway.

    The really creepy part is that a lot of this corruption (the revolving doors, lobbying activities and campaign contributions, for instance) is legal. Mull that over: We’ve passed laws allowing the “#Deep_State” to not only exist, but also to flourish.

    #complexe_militaro_industriel #corruption_légale #Etats-Unis