How the CIA, NSA shape the minds of America's children

"Worried about what your children are getting into while surfing the Web? Well, how about organizations involved in intelligence gathering and espionage?

Despite their very adult missions, both the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency have sections specifically for youngsters.

Communication expert Joanne Cantor said having games indicates that an organization wants kids to have a positive image of them.

Cantor said companies that see children as a target audience, such as fast-food chains or sweetened cereal producers, “have all sorts of games on their websites to make the kids like them and to sort of recruit them at young ages, and that’s very controversial among people who consider marketing to kids as unfair.”

"We realize the importance of helping to educate the nation’s youth and raise awareness about the National Security Agency’s core values, vision, and critical mission.” From: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/cia-and-nsa-websites-invite-children/

Basically the CIA is building a US version of Komsomol:

"The Bolsheviks saw Russian youth as ideologically promising because it was more removed[]. If the Party could create a mass of indoctrinated, obedient young people, the regime would be stable for years to come. Therefore, the Bolsheviks attempted to influence and politicize every aspect of youth culture, both public and private."

Are you worried about what your children are getting into while surfing the Web? You should, because soon they'll be flying the drones that kill Pakistani children. It's all a game.

What triggers Echelon?

While browsing through some old files I found this little ditty by Kieren McCarthy, from May 31, 2001:

"What are those words that trigger Echelon?  According to various UK media sources today, the buzzwords said to trigger the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand spying mechanism Echelon have been "posted on the Internet". We haven't found the file and it hasn't popped up on the authoritative site for these sorts of things, Cryptome.org, so we'd not put too much weight behind it. However, just for your interest, we give you a quick run-through on what some of the words are. There are the obvious phrases like "Kill the President" which caused two schoolboys from the UK to be quizzed by special branch, "anarchy", "echelon" :-), "nuclear", "assassinate".

Then there are ones that are dodgy (cause they fit in with X-file type paranoia) like "Roswell", "Waco", "World Trade Center", "Soros" - after George Soros, "Whitewater". Then there are a suspiciously large number of hacker names: Furby, Bugs Bunny, Bubba the Love etc. But just when we thought it was obviously some script-kiddie hoax, a few interesting words crop up: FRU - the cover name for the SAS in Northern Ireland, Lebed - an ex-Russian general, now a politician, HALO - a type of parachute jump, Spetznaz - the Russian SAS, Al Amn al-Askari - a member of the Iraqi cabinet, Glock 26 - a ceramic handgun that can't be detected by airport scanners (a reader informs us that the Glock 26 is only partly ceramic, the bullets are metal and is can be detected at airports - so we should really shift this one into the X-file list), Steak Knife - the codename for an IRA double agent, And so on and so forth. Go through them carefully to satisfy your paranoid fantasies (you'll be safe under the bed, trust us)."

I don't recall where this piece appeared so the only credit given is the above.

For more on Echelon visit SpyWriter.

Psychic Chocolate Killers

NSA is preparing to employ psychological warfare against online threats:

"Operational attacks against an Internet threat would begin by locating and identifying the individuals involved in the hacks. NSA psychic warfare operatives would assess the targets to identify personality vulnerabilities and determine an operational strategy to remotely influence and effect changes in the bio-physical responses of the targeted individuals. An individual's propensity to develop a specific disease might be enhanced to 'post-select' development of the illness in the target, via emotional influences remotely driven by the operational officer. Feelings of illness or weakness might be enhanced to discourage unwanted behavior." From: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/239048

Should these psychic tactics fail spies can always turn to chocolate:

"A leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Haddad was accused by Israel of responsibility for several terrorist operations, the last of which was the hijacking of an Israeli passenger plane en route to Entebbe in 1976. According to a recently published book by the Israeli journalist Aharon Klein, Haddad had a great fondness for Belgian chocolates. Mossad obtained some of these special chocolates, coated them with a slow-acting poison, and had them delivered to Haddad, who was then living in Baghdad, by an Iraqi official who was a Mossad agent and who had struck up a friendship with Haddad. Klein relates that the deadly substance was first developed in the IIBR and that its slow-acting and undetectable properties ensured that the agent and the instrument of death would not be discovered.

And indeed, following a gradual but severe deterioration in his health, Haddad was flown to a hospital in East Germany where he was diagnosed with leukaemia and eventually died on 28 March 1978." From: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg

Someone is always watching you

We allow Google, Amazon.com, credit companies and all manner of private corporations to collect intimate information about our lives, but we reflexively recoil when the government proposes to monitor (and not even collect) a fraction of that information, even with legal safeguards. We carry in our wallets credit cards with RFID chips. Data companies send unmarked vans in our neighborhoods, mapping wireless networks. The IBM scientist and tech guru Jeff Jonas noted on his blog that every time we send a text message, we're contributing to a cloud where "powerful analytics commingle space-time-travel data with tertiary data."  Geolocated tweets can tell everyone where we are, what we're doing, and who we like. [...]

Government power is just different than corporate power. Our engagement with technology implies a certain consent to give up information to companies. A deeper mistrust of government is healthy, so far as the it places pressure on lawmakers to properly oversee the exercise of state power. Warrantless domestic surveillance by NSA during the Bush administration doubtless ensnared a number of innocent Americans and monitored the communications of people who posed no harm to anyone. Where the standard is personal privacy and the rule of law, the violation is severe. SOURCE

Feds track citizens using Sprint's geolocation data, and Yahoo, Verizon sell information on their customers.