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ANTIWAR.COM targeted for investigation, website hacked today
This really brings the Snowden revelations home. I haven't visited Antiwar.com as much the last few years because, however glacially slow it looked like our hot wars were winding down.
Now that our government is demonizing Russia on a daily basis, I thought they might have something useful to say.
This was the first article I read. When I had a few minutes to post it here, their site was infected with malware that originated in Ukraine.
"You know, one of the interesting things is, obviously, people are very aware of the COINTEL abuses. I know youve had people on your show who actually participated in the break-in of the FBI and took the documents that unveiled that program. People are aware of J. Edgar Hoovers abuses. The nature of that series of events is that the United States government looks at people who oppose what they do as being, quote-unquote, threats. Thats the nature of power, is to regard anybody whos a threat to your power as a broad national security threat. And a lot of times people will say, We dont yet have the reporting in this case that shows that kind of abuse. And a lot of that reporting is still reporting that were working on and that I promise you is coming."
My blood ran cold for a second reason, however, one more personal and immediate: thats because in the summer of 2011 we discovered that the FBI had indeed targeted Antiwar.com specifically myself and our webmaster, Eric Garris for what they termed a "preliminary investigation" in 2004. We learned this through a Freedom of Information Act request made by someone else: in an April 2004 memosome FBI high mucka-muck speculated that we might very well be "agents of a foreign power" and that it was high time to "sniff" around after us.
The significance of the "foreign agent" phraseology was underscored when the Snowden revelations came to light: for the "legal" rationale behind the NSAs police state operation is that targets are alleged to have a "foreign" connection. Technically, the American version of the KGB isnt supposed to be conducting surveillance on any US citizen without a requisite "foreign" connection and here was the FBI inventing one, or at least trying to. Since there is no such connection Antiwar.com is run by Americans, and has no overseas organization or funders I assumed, at first, that this exempted us from the NSAs spying.
As time went on, however, and it became clear that a "foreign connection" could be established by discovering a "two-hop" or even a "three-hop" link to an entity deemed foreign, I started getting a little nervous and yet still my innate skepticism remained largely intact. After all, wouldnt it be awfully stupid for the NSA and the FBI to be spying on a legitimate constitutionally-protected non-criminal enterprise such as Antiwar.com? The danger of being caught, I thought, was too great: it would all come out eventually.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/05/13/the-american-republic-is-dead/
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ANTIWAR.COM targeted for investigation, website hacked today (Original Post)
yurbud
May 2014
OP
villager
(26,001 posts)1. Oh, I'm sure many "Undergrounders" will defend the FBI harrassment
Since otherwise they might have to pick a side, rather than just a political party
yurbud
(39,405 posts)2. those guys should move to Propaganda Underground.
villager
(26,001 posts)3. They're working on turning this site into that very thing
n/t