WH on NSA snooping: You can totally trust us.

[kentonio]

If you're referring to the OWS squatters, they didn't accomplish anything for a very good reason. If they couldn't even get serious and decide what they wanted, why the hell should anyone else listen to them? "Hi, there, we're the future of American democracy! Look at our puppet shows and impromptu street theater! Pardon me, we've got to go try and achieve perfect consensus in small groups via jazz-hands. It hasn't worked yet, but then we've only been at it for a month. Give us another year and we should be ready to run the whole country that way too."

****, at least the Tea Party had some kind of overall plan.

That's the thing though, instead of people stepping up and providing direction or leadership, everyone just sat back with an attitude of 'let's wait and see if this is anything that will help me' and so it tailed off and died. Fair enough, but it's a little rich for people to then complain about a lack of change or to claim that it's not possible for things to change. You get enough people out on the streets and things do change, and you don't need to burn stuff down to achieve that.

[Elok]

That's the thing though, instead of people stepping up and providing direction or leadership, everyone just sat back with an attitude of 'let's wait and see if this is anything that will help me' and so it tailed off and died. Fair enough, but it's a little rich for people to then complain about a lack of change or to claim that it's not possible for things to change. You get enough people out on the streets and things do change, and you don't need to burn stuff down to achieve that.

Well, yes, because they emphatically didn't want direction or leadership, did they? Or rather, they wanted everyone in the movement to be a leader, because one of the few ideals apparently shared by most of the group was a desire for total consensus-building. Which just doesn't work on a large scale. Unlike the TP, which started out grassroots (mostly) but rapidly organized into hundreds of little groups with goals and plans, the Occupiers began and ended as an amorphous mass.

Those people were proof that getting out on the streets is not enough to change anything, by itself.

[kentonio]

The organization could have morphed into something really useful, they just needed the right figureheads to step up. It never felt like there was any mass consensus against direction or leaders, just the blathering of a few vocal hippy types.

[Wezil]

The organization could have morphed into something really useful, they just needed the right figureheads to step up. It never felt like there was any mass consensus against direction or leaders, just the blathering of a few vocal hippy types.

Those two sentences conflict.

The second part was the reason Occupy went nowhere.

[kentonio]

Those two sentences conflict.

How?

[Wezil]

Anarchists and hippies weren't interested in any leadership. It was an impossible "morph".

[kentonio]

Anarchists and hippies weren't interested in any leadership. It was an impossible "morph".

Occupy was not an organization comprised solely of anarchists and hippies. Do you really think there are that many anarchists and hippies in the US?

[Colon™]

Occupy was not an organization comprised solely of anarchists and hippies. Do you really think there are that many anarchists and hippies in the US?

Anarchists, hippies and hangers-on drawn from the hipster population then.

[kentonio]

This is why you can't have nice things.

[Elok]

Question, then: if they were not intrinsically averse to leadership, why did leadership never develop at any of the sites? It's not like they had no time; they spent weeks doing nothing. It's highly unusual for people to hang together for that long in pursuit of a common cause and not have a central core of the most dedicated and/or intelligent taking charge naturally.

[kentonio]

Good question. I don't see how they could have been 'intrinsically averse to leadership' however in those kind of numbers, given how completely prone humans are to looking for leaders.

[Sava]

As someone who wishes to see accountability with regards to our financial system, I am deeply upset by the occupy movement and their hippy bull****. Banging bongo drums and singing kum ba ya ain't gonna fix didley ****.

[DaShi]

Question, then: if they were not intrinsically averse to leadership, why did leadership never develop at any of the sites? It's not like they had no time; they spent weeks doing nothing. It's highly unusual for people to hang together for that long in pursuit of a common cause and not have a central core of the most dedicated and/or intelligent taking charge naturally.

This may not be the correct way of thinking about it. Not all outcomes are determined by a single cause, especially among human behavior. There are numerous reasons that the movement didn't create leadership at the level you are discussing.

[The Mad Monk]

US seizure of journalist records called 'chilling'

Associated Press (AP) President and CEO Gary Pruitt speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, June 19, 2013. The US government's secret seizure of AP phone records had a "chilling effect" on newsgathering by the agency and other news organizations, Pruitt said Wednesday.

AFP - The US government's secret seizure of Associated Press phone records had a "chilling effect" on newsgathering by the agency and other news organizations, AP's top executive said Wednesday.

"Some longtime trusted sources have become nervous and anxious about talking with us," AP president and chief executive Gary Pruitt said in a speech to the National Press Club.

"In some cases, government employees we once checked in with regularly will no longer speak to us by phone. Others are reluctant to meet in person ... This chilling effect on newsgathering is not just limited to AP.

"Journalists from other news organizations have personally told me that it has intimidated both official and nonofficial sources from speaking to them as well."

Pruitt spoke one month after the US news agency revealed that it had been notified after the fact that the US Justice Department had secret subpoenas of two months of phone records from its news operations.

The AP has said US authorities appeared to have sought out the records as part of a criminal investigation into leaked information contained in a May 2012 AP story about a foiled terror plot.

Pruitt, who previously called the seizure "a massive and unprecedented intrusion" into newsgathering, said the Justice Department "violated its own rules" on how it handles investigations of leaks to news media.

He said the collection of records pertaining to more than 100 journalists was "an overbroad and sloppy fishing expedition" and failed to follow procedures on notification.

Pruitt said that authorities maintained that by notifying the AP ahead of the sweep "it would have tipped off the leaker" but argued "that kind of reasoning would apply in every single case."

This rationale would mean news organizations would never know when its records are being obtained, news sources would become less willing to speak and "the public will only know what the government wants them to know."

The Justice Department has told the AP "that our phone records have been and will continue to be walled off, protected and used for no other purpose other than the leak investigation," Pruitt said.

"We appreciate these assurances. But that does not excuse what they did. We need to make sure it doesn't happen again."

The AP chief said the US administration should reaffirm the right of advance notice to news organizations, and use the courts to adjudicate any disputes on whether certain records are needed.

He also called for a "federal shield law with teeth" to ensure that journalists are not prosecuted for doing their jobs.

"We do not dispute that the government has the right to pursue those who leak classified information," he said.

But he argued that "no one in this country should ever be prosecuted for committing journalism."

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder said the leak which prompted the seizure of journalist phone records was a "very serious" matter which "puts the American people at risk."

Pruitt said Wednesday however that the AP waited five days before publishing the article, until after it had been assured by US officials that "the national security risk had passed.

The US administration under President Barack Obama has been aggressive in pursuing leaks of secret government information.

Authorities have said they had opened a probe into Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who leaked details about a cast US government electronic surveillance program.

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced in January to two and a half years in prison for leaking the name of a secret agent implicated in harsh interrogations of Al-Qaeda suspects.

http://www.france24.com/en/20130619-us-seizure-journalist-records-called-chilling

You don't need to arrest people or shut down newspapers to destroy one of our principle means of rooting out malfeasance and corruption. All you need to do is...this.

[The Mad Monk]

Oh, and about the people who are watching us:

Background Checks Faked With Lax Oversight, Watchdog Says
By Nick Taborek - Jun 19, 2013 5:00 PM CT

Investigators charged with conducting background checks of U.S. national-security workers have falsified records and aren’t receiving adequate oversight, according to an inspector general’s testimony.

One worker fabricated 1,600 credit checks before it was discovered her own background investigation had been falsified, Patrick McFarland, inspector general of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, said in prepared testimony obtained by Bloomberg News in advance of a Senate hearing tomorrow.

While 18 investigators, including contract and government employees, have been convicted of falsifying reports since 2006, McFarland said the inspector general’s office lacks the resources to clear a backlog of an additional 36 cases.

“My office has been alarmed for several years about the lack of oversight,” he said in his written testimony. “Our resources remain woefully inadequate, preventing us from performing the level of oversight that such an important program requires.”

McFarland provided few details about the cases.

Passing a government background check is a requirement before the employee or a contractor is granted a security clearance.
Snowden Leak

The disclosure of secret documents describing two U.S. surveillance programs by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who had worked for Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. (BAH) and had a top-secret clearance, has called attention to the government’s process of vetting people who handle sensitive information.

Two Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittees plan to hold a hearing addressing the government’s security-clearance process.

The Office of Personnel Management is responsible for some 90 percent of the background investigations of U.S. government employees and contractors. The Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security are the biggest users of the program.

The personnel office conducts more than 2 million investigations a year, according to its website. It vets applicants for federal agency jobs and applicants for security clearances.

While the personnel office charges other federal agencies to conduct the checks, it isn’t allowed to include the cost of the inspector general’s oversight in its prices, according to McFarland.

President Barack Obama has included in his fiscal 2014 budget a proposal that would let the agency include oversight costs in the prices of its background investigations, McFarland said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Taborek in Washington at ntaborek@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Stoughton at sstoughton@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-19/background-checks-faked-with-lax-oversight-watchdog-says.html

We really...don't know who's watching us.