The FBI's demand that Apple break into a private email account is one more unacceptable government attempt to expand the already huge police state that Americans have accepted since 9/11. It is a worm that ultimately will destroy the apple, then eat away at the entire tree--until finally obliterating the orchard. It smacks of Stalinism and the Orwellian nightmare.
In my just-released book, The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, I discuss in great detail how much worse things have become since the original Confessions of an Economic Hit Man was published in 2004.
The treacherous cancer beneath the surface of the federal government's infringement on personal privacy has metastasized. Economic hit men (EHM), and the jackals who step in to assassinate leaders or overthrow governments when the EHM fail, have spread from the economically developing countries to the United States and the rest of the world. These pernicious attacks rock the very foundations of democracy and the planet's information-based systems.
The EHM and jackal system, based primarily on debt and fear, is even more treacherous now than it was when I first wrote about it twelve years ago. The EHMs and jackals have radically expanded their ranks and adopted new disguises and tools. And we in the United States have been "hit" badly. The entire world has become a target. We teeter on the edge of disaster -- economically, politically, socially, and environmentally. It's time to fight back.
The jackals, like those in the FBI who are pressuring Apple, were once only assigned to foreign lands. That has changed. In the aftermath of 9/11, fear drove Americans to agree to sacrifice privacy and freedom and give the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and other agencies unprecedented powers. Tools perfected overseas, including drones and surveillance aircraft, are now used to spy on us in the United States.
The FBI and other government agencies, aided by their allies in the media, hammer us with messages that terrify us into believing that we must pay any price, and assume any debt, to stop the enemies who, we are told, lurk at our doorsteps. The problem comes from somewhere else: insurgents; terrorists; "them." And, its solution requires spending massive amounts of money on goods and services produced by what I call the corporatocracy -- vast networks of corporations, banks, colluding governments, and the rich and powerful people tied to them. We go deeply into debt, our country and its financial henchmen at the World Bank and its sister institutions coerce other countries to go deeply into debt. Debt enslaves us and it enslaves those countries.
Documents released by US federal authorities in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit reveal that at least sixty-three drone sites, located in twenty states, were active in the United States as of 2012. Many were operated by soldiers and were deployed from stateside military installations. Others were manned by law enforcement agencies and the US Border Patrol. Some, if not all, are designed to assassinate people.
In June 2015, the Associated Press reported that the FBI has a "small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the US carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology--all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government." The article went on to say that these flights are usually conducted without a judge's approval and that "in a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country."
Furthermore, the NSA monitors about 200 million text messages each day and has surreptitiously planted spy software in some one-hundred thousand computers, allowing it access to the information in those computers. Now, it insists that Apple assist it in going deeper into the nefarious world of destroying our rights to privacy.
The ability and willingness of the corporatocracy to spy on our every movement and to take action -- including imprisonment without habeas corpus, or assassination when we do anything perceived as a threat to its greed-driven power -- is virtually unlimited. And, totally undemocratic. Its lobbyists own our elected officials. Its special operations teams conduct illegal assassinations. Its low-flying pilots and robot jackals monitor our phone and Internet conversations.
All of this is part of the corporatocracy's determination to do whatever it deems necessary to maintain control.
Let's not allow this FBI worm to bore into this Apple!