Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Pentagon Personae

social media, PSYOP, spying, CIA, FBI, NSA, China

We think of Facebook and Twitter as platforms for you and me and our fellow citizens to share information and opinions and photos and just plain fun.

But our government agencies are also on those platforms, secretly as well as openly.

And not just for fun and games.

It’s a serious information war out there — with mis- and dis- elements, too — and Facebook and Twitter may be in over their heads.

“The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States,” wrote Ellen Nakashima in the Washington Post in mid-September, “was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny.”

Ms. Nakashima’s report begins with the big news: “Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month,” and we are told of a “sweeping audit” to probe how the Pentagon “conducts clandestine information warfare.”

This is largely in response to Facebook and Twitter identifying and removing “fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules.”

Social media companies took down actual U.S. military psy-op accounts. But it is worth noting that the report does not mention Facebook or Twitter taking down foreign equivalents, though that has happened in the past.

It might be time to reconsider all government activity in social media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags freedom, mind control, propaganda, PSYOP, social media, spying

Thought

Ernest Bramah

It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea shops.
Ernest Bramah, “The Transmutation of Ling,” in The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900).

Today

A Republic

On October 5, 1910, the Portuguese monarchy was overthrown and a republic declared.

crime and punishment Fourth Amendment rights general freedom

Fourth Amendment Dead?

Unconstitutional actions are constitutional.

A federal judge doesn’t say so explicitly, but that’s what his ruling amounts to.

The case, which we discussed previously, involves U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills company that the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided last year. The company has been fined $1.1 million for money laundering because it let dealers anonymously keep cash in its safe deposit boxes.

Judge Gary Klausner concedes that the FBI lied to obtain a warrant, planning to seize the property of all boxholders whether or not there was any evidence of a crime against a given boxholder. And to this day, “specific criminal conduct has not been alleged against customers.” Nevertheless, Klausner ruled that despite the lie, it was constitutional for the FBI to grab the boxes’ contents.

Of course, if the warrant authorizing the FBI to ignore Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures had been honestly solicited, that still would not have transmuted unconstitutional actions into constitutional ones.

“The court does not deny that the government had an improper motive when it applied for its warrant,” observes Rob Johnson, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, which is representing the boxholders.

“But it says that fact is irrelevant unless the improper investigatory motive was the only reason that the Government opened the safety deposit boxes. . . . If today’s shocking decision stands, it will set a dangerous precedent that will allow the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to bypass the Fourth Amendment.”

Thankfully, the Institute for Justice doesn’t regard the case as closed. It will appeal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 4th Amendment, freedom, law, police

Thought

John Locke

Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, tho’ he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus a thief, whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill, when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat; because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which, if lost, is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence, and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man’s person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not, a common judge.
John Locke, from the Second Treatise on Civil Government (Thomas Hollis Edition. [London: A. Millar et. al.] 1764), Chapter Three: “Of the State of War.”

Today

SpaceShipOne

On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first private craft to fly into space, thereby winning the Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.

First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Public-Private Censorship Partnership

Post author By Redactor
Post date October 3, 2022
No Comments on Public-Private Censorship Partnership

When government pays people to help censor critics of its policies and talking points, this makes it even more obvious that it’s acting to repress speech and violate the First Amendment.

Thanks to a recent lawsuit against the Biden administration, we have been seeing emails confirming that government officials routinely ask Big Tech to censor this and that.

Now, Just the News reports that government agencies and liberal groups such as Common Cause and the Democratic National Committee worked with a consortium of private groups — the Election Integrity Partnership — during the 2020 election season to target and censor social media posts.

The EIP “set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency and State’s Global Engagement Center to file ‘tickets’ requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.”

About 35 percent of the many posts EIP flagged in 2020 were sanctioned in some way by Big Tech.

Millions of tax dollars have been funneled to consortium members to fund these efforts to censor “misinformation,” i.e., speech that government officials disapprove of.

The EIP remains active in 2022.

Of course, politically controversial speech is just the kind of speech that the Founders were concerned to protect. Madison and Mason didn’t expect that the ability to publicly debate whether Bach is better than Beethoven or the best way to shingle a roof would ever be in great jeopardy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 1st Amendment, censorship, freedom, government

Thought

Denis Diderot

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.
Denis Diderot, “Political Authority” (as quoted in Selected Writings [1966] edited by Lester G. Crocker), L’Encyclopédie (Volume 1, 1751).

Today

Buchanan & Vidal

On October 3, 1919, James M. Buchanan was born. Buchanan would develop the theory of “Public Choice,” and receiving the 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work. His books include Cost and Choice, The Calculus of Consent (with Gordon Tullock), and The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. Some of his most interesting research was into the realm of constitutional theory and practice.

He died January 9, 2013.

In 1925, on this date, Gore Vidal was born. Vidal would go on to become one of the leading post-WWII liberal essayists as well as a major novelist and screenwriter. His most famous novels include Burr, 1876, and Lincoln, installments in his American history series; his collection of essays, The United States, was one of his many bestsellers. Vidal was an elitist who expressed sympathy for populism and socialism, but also was a radical civil libertarian, and may occupy the extreme of the “liberal” quadrant in American political ideology: great on personal liberties but quite bad on market/property liberties.

He died on July 31, 2012.

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