NSA Bluffdale facility to store over 5 zetabytes of surveilance data on sovereign American citizens

Back in the 1990's, patriotic citizens already knew that Americans were the most surveiled and dossiered people in the history of the world – more so than citizens under the Fascist or Communist regimes of Hitler or Stalin. Of great concern at that time was the liberty destroying implications of RICO, FINCEN, "Know Your Customer" and other similar interdiction philosophies, legislation and law enforcement policies and programs. The philosophy of the most former of these, RICO, threatened to invert one of the fundamentals of American liberty – the presumption of innocence until proof of guilt has been unanimously ratified by a jury of one's peers – by designating everyone as a potential suspect of criminal activity except those who could be positively ruled out as such. This philosophy represented a complete reversal of investigation policies which, prior to RICO, respected the presumption of innocence (and the Eighth Commandment) by requiring evidence of a crime having actually been committed BEFORE investigation could justifiably begin, and by limiting potential suspects to those who could be positively connected to the alleged crime. Instead, RICO legitimized the legal philosophy that everyone is a potential criminal and justified the indiscriminate, unwarranted and perpetual collection of data on all persons in a search for activity fitting various criminal profiles. FINCEN and "Know Your Customer" were two such data collection programs.

Sovereign citizens of the united States, concerned that such philosophies, policies and programs represented a threat to fundamental human rights that are enumerated in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, were assured that FINCEN was only regional and targeted only interbank transactions already under reasonable suspicion of illegal activity, while "Know Your Customer" bank procedures were only the recommendations of the World Bank and were thus voluntary and not required. Most concerned citizens outside of the East Coast ignored FINCEN, while throughout the Nation, "Know Your Customer" was vigorously opposed by customers who urged their banks to decline participation in this program. By the close of the 1990's, "Know Your Customer" had been defeated in the marketplace, as banks which were known to implement it suffered a measurable loss of patronage as a result. Then came September 11, 2001, and soon after came the Patriot Act, an essentially unreviewed and significantly under-debated piece of legislation which nationalized FINCEN-types of data collection on all persons, mandated "Know Your Customer," and expanded the indiscriminate collection of data on all sovereign citizens, regardless of any fundamental human rights enumerated in the Constitution. Today, all non-cash transactions are tracked and recorded along with all banking activity. All online activity is recorded – all websites accessed, all emails sent. Everything.

These are violations of fundamental and necessary human rights, violations which rise to the vaulting heights of malicious aggression against sovereign citizens of the united States. Those who ignore or dismiss such violations and the dire consequences which necessarily descend from them are blathering fools. "I'm not doing anything wrong, so what do I care," is their first response. These are intellectual incompetents, who, like nothing more than animals, merely exist from one impulse to the next, with little capacity for contemplating the meaning of their own existence much less considering the benefit of others. Narrow, thoughtless "in-the-moment" pragmatists, they concern themselves only with filling their own bellies. Today. Only with securing their own comfort. Today. Only with the swiftest course of relieving themselves the pain of thinking and working. Today. They do not have the capacity or foresight to see, understand or appreciate that, once they abdicate their obligations in a system of self-government, what is "right" or what is "wrong" is entirely outside their control – is determined solely by an independent central authority who owes no person an explanation for what criteria constitutes right or wrong or suspicious activity, why or when those criteria change, or whether any of it really matters once political interests presume to interfere. The second response of these incompetents is to suggest that, "We need to make certain sacrifices to enjoy peace and security." And here is more evidence of the same, and so I repeat: Narrow, thoughtless "in-the-moment" pragmatists, they concern themselves only with filling their own bellies. Today. Only with securing their own comfort. Today. Only with the swiftest course of relieving themselves of the pain of thinking and of working. Today. No sovereign citizen, nor collection of such citizens, has the authority or can assume the prerogative to suspend the fundamental and enumerated human rights of any other sovereign citizen for any reason. Period. That is what it means to be a Sovereign. And that is what it means to be an American citizen: not a follower of so-called "leaders" in government (a Sovereign has no leaders in government), not a subordinate to the arbitrary rule of greater men (a collection of Sovereigns recognize no one "greater" among themselves), but a a Sovereign who voluntarily submits along with his fellow Sovereigns to the Rule of Law, which they collaboratively establish in the halls of representative government. Fools can voluntarily suspend their own rights, and abdicate their sovereignty for the supposed benefits their stupidity justifies, but they cannot suspend the fundamental enumerated human rights of others or force them from the privilege of sovereignty into serfdom. And what benefit could they derive from it anyway? Benjamin Franklin suggests, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Those lacking the personal capacity and grit for the intellectual and physical struggle to acquire and maintain liberty, even at the cost of temporary safety, get exactly what they deserve. When liberty is turned over to the State, it is never peacefully returned; such fools would trade liberty for safety, and embrace slavery in return – would gladly trade everyone's liberty for the promise of their own temporary safety, and consign the whole of society to a fearfully wretched state of servitude under the tyranny of arbitrary and ruthless State power.

In the wake of the Generals Allen and Petraeus scandals, William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades, very simply and straightforwardly describes the magnitude of the government's data collection program. It started in the 1990's, accelerated swiftly under Bush following the Patriot Act, has continued to see considerable growth under Obama, and today, as Binney reports, the NSA is constructing a data center in Bluffdale, UT, capable of storing and managing over five zetabytes of data collected on sovereign American citizens.


Given that all data is simply stored, regardless of whether such activity is legal or even suspicious today, the reader should ask himself if the variety of data he accesses, uses and shares over a given period of time could be construed to suggest the profile of a criminal, or of someone harboring criminal sentiments? What kind of eBooks does he access, download and read, and what do they suggest regarding his psychological profile? What about twenty years from now? Is it possible that "hate speech" laws may be expanded by then to include the expression of religious conviction or the exercise or advocacy of Christian church practice – as it has already in Canada with respect to sexual orientation or in certain European countries fearful of fallout from criticism of Islam? Is it possible that certain political or economic philosophies, like democracy or capitalism, may be regarded as seditious in the near future and be punishable by imprisonment or execution – as in the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba and many other countries across the world through most of the 20^th Century? In these or any other circumstances, is it possible that the data one accesses, uses or shares today could be construed in the future as evidence of a psychological profile characteristic of what is thought to be a criminal, or a political enemy? The answer is most assuredly and emphatically, Yes!.

The proper response to impending and tragic loss of individual sovereignty and liberty in this Nation, is not that of Lutheran Quietism, is not the political action taken by the passive citizen of fascist Germany who may have had his opinion but remained demonstrably impotent as Hitler engaged in wanton and maniacal policies of the Final Solution. The answer is not that of the witless, careless and lazy leach who floats through life singing, "Que Sira Sira, I have my faith, I know I'm going to heaven, everything is in God's hands, nothing else matters, Que Sira Sira." These are not the answers of a Sovereign who bears not only the right but the authority and obligation to make himself heard, especially in matters pertaining to his liberty as a Sovereign and thus also his ability to freely carry out his rights and responsibilities as such. Shame on the American citizen, and especially the Christian, who would take no notice of nor have any care over the dissipation of fundamental enumerated human rights, who would rather submit to unwarranted and continuous surveillance and psychological profiling by the governing authorities than trouble himself to be concerned, and who would gladly force his countrymen to do the same.

Good citizenship requires that one stay informed, remain concerned, and be active. And the best way to be active is to remember Congressman Larry McDonald and the Four Boxes of Liberty:

If a Free Society is also a Civilized Society, we citizen-sovereigns are obligated
1. first to discuss such issues amongst ourselves, to utilize our freedom of speech to persuasively urge our neighbors and countrymen to abandon trust in the despotic machinations of freedom’s enemies and in those who work their engines;
2. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns to remove those from political office who misunderstand their limited roles, who disrespect the autonomy of citizen-sovereigns, and who work either deliberately or from profound ignorance and carelessness to deprive those whom they represent of their liberty, and to replace them with representatives who will not;
3. to then exercise our obligation as citizen-sovereigns to challenge unjust laws in the courts, even if we must first suffer the indignity and expense of suffering unjustly for disobeying such laws in order that material cause and legal standing can be established before the court;
4. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns, in our capacity as jurors who determine fact from evidence presented in the courts, and in agreement with fellow jurors, to nullify unjust laws when fellow citizen-sovereigns stand to suffer as victims of those laws (this is called jury-nullification);
5. and finally, when all else fails, we are obligated, as our Declaration of Independence clearly and directly states, to dismantle a government which cannot or will not be reformed, by force if necessary, and build a new one in its place, as is the right of all sovereigns who stand to be deprived of their sovereignty by others. From the Declaration:
   
   
   “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
   
   “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
   
   It is in the defense of the individual citizen-sovereign’s liberty, as a sovereign, that alteration or abolishment of a government which is “destructive of the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is justified.

Congressman Larry McDonald is the one who is most often credited with a meme which capsulizes these four steps to preserving liberty. It is called the Four Boxes of Liberty, and it is a fitting place to end this post:


THE FOUR BOXES OF LIBERTY

1. The Soap Box
2. The Ballot Box
3. The Jury Box
4. The Ammo Box

William Binney, in his idealistic struggle for the cause of liberty, has taken his civic obligations as a citizen-sovereign all the way to McDonald's THIRD BOX of Liberty. He is a true example of personal sacrifice and dedication to protect against violations of the fundamental enumerated rights that are necessary to the character and continuation of our Nation. For more information, follow developments in the struggle to defend liberty in a digital world on the pages of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.