Sure enough, right after the recent leak of sensitive national security documents by a 21-year-old, low-ranking national guardsman, the Biden administration announced it is considering "expanding how it monitors social media sites and chatrooms." Fun fact, expansion into every part of our online activity has long been underway, and it is about to get much worse if the Restrict Act is passed. While short, Biden's statement below indicates what we have now come to expect from "our partners and allies" in the national security surveillance state—expanding surveillance.
Biden Press Release/April 14/https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/14/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-arrest-in-national-security-leak-case/
The Restrict Act
Few have probably read the Restrict Act, so it was easy for politicians and legacy media to present the bill as a mere ban on TikTok. The Restrict Act was labeled the TikTok bill—to distract, gaslight, and hide what Congress is working on from the public. If Congress has its way, the Restrict Act will be passed, perhaps with some conciliatory but meaningless amendments.
The Restrict Act is a terrifying bill that will, as Tulsi Gabbard says below, effectively "impose a digital iron curtain," allowing the government to do more of what they are already doing—monitor us, censor us, and crush dissent in the name of keeping us all safe. How about those borders, guys?
Truth is that this administration and parts of both the Democrat and Republican parties have muscled their way into controlling so much of American lives, making it obvious to most that the Restrict Act isn't just going after China. It is going after us. Make no mistake; the surveillance state is here. However, the intrusive and unconstitutional controls our government continues to implement are most likely far beyond our awareness and understanding. And by the time we figure out what they've done, it will be very difficult to undo.
Pay Attention to the Messaging
Messaging from the administration and the media is intentional, crafty, and manipulative. It is more oft than not purposed to allay our worst fears. Meanwhile, spooks and tyrants work 24/7 behind the scenes to install policies and programs that violate our privacy rights. A.I. and machine learning are the next frontiers, making what they are doing now seem like child's play. According to this interactive map provided by the Carnegie Endowment, the U.S. participates in every possible kind of surveillance available. The U.S. also ironically uses Chinese tech to supply its surveillance technology—opening the door to national security threats from one of the most egregiously tyrannical actors on the global map.
Surveillance Tech Types/Global Map/https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/ai-surveillance
The "latest" leak of "secret" and "top secret" material from a gamer on Discord who is a young national guardsman could be the latest dog and pony show to distract from the Restrict Act—a bill that has been castigated in the realm of public opinion. The recent tanking of public opinion about the Restrict Act may be why the government and its partners are now in beast mode. There has been but scant mention of the contents of the documents and an obsessive concentration on ensuring such a leak never happens again. It could easily be a DoD/IC ploy to push Congress to pass the Restrict Act.
It stretches credulity to believe that a relatively low-ranking national guardsman had access to highly sensitive national security information in the first place. Call me cynical, but this type of scenario has played out before in service of agendas that only serve to mislead the average American. Remember RussiaGate? Pentagon Papers, anyone?
Who is to say that our intelligence community and the Department of Defense aren't behind the leaks? And hey there, legacy media! What happened to "Democracy Dies in Darkness?" I thought it was the job of journalists to be the fourth estate and guardian of the people in the face of government overreach and malfeasance. If the Trump White House had lied about the depth of its involvement in Ukraine, this kid would have been a decorated hero.
Instead, the government and the press hunt down and handcuff a low-level guy, making him the most significant focus of their concern. Next up, useful "tough guy" idiots like Lindsey Graham appear on Fox News and CNN to condemn the kid's actions. Tragically, the kid, a patsy, goes to prison for treason. All discussion about the contents of the leak disappears, and Big Brother rolls out his latest version of the Patriot Act.
The Surveillance State is Expanding
As Tracy Beanz said on Friday's Dark to Light podcast, "These leaks are all propaganda to make you think that you're getting leaks from inside the government. But it's not. It's directed leaks" fed to journalists from inside the intelligence community to destroy "actual whistleblowers." Joshua Adam Schulte, a whistleblower who supposedly leaked the Vault 7 files to WikiLeaks, alleges the intelligence community planted underage porn on his computer to further justify his arrest and imprisonment. He has been in jail since 2018.
It is not looking good for the American people right now. Missouri v Biden, with its temporary injunction hearing coming up in May, has already shown us how deeply interconnected our government and Big Tech are in monitoring and censoring Americans online. WhatsApp Chats were targeted, among other things.
Our government doesn't want us to discuss bank failures because that will "destabilize the economy." Meanwhile, the government and its Wall Street partners are partly responsible for their failure. Or maybe it is also because they want them to fail so they can justify the rollout of the "consolidation and centralization of banking," a "necessary stage to roll out a central bank digital currency (CBDC)."
We are just now coming out of nearly two years of government lockdowns and non-sensical, unscientific edicts. The pandemic showed everyone that there is a worldwide initiative to institute digital passports to prevent or mitigate the next pandemic ostensibly. The World Economic Forum openly brags about its 2030 Agenda.
Governmental back doors into online chats, social media platforms, DMs, and government control over mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM) while "shaping" a robust multi-agency, cognitive infrastructure are just some of the unconstitutional intrusions we already know about. So don't blame those who have come to believe that almost everything this government is doing serves plans to implement a surveillance state that is far beyond your worst nightmare.
