HS 173 - "Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry" with David Brown

Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

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It's my pleasure to welcome David Brown to the show. He's a freelance writer and novelist generally published under the pseudonym DB Grady. His latest books are Deep State Inside the Government Secrecy Industry and the Command Deep Inside the President's Secret Army. Both were published by John Wiley and Sons and co authored with his friend Mark Arbinder. David, welcome. How are you?

I'm very well, thank you.

Well, good. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. I should also mention that you're a correspondent for the Atlantic and regular contributor to the Week and Mental Floss, which I enjoy. That's great.

Glad to hear it.

Yeah, good, Good stuff. So these are works of fiction, but they seem all too true in today's era, don't they?

Well, Deep State and the Command are both nonfiction. They reported explorations of the secrecy apparatus of the United States. We take a hard look at the National Security Agency, the Joint Special Operations Command, and the various components of the intelligence community.

Well, it's interesting that a secret organization or an organization based on secrecy and intelligence has become so famous recently, thanks to Mr. Snowden. But tell us about it. I mean, what goes on in this world?

Well, the National Security Agency is charged with signals intelligence and cyber security for the United States. Their job, they basically have one job. Listen to other countries that's their job. They have one rule, do not listen to American citizens. Well, wouldn't you know, the one rule they have, they seem to have broken repeatedly really since their inception. But most recently as the world becomes digital, so to speak, the violations have become egregious and quite shocking.

Sure. Oh no, most definitely. I mean, the NSA was in the news yesterday with this whole thing of if one suspicious email comes into your account that they're looking at, then they basically download your whole account. And I guess the FISA court ruled that they can't do that. They claimed it was a technical glitch and now that it's fixed, but you know, who the heck can possibly keep track of this? I mean, I can't fix technical glitches on my own personally computer. And who's looking over the NSA's shoulder?

That's one of the arguments that transparency advocates have been making for years. We make that point in deep state. When you operate, the National Security Agency operates in almost entire total secrecy. The FISA court operates entirely secret. The congressional oversight committees hold closed hearings. And when our, when the leaders of the National Security Agency and the, the Director of National Intelligence testified before Congress, we now know they lie. So there's really very little accountability there. And that's really the heart of the problem. One thing that I would add to what you mentioned earlier about the downloading the emails via one email, there is in place what's called the three hop rule. So if Bob the Terrorist is spotted by the National Security Agency.

The FBI or the CIA, the National Security Agency can not only monitor Bob the Terrorist, they can go one hop away, everyone in Bob the Terrorist's phone book. Two hops away, everyone in the terrorist friend's phone book. Three hops away, everyone in that person's phone book. So what you're looking at, for every one terrorist, mathematically 2.5 million people can be monitored at any given time. So that's a pretty horrifying thing. And that's legal.

The three hop rule. Very interesting. That is just unbelievable. I mean, we can talk all day or for days about the abuses and the concerns, but you know, maybe I'd just like to jump to asking you if anything, what can we do about it? I mean, America was built on the idea of individual rights and being secure in our possessions and effects. And so much of our possessions and effects, if you will, are in the digital world nowadays.

You're asking a very good question. Generally, any issue in politics, you've got the left and the right kind of doing A tug of war. So if you talk about abortion, one side's against it, one side's for it. If you're talking about, well, really anything go down the line. War, peace, anything. There's left and the right pulling at each other and we kind of end up in the middle somewhere, in a kind of a middle safe ground, domestic surveillance, or at least the activities of the intelligence community and especially the National Security Agency. It's the only issue I know of where Republicans are like, absolutely, let's keep it going. And Democrats are saying, sure, let's keep it going. There's no opposition really, in elected government today. Everybody's running in the same direction and that's continue surveillance. And a lot of this has to do with power. The Democrats don't want to go against President Obama. The Republicans are afraid of going too hard against Obama because they might get it president elected in the next election. So everybody's afraid of sacrificing wood is a tremendous amount of power. And that alone should tell you why we should be a little bit concerned about the NSA and about the capabilities they have. Why are people wanting to protect and perpetuate this power?

Oh, no question about it. I mean, I think if we're not living in fear of this, we all should be. That the fact that who knows what you post on your Facebook page today, you know, when you watch something on the news and go complain about it, isn't going to be brought up 10 years from now and say, oh, you know, this guy posted anti government things on his Facebook page. Well, I do that a couple times a week.

Isn't the whole point to be critical of our government? That's what we should be doing.

That's the great concern. And historically, the infrastructure has not been there for this massive collection of data stored for a long period of time. The problem is technology has advanced to such a point where, yes, now we can do exactly what you just said. The United States government and governments around the world can collect your data. They can, basically, and we know they are for a fact vacuuming up the data in your social network and in your profile and sticking it in a database and keeping it there. And that data is constantly being mined and churned for information. Now, ostensibly, its purpose is to find terror, to thwart terrorist attacks, which is, of course a good, worthy goal. The problem is the data is still there. And you have to trust that everyone we elect now and for the rest of time will always be sort of a benevolent leader. Never misuse this power. I'm not willing to make that bet.

Yeah, I'm not willing to make that bet either. I think it's already being misused today. It's just incredible. I mean, the whole concept of freedom of association. Facebook must have been the data mining opportunity of a lifetime for the government, because that whole freedom of association concept is out the window. How many people really know all of the friends in quotes, you know, in their Facebook circle say, you got some bad apple on there. Oh, well, you were friends with that person. What's a friend nowadays?

I mean, one of the big fears is once you, Once you, Once you get into these databases, you're not getting out. So if, for example, you do have, say, if not a direct friend on Facebook or whatever, any social network profile but maybe two links away, your name gets brought in that database and it stays there. And so whenever it comes time to begin doing investigations, your name will make an appearance. And that's the horrifying thing. You will be eligible to be listened to by the government. Congratulations.

And it's even more horrifying than that because we're assuming all the data stays intact. I mean, you know, on my own computer, from time to time, files get corrupted, data gets messed up. I mean, I've noticed that. And you know, like the address book on my iPhone, it'll. It'll mess things up occasionally where if I have your phone number in my phone, it'll later, after a couple of times of syncing it with the computer, it'll say your name with someone else's phone number. I mean, I've had that happen before. Probably many people have. This can happen with the NSA databases too. And you can be basically falsely thought of as associating with someone you're not even associating with.

These are systems built by man. So they will have flaws and they will have mistakes. The long term ramifications of this I don't think have been felt, but will be, and it will be a very bad day indeed.

Yeah, yeah. Something else. It really is. Well, tell us about the President's Secret army, if you will. Let's kind of switch gears a little bit here.

Sure. Mark and I wrote a book called the Command Deep inside the President's Secret Army. This was in 2012. We were referring to the Joint Special Operations Command, which is a component of Special Operations Command, designed for interagency special operations missions. Really what you're talking about here is Delta Force and Seal Team 6 and units like that, we can call them the President's Secret army because to a large degree, they don't really fall inside the traditional chain of command. So a 30 man unit in the 82nd Airborne isn't likely to get a call from the President himself to say, hey, do this, Delta probably will. So the President has tremendous power. I mean, we saw that really with the bin Laden raid. By any legal measurement, the bin Laden raid was illegal. I mean, it simply was. It was an illegal invasion. That said, I mean, everyone's glad it happened. And that's where the President's power comes in with regard to jsoc, with regard to the SEAL Teams and Delta.

And are you saying that this can be misused or is there a civil rights concern here too?

Can it be misused? Absolutely. And that's again, that comes back to the same issue as the National Security Agency. Nobody's saying that the analysts at the NSA are out to get you. I mean, there's no evidence of that. The problem is one day, you know, we're not very far removed from a time when they can do that. Likewise with units like jsoc where there's very, very minimal oversight today, nobody's saying, well, they're secretly going to do whatever five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, without adequate oversight, who can say what the problem is? And that's why it should be the order of the day for government to provide as much transparency and offer as much sunlight to these types of programs as humanly possible. For example, Seal Team 6. There's not a person on the planet who hasn't heard of Seal Team 6. One person you'll never hear use the word SEAL Team Six is the President. Why? Because it doesn't officially exist. These are the kinds of things. Go ahead and declassify that. Go ahead and acknowledge that because that's the first step toward getting accountability.

Right, Very interesting, very interesting. Well, back to the NSA issue for a moment. I just wanted to ask you about Snowden because, you know, obviously he's so in the news. Did he actually release anything that was of national security interest? Or did he just tell us that our own government is spying on us, which we really didn't know before that, or at least not to that extent.

Sure. I mean, one thing, of course that would be highly illegal would be releasing, for example, the names of operatives in the field and endangering human lives? That, of course would be unforgivable. And that hasn't happened. So that's a good thing. In terms of the revelations that have come out, it's very similar to The Bradley Manning WikiLeak situation where everything that really has been revealed so far has generally been suspected, has been reported on peripherally. I know in deep state. With regard to.

On our section on the National Security Agency, we've actually been vindicated entirely by the revelations by Edward Snowden. It turns out we were right. So that's good that we have confirmation of these things. So we always had an idea. We're now getting kind of refinements to those ideas. We're getting more details and we're learning to a certain extent. One sad thing that we're finding out is even the wildest dreams of the most insane conspiracy theorist. Turns out he was right.

Yeah.

So that's a pretty sorry world to live in.

Yeah, yeah, it sure is. So, you know, I guess he has said or the government believes that he has a lot more information he could release and do a lot of damage, you know, if anything ever happens to him. Julian Assange was on 60 Minutes too recently and you know, he was kind of alluding to the same thing that's sort of the insurance policy for these guys. Did you have any thoughts on that?

Well, I mean, it's a very clever plan. In the event that Snowden or.

Julian Assange are captured or killed, these massive encrypted databases will be decrypted and suddenly all of this information, look, I mean, they're telling you the stuff that is safe to know. Wait till they start telling you everything. The whole truth and nothing but the truth is a pretty scary thing. So that's clever on their part. That's a good self defense mechanism. You can look at Bradley Manning to see why they're doing it. I mean, Bradley Manning is basically going to be put under the prison. We're never going to see him again. And these guys, these whistleblowers need to have these sorts of protections because the United States has very weak, if you could say they have whistle protection, whistleblower protection at all.

So, I mean, is Bradley Manning, is he gonna be in solitary for the rest of his life?

No, no, I don't think he will be in solitary confinement for the rest of his life. That said, the actual conditions of his incarceration, I'm not sure we know just yet. We know after he was arrested for the first few months, in fact, he was essentially tortured. He lived. It was a living hell for him and that's what you can expect. I would like to think that because there's so much public attention brought to his case and because there's so much sympathy for what he's done, that no, he won't have to. These types of, won't live in this kind of caged animal environment.

Yeah. How was he tortured?

Sleep deprivation was one of the big ones. You can look at the general conditions that he was living in. I think at some point he was put on suicide watch. Now in the army, suicide watch isn't what you might generally think. Somebody's going to be in the room with you 247 no matter what you do, everything will be removed. That you can kill yourself from shoelaces, belts. I think at one point he was stripped naked for an extended period of time. I mean these are inhumane treatment for what is an entirely non violent offense.

Cruel and unusual punishment.

Exactly.

Just. Well, just what our founders told us we couldn't do. And, and now we're doing it. Just how are we doing. It's illegal.

If these were, if these were things that, that, well the NSA is just violating the law and we need to get them, that would be one thing. They're, they're following the law to the letter. And that's the scarier part.

Yeah, it really is. It really is. Well, any more tips just to wrap up on what people can do? I always like to ask. Gosh, other than complain about this, spread the word about it so you create more awareness. I mean what can we do?

What you can do in your direct personal life to protect your communications. I advise everyone I talk to look for email encryption software. There's one called GPG which is based on the PGP encryption software. It's free. You can install it in your email program, Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, all that stuff. You create a private key and a public key and you're able to encrypt your email. And decrypting a PGP encrypted email takes somewhere on the order of 2 billion years.

Oh nice. Even for the government.

Even for anyone. I mean mathematically impossible at this point. So you're basically looking at military grade encryption for your personal communications. It's something worth looking into. And that's G as in Golf, P as in Papa, G as in Golf tools to L S. Okay, so say that again.

So. GPGtools.org yes, GPG tools. Now that means the other person on the other side of your communication has to have the key, right?

That's correct. Well what it they have to have the public key. The way it's going to work, both sides have to be, have to have this program on their computer. Once you both have that software, really it's automated. So When I send you an email, for example, it'll encrypt it and when you receive it, it'll automatically decrypt. It won't even, you won't have to do anything fancy. So that's one thing that people can do in their lives today to make their communications a little bit safer.

Yeah, that's great advice. You know what concerns me about these things like these anonymous browsing tools that are out there and so forth, and maybe GPG is. How do you know it wasn't created by the nsa?

There's a backdoor in it. There's no way I could know that.

The beauty of this free software is that it is open source. So what's actually going on in the background is available for information security specialists to monitor, to read, to track, to figure out what's going on and make sure there's nothing like what you worry about happening. Is it possible? Well, anything's possible, but it's highly unlikely that GPG has been penetrated or somehow violated by the nsa.

Yeah, that's great, great advice, great advice. Well, give out your website and tell people where they can learn more about you.

Sure. My website is dbgrady.com youm can find out more about the book at deepstate.org and by all means send me an email or buy many copies of the book for your friends and family.

Fantastic. Well, David, thanks so much for joining us today and keep, keep getting the word out there about this stuff. And we've got to be very vigilant. These are very, very important times in which we live. This is not business as usual for the US Government, at least in my opinion. This, we got to be very vigilant nowadays. So just encrypting your emails, I mean, great advice. Simple, easy to do. Right there. So good stuff. And dbgrady.com and again, I'm sure the books are on Amazon and published by John Wiley. So appreciate you joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

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