{"id":187079,"date":"2013-06-25T20:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T01:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/06\/25\/barack-milhaus-obama\/"},"modified":"2013-06-25T20:24:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T01:24:00","slug":"barack-milhaus-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/06\/25\/barack-milhaus-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Barack Milhaus* Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, Barack Obama has stepped it up a notch in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/2013\/06\/20\/194513\/obamas-crackdown-views-leaks-as.html\">war against transparency in government<\/a> by requiring federal employees to snitch on each other, and declaring both leaking and investigative journalism as tantamount to treason:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans\u2019 phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">President Barack Obama\u2019s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of \u201cinsider threat\u201d give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for \u201chigh-risk persons or behaviors\u201d among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cHammer this fact home . . . <b><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States<\/span><\/b>,\u201d says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The Obama administration is expected to hasten the program\u2019s implementation as the government grapples with the fallout from the leaks of top secret documents by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the agency\u2019s secret telephone data collection program. The case is only the latest in a series of what the government condemns as betrayals by \u201ctrusted insiders\u201d who have harmed national security.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<i>emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p>This really is chilling and truly evil.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Obama is truly the <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/search?q=worst+constitutional+law&amp;max-results=20&amp;by-date=true\">worst constitutional law professor ever<\/a>.<sup>\u2122<\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, Barack Obama has stepped it up a notch in his war against transparency in government by requiring federal employees to snitch on each other, and declaring both leaking and investigative journalism as tantamount to treason: Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans\u2019 phone records, the Obama administration was &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969,1102,1103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evil","category-intelligence","category-secrecy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187079"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}