NSA SPYING, SWIFT, AND HOW NOT TO RUN A BREAKAWAY CIVILIZATION

Regulars at this site will be aware that I have previously blogged about the implications of the Snowden-NSA revelations, and I have spoken to these implications on some of my News and Views from the Nefarium as well. One of the recurrent themes that I have stressed - courtesy of an insight of Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts  and an insight I myself developed in Covert Wars and Breakaway Civilizations - is that such electronic eavesdropping capability is the ultimate insider trading mechanism. It is, moreover, the ultimate data-mining operation to be able to game out "world prediction scenarios" with accuracy. No computer algorithm or program, even that of the massed and networked supercomputers doubtless at the disposal of agencies like the NSA, can spit out accurate scenarios if the data input is bad or non-existent. We'll get back to that point, because it concerns us in a major way here.

For how, however, our point remains focused on the "insider trading" aspects of this. Regular readers here will recall that I repeatedly noted that the BRICSA entente, if they were to be an effective weight and counterpoise to the enormous financial and political power of the Anglo-American power oligarchy, would have to develop its own international bank(s) and eventually its own competitive clearing systems, independent of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transfer) in Europe and CHIPS (Clearing House Interbank Payment System) in North America.

Now, in the wake of the Syria mess and Snowden revelations, Russia Today is reporting this:

NSA ‘Follow the Money’ branch spied on Visa customers, SWIFT transactions – report

Notice that the ultimate source here is Snowden, via Der Spiegel in Germany:

"Referring to information leaked by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor, German Der Spiegel reports that the surveillance was carried out  by a branch called "Follow the Money" (FTM).

"After the information on transactions was obtained, it was redirected to the NSA's own financial database, called "Tracfin".

"According to the leaked documents, in 2011 the database contained 180 million records, with 84 percent of those being credit card transactions details.

"Among the millions of records, the NSA's Tracfin’s also contained data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). Used to conduct business operations “with speed, certainty and confidence”, this global financial service is used by more than 10,000 banking organizations in 212 countries.

"The NSA spied on SWIFT on several levels, involving its "tailored access operations" division, according to the report in Der Spiegel. Reading 'SWIFT printer traffic from numerous banks,' was just one of the ways the NSA was accessing the information.

One of the NSA’s goals was to 'collect, parse and ingest transactional data for priority credit card associations, focusing on priority geographic regions.'

"According to documents dated 2010, the agency was spying on large credit card companies’ customers, Der Spiegel adds. In particular, the NSA was getting access to transactions by Visa Inc. customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Reportedly, speaking at an internal conference that year, NSA analysts described in detail how the search through the US company's complex transaction network for tapping possibilities was conducted."

At one level, of course, it could be argued that the NSA is simply doing its job and monitoring financial traffic in the regions most suspected to be coupled to international terrorism.  But at the deeper level, the revelations of spying via SWIFT, is a tacit and roundabout confirmation of the implications raised on this website in earlier blogs and videos: such a mechanism would allow, in real time, an accurate picture of large scale international movements of capital, and therefore, constitute the ultimate insider trading mechanism.

The implications of this revelation - and their reportage in RT - would seem to be to be rather profound, and of a geopolitical nature, if we are allowed to indulge in our usual high octane speculation. To point out electronic spying via the vast system of international clearing will, in my opinion, only hasten plans of such nations in the BRICSA entente like Brazil, to severe their internet entirely from that of the USA, precisely in order to secure their citizens' communications and their own national security.

A competitive mechanism of international clearing for those nations will not be far behind, and with it, the temptation to expand their own electronic surveillance capabilities, for face it folks, those capabilities exist; almost every major power has them in some degree, and every major power will use them.  The question is the extent of trust that the public will invest in their public institutions, and in the West, these are at all time lows.

Which brings us back to our first point: non-existent, or, in another scenario, bad data input. There are stupid voices out there -colossally stupid voices as we'll see in a moment - calling for a regulation of the Internet. But the ability of a command and control culture and economy decreases exponentially as the amount of accurate feedback and data decreases. It will not do to have your magnificent Five Year Plans reporting that a tractor factory in Pinsk is manufacturing 75 tractors per month(because that's what it was designed to do), when in fact, it is only making 12 per month, but, you don't report the vast difference, lest the apparatchiks come banging on your door in the middle of the night and haul you off to the Lubyanka for "slacking."  Fear breeding corruption breeding inaccurate data, breeding collapse.

The whole point of having the Ultimate Insider Trading Mechanism, folks, is accurate  data input. Regulation is that first step on the road to the tractor factory in Pinsk, and to the corruption of your wonderful money-making machine. When trust begins to crumble, and is reinforced through "regulation" of what ideas are safe, and what are not "convenient", then the process of decision-making changes, the data collection becomes skewed, and eventually, your World Sentient Programs are gaming out scenarios increasingly disconnected from reality...

... indeed, maybe that's ultimately why our leaders seem so insane, because the results being spit out from those Crays are already corrupted, like the officials for whom the reports are compiled.

See you on the -  Oh... one more thing. I have no idea if there's a tractor factory at Pinsk (it's in the western Pripyat marshes, for those interested), but who else but a bunch of Marxist-Stalinist kookoos would build a tractor factory in a swamp? So it seemed as likely a place as any...

...See you on the flip side.

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

19 Comments

  1. Frankie Calcutta on September 23, 2013 at 7:17 am

    Each new baby gets an extra dose of special mitochondrial DNA? Oy vey! I think I would get into the gefilte fish business. I would expect demand to go through the roof when these babies come of age. I couldn’t think of a more apocalyptic future scenario than the whole world becomes a giant Brooklyn. It would be the most annoying planet in the galaxy and possibly the universe. Then of course, those off-planet geneticists who seeded a portion of humanity a while back with this special mitochondrial DNA will return and now claim ownership of all special DNA carriers. Maybe Steven Speilberg’s recent Lincoln movie and its emphasis on the emancipation proclamation was actually not intended to be propaganda to stir up racial unrest, but instead a rallying cry against portended future enslavement?

    I think about all those Indigo Children we heard so much about a while back and how they were supposed to come and save humanity when they grew up. What a flop they turned out to be. I know a woman who always claimed her son was an indigo child. Now he is grown up, lives in her basement, and is addicted to video games and energy drinks. I even heard the brains behind the dollar store blight was born an indigo child. What a curse on humanity he turned out to be. I suspect these genetically modified babies will windup being like Woody Allen on steroids. The human container, for the most part, is just not equipped for this special mitochondrial DNA. It makes the carrier insane.



    • jedi on September 26, 2013 at 4:01 pm

      there is no record of the real ones….ie mommy wouldnt know.



  2. shockandawe on September 21, 2013 at 7:34 pm

    Recalling the mysterious death of the hacker who demonstrated on stage (Los Vegas?) how he could control ATM’s via telephone. He came in through the back door via the telephone lines interconnecting the ATM’s. NSA intercepting the printer traffic….

    Look at the vast amounts of empty data storage capacity the NSA, etc. have, simply waiting for more garbage in.

    My old song again… Adiabatic Quantum Computers. The initial purpose and intent for their R&D, and manufacture was…. to model human, societal behavioral patterns, for advantage in the markets.

    Coupling the above items, one can see, that as long as you are gathering all the garbage data, computers have now reached the level of being able to sort it all. Much like mining for flakes of gold.

    Now, one can easily sort the “wheat from the tares”.

    Yes Doc, I am coding my linguistics!



  3. Jon on September 21, 2013 at 11:49 am

    “I have no idea if there’s a tractor factory at Pinsk (it’s in the western Pripyat marshes, for those interested), but who else but a bunch of Marxist-Stalinist kookoos would build a tractor factory in a swamp?”

    That’s easy – a capitalist who owns swamp land! He gets his bought dogs in the local government to buy the land at a premium for an “industrial Park,” then cons some poor tractor manufacturer from a long way off to commit to building the plant. By careful legal manipulation, and use of tax regulations and such, the tractor maker gets tax rebates for “creating jobs,” the land owner makes a killing getting useless swamp land off his hands, and when the factory fails, they blame it on too expensive labor and restrictive environmental laws regarding preserving swamp land, then take huge tax breaks on their loss and get government (read “taxpayer”) help in relocating the plant- happens all the time. Remember ther Reagan and Bush I years?

    There are already many quiet movements to game the “data miners” by corrupting the data set. There are a lot of people who intentionally put conflicting and contrary data into the system whenever possible. Not to mention all the errors which creep in due to poor programming (medical data systems in particular), non-native language data entry clerks, file corruption, incorrect serach algorithms, and so on.

    Anyone who has ever tried to correct their data in some government or business data base knows whereof I speak.

    To make matters worse, a lot of these bozos think that computer data is God’s own word – computers can’t be wrong! After more than 30 years working with computers, I’m here to tell you they screw up all the time – I don’t trust them. ( I still do most of my writing on paper first before transfering it to computer. Despite all the heavy “meme” pushing about the “paperless office,” paper is still a very mature and robust technology, and those who truly understand technology know this. We simply do not have a digital technology as robust and mature as paper – or clay tablets, for that matter!)

    Electronic data is extremely ephemeral, to use Bucky Fuller’s term. Without power and the proper machine to read it, electronic data is worse than useless. Even microfilm and microfiche are more robust.

    One project I’ve always wanted to do, if I ever won a big lotto jackpot or married a billionaire heiress, would be to “back up” all the most important writings and knowledge of the human race onto some kind of metal or ceramic format, something which could withstand the ravages of time (like clay tablets), and include grammars and language primers with each cache. This way, after we blow ourselves up or get “bombed back to the stone age” by some moron, we could jumpstart civilization again, hopefully with more sense and a shorter learning curve. (Assuming our jailers allow that.)

    I would also add plenty of texts warning about all the dangers we had seen, like JPF’s books, and others in the field, as well as narratives explaining the ptifalls, crooks, manipulations, plots, conspiracies, etc., which can happen, and how to avoid, or least remain aware of, them.

    I wonder if that would actually work, or if the new humanity would make the same stupid mistakes all over again? I guess this is what parents of teenagers go through . . . .

    Maybe these cycles exist for a reason, or are just a part of the natural course of events.



    • Frankie Calcutta on September 21, 2013 at 7:06 pm

      Jon,

      I admire your magnanimous instincts. Unfortunately, if you “backed up” all the most important writings and knowledge of the human race onto some kind of metal or ceramic format,” some future version of a conquistador or yahweh fundamentalist would be given the marching orders to seek it out and destroy it. Your best bet would be to hide the most crucial information for the advancement of our species in plain site in the form of myths and sanctioned scriptures and hope that future generations can decode it. Or else put it out of reach on another planet. I personally would put all this backed up info on a perpetually returning comet along with an ethno bomb aimed at those alien stewards who are always trying to keep us Earthmen down.



  4. marcos toledo on September 21, 2013 at 10:57 am

    As the old saying goes garbage in garbage out GIGO. One wonders what fantasies and lies are being feed to our elites or they what to believe. We are in for a wild roller coaster ride.



  5. MQ on September 21, 2013 at 10:39 am


    • MQ on September 21, 2013 at 11:50 am

      Oh, and I found this little gem as well:
      http://presscore.ca/2012/washington-dc-navy-yard-shooting-linked-to-attempted-arrest-of-obama-for-treason.html

      Check out this excerpt:
      Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ABC News Aug 27, 2013: “A massive and “serious” cyber attack on the U.S. homeland is coming, and a natural disaster — the likes of which the nation has never seen — is also likely on its way.“
      The only way anyone could know that there is “a natural disaster — the likes of which the nation has never seen — is also likely on its way” is if you are the one planning and preparing it.
      “You also will have to prepare for the increasing likelihood of more weather-related events of a more severe nature as a result of climate change, and continue to build the capacity to respond to potential disasters in far-flung regions of the country occurring at the same time.



      • Margaret on September 22, 2013 at 12:36 am

        MQ, adding to your little gem – “attempted arrest of Obama for treason” – this reported but unverified: “Meltdown in Washington: President Obama Reported Sedated Following Emotional Breakdown”
        http://nationalreport.net/meltdown-washington-president-obama-reported-sedated-following-emotional-breakdown/



        • LSM on September 22, 2013 at 9:37 am

          no-one can touch Obama for whatever reason; if my read sources are correct the USA has been turned from a sovereign state into a corporation since the Act of 1871-

          that’s why his birth cerficat is irrelvevant; the CEO of a corporation can be born anyware on this planet; hence the silence of the bought-and-paid-for US Supreme Court on this issue-

          so is Obama himself having a nervous breakdown or his ‘double’?-

          are we to naively assumet if the top “N**zs had doubles things are different nowadays?- hardly- look at how Obama has been rarely filmed with the scars on his head but mostly not-

          so how many of us have not yet considered that most important politicians nowadays may have doubles?-

          very few-

          as if the world is different nowadays



          • Don B on September 22, 2013 at 11:04 am

            Larry,

            I agree Obama is not going anywhere because we can’t afford a race riot which is what would ensue if he is impeached or assassinated. If you remember G W Bush got a bit giddy the last years of his watch. The job is becoming too much for a person for 8 years. The degraded mental capacity doesn’t just apply to the average Joe, it also applies to our leaders. I have very little faith that we will pull out of this moral and mental quagmire. If 10% are awake, and I doubt that figure, it is not enough. Times are different now than in Colonial times as we are under a complete control grid now. Anyway, stay well over there.

            db



      • Robert Barricklow on September 22, 2013 at 10:00 am

        In Robert W. McChesney’s new book Digital Disconnect he says that China uses censorship via the internet by making the user go through alot of hoops, and each hoop is designed to be a long process(likend to a slow boat to China). Well this link to presscore.ca story was a slow boat to china for my computer. Which tells me it must be good. It was fantastic! Great Link.
        Thanks MQ.



      • Margaret on September 22, 2013 at 10:27 am

        Ditto MQ, thanks, I like the presscore.ca site too … independent reporting, will stop by often. While looking around I saw another interesting juxtaposition of events noted on their exposé page http://expose.presscore.ca.
        DHS scheduled a training exercise “Active Shooter Workshop-DC” on Sept. 19th just three blocks away from where the Navy yard incident took place on Sept. 16th. Too coincidental?
        [fyi RB I didn’t find the site slow to load or navigate altho’ lately the net has been very sluggish]



        • Robert Barricklow on September 22, 2013 at 2:29 pm

          It isn’t slow on sites I frequent. But at times I select to venture off-the-beaten-path i find some odd behavior in sites that are like presscore. I think there is some “chinese{read usa reverse projection]” algorithm that slows down “behavoirs” that might say/the hell with it, and move on. I don’t. If anything I’am dogged in my behavoir. Wave the sock/Forget about it! Take the sock away/I’am all over it!
          So, cut to the chase Margaret:
          Goldfinger, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action.

          Bye the bye, most of your posts I find myself in tune with. If not, I looking at myself in the mirror and wondering/where I went wrong.



          • Margaret on September 25, 2013 at 10:22 pm

            Your kind words are much appreciated Robert, it’s mutual … and likewise …



          • Robert Barricklow on September 27, 2013 at 1:32 pm

            Your too kind and have got a lot of claas.



          • Robert Barricklow on September 27, 2013 at 1:35 pm

            Well, it seems I can’t change my spots or spelling/”Class”.

            Back to skool for me.



  6. Robert Barricklow on September 21, 2013 at 10:35 am

    In the past deregulation was ipso facto
    decrimilinaluzation.



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