Encryption Key To The Kingdom

After Super Bowl 50 aired, I received many emails asking me if I was going to do my annual analysis of the commercials involved and what it all means for future events. Of course, I have said that the event can be used as an oracle, and I am sure there are few people think I am crazy, but tonight I think what I am about to tell you gives me reason to believe I am on to something. Now you have to forgive me, because in order to prove my point, we have to use our memory of a Super Bowl that happened 32 years ago.

During the 1984 Super Bowl between the Washington Redskins and the Miami Dolphins, there was a revolutionary ad campaign that was produced by Apple called, “1984.” If you recall, the commercial opens with a dystopian, industrial setting that is reminiscent of the old Fritz Lang movie, Metropolis.

People are marching in unison to a large telescreen with what appears to be a large talking head giving orders to the brainwashed herd and immediately you realize that this is some sort of 1984 metaphor.

Suddenly, an alarm is heard and we see a runner that looks like a track and field athlete wearing orange and white which is a sharp contrast to the gray and bleak images we first see. There is a picture of what appears to be Apple’s Macintosh computer on her white tank top.

She is carrying a brass-headed hammer and is being chased by security police, wearing black uniforms, protected by riot gear, helmets with visors covering their faces, and armed with large night sticks. She races towards a large screen with the image of a Big Brother-like figure giving a speech.

The Big Brother image tells the brainwashed minions the following:

“Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology—where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!”

The runner, now close to the screen, hurls the hammer towards it, right at the moment Big Brother announces, “We shall prevail!” There is an explosion and the shattering glass and dust files, none of the minions flinch and an announcer says at the end of the ad:

“On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

Now, times have changed.

The Big Brother spirit of 1984 has plagued Apple and other computer giants since it was first revealed by Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency had been using personal computers in their surveillance data collecting efforts.

Today, we are seeing that the ad we saw in 1984 is beginning to come true.

In 2014, Apple announced it was throwing away the encryption keys that had previously allowed it to help law enforcement unlock customers’ iPhones.

At the time, the company was trying to beef up its reputation for customer security in the wake of revelations that it had participated in the National Security Administration’s data collection efforts.

It is as if the Apple runner had thrown the brass hammer at Big Brother – and now it looks as if they have brought a bigger hammer because they are now being ordered to unlock security codes to help the government get more information on an alleged terrorist.

A federal judge ordered Apple Inc. to help the U.S. Justice Department unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. Federal investigators haven’t been able to unlock the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who The FBI says carried out the December. 2, 2015 shooting that killed 14 people at a local government holiday party, the government said in a filing in federal court in Riverside, California. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym ordered Apple to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to the FBI to recover information from the phone.

Farook was using an iPhone 5c owned by the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health with an iOS 9 operating system. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were eventually killed in a gun battle with police after the attack. The Justice Department wants Apple to provide customized software that will prevent the data on the phone from being deleted after 10 attempts to input the pass code. The software also must enable agents to send electronic pass codes to the phone, rather than manually typing them in, according to the application. The software will allow agents to automatically enter multiple pass codes to get around the encryption standards.

For the first time, the government is requesting Apple write brand new code that eliminates key features of iPhone security features that protect consumers that are using Apple iPhones around the world.

Even though we are told that Apple is supposed to create new software to hack the phone of an alleged dead terrorist, it would also provide access to any phone on this planet including those owned by people the US has no jurisdiction over in the first place.

Those who support this measure say that they will only be required to provide the software for just on phone and that is the phone of Farook and that national security should have access to the phone’s security system in order to foil future terrorist attacks.

Once again, giving the surveillance state more power after they failed in preventing this attack with all of their other inroads to security and fourth amendment violations.

Essentially, the government is asking Apple to create a master key. A key that will not only open up security features on the phone of a dead terrorist, it will be a pass key that will literally be the key to the kingdom.

This key would be the mechanism that unlocks all security features and it would be certain that our government would ask to use it and abuse it again and again. It could be used as a key to unlock other phones, and this power would be used to turn against any software or device that has the where with all to offer strong security.

This is not an overreaction – it is the warning about the slippery slope that we have gone down before.

If anyone remembers, I did a program about the Octopus, the story about investigative reporter Danny Casolaro. The account of the Octopus conspiracy was reported by Kenn Thomas and the late Jim Keith.

Danny Casolaro was just a reporter that stumbled onto a story that would cost him his life.

Casolaro’s investigation began with his inquiry into the case of Inslaw, from whom the U.S. Justice Department stole a software package called PROMIS and sold it to governments and financial institutions around the world, after modifying it to provide a back door by which they would track the movement of money and other assets everywhere.

It was the ultimate surveillance software.

PROMIS is short for “Prosecutors Management Information System. The super intelligence and surveillance software was created by Bill and Nancy Hamilton who formed a company called INSLAW. The software was created under contract of the U.S. Government for $10 million dollars. After the software was installed in the U.S. attorney General’s office – the Justice Department refused to pay for the software.

After entanglements with the creators of PROMIS – a company called, Hadron owned by Attorney General Ed Meese tried to purchase the PROMIS software and try to lease it out for $500 million dollars to the same justice department that refused to pay $10 million dollars for it.

Danny Casolaro had to track the spread of the PROMIS package to follow the people who are following the money, and in so doing, illustrated the links in the network of criminal influence around the world and back to their origins, the way a physician might use an angiogram to reveal the blood flows in a human body.

The Hamilton’s refused the offer but somehow PROMIS eventually found its way into foreign law enforcement computers.

Casolaro wanted to investigate the INSLAW scandal and found that the PROMIS affair had so many conspiracies ties to it; he compared it to an Octopus with every tentacle involved in criminal malfeasance.

PROMIS created what he called a BIG BROTHER master file – where political dissidents, tax protesters, whistle blowers, reporters and conspiracy theorists were listed as potential threats to the government.

So history shows us that that the CIA and other government alphabet agencies will do anything to get some sort of electronic backdoor advantage against their enemies, their allies and American citizens.

The U.S. government wants us to believe they can be trusted and that it won’t misuse their power once they get the encryption key from Apple. But using the Octopus example, we can all imagine the innumerable ways this backdoor software could be abused.

What the government wants is a master key.

Even if you trust the U.S. government, once this master key is created, governments around the world will surely demand that Apple undermine the security of their citizens as well.

This reminds me of how Agent Smith in the Matrix movies tried to hack into Morpheus’ brain so that he could get the access keys into the Zion program. He could use many methods to get in, but he wanted Morpheus to give up the keys in order to have power over him. The keys would then open the Zion program so that he could control it and then eventually destroy it.

This of course is metaphoric predictive programming and there is an ironic bit of political subterfuge and obvious mocking of what Apple promised when it released its Super Bowl ad back on January 22, 1984.

Who would have thought that a Super Bowl ad made 32 years ago would be this prophetic?

Encryption without back doors is a standard feature of web browsers and easily available for emails and hard drives. And building a back door accessible to the FBI opens the possibility that more repressive governments will ask Apple for the same favor in order to access their citizens’ communications.

The US District Court in California ordered Apple to create software that could be loaded onto Farook’s iPhone in order to unlock the device described as a “skeleton key” to the encrypted data.

The government argued that it could create software that would work only once on one phone. But Apple, in a statement, said even creating the technique is too big of a threat, because it could easily be reused on any phone.

But taking a security bite of Apple now is quite revealing as we learn that information like this is selective.

Why has the NSA chosen this particular case as the case to create a software key?

Has the NSA or the FBI ever asked Apple to hack any of the suspect’s phones that are involved with any of the thousands of gang related murder cases in Chicago or Detroit?

To my knowledge, there doesn’t seem to be a call for a hacking Key to dig into the phones of the drug cartels.

How about hacking into UBS Trader Tom Hayes superior’s phone? We could find out a whole lot about the Libor scandal.

How about Hillary Clinton’s phone or the President’s phone and the conversations they had about Benghazi.

You see, the thing is Big Brother is okay, when it is they who wish to use it against alleged dead terrorists. It is once again an example of how our government expects to be rewarded with the stripping of our privacy rights because they fail at keeping people safe.

I ask again, why do we constantly believe that it is okay to reward our government with whatever they desire, when they fail to protect us?

When another attack or spiking event happens on American soil and we know that one most assuredly will. Are we going to continue to stampede like sheep to the State for security, bleating to them that we need to be shorn of our remaining liberties?

Can we please turn down amplified opinions of the fake terrified media talking heads who expect you to be terrified of the terrifying terrorists so that they can provide a solution of more surveillance and an omnipotent security state?

Do you really want to see a government with permanent security powers that will play a unconstitutional game of peek-a-boo in order to imprison you or have you shot without due process?

Privacy is a cornerstone of democracy and a fourth amendment right. We infringe upon that right, because of some special case and soon it will be routine. Why on earth would anyone support more police powers when the alphabet agencies cannot even be effective in keeping us safe with the privacy rights we have already given up to aid in the fight against terrorism?

Does the situation in San Bernardino give the State the right to run rampant over privacy and liberty?

Not only did the San Bernardino shooting trigger more calls for the whittling away at the second amendment – there seems to be no outcry for the defense of the fourth amendment, and if agents would have allowed the suspects their 14th amendment rights, we would have given them a trial, and there wouldn’t have been the debate on whether or not it is right that Apple is trying to prevent 1984 style malfeasance.

Text – Check out Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis Live Nightly @ http://www.groundzeromedia.org