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"The Week" ran a full page article on the NSA (National Security Agency). The article says that the NSA is trying to shake its image as the least understood agency of the government.
The NSA is collecting electronic intelligence from the world-- computers, faxes, telephones etc. Being connected to the modern world is a risk via the long arm of u.$. repression.
"In 2003, the NSA had flagged 10 different cell phones used by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. When his voice matched with one of the numbers, the agency used satellites to triangulate his position and grab him." The NSA can also turn on microphones on cell phones and "Wired" reports that the NSA has devices to see into almost any electronic device. Likewise, an editor working for an Indian publication says that someone videotaped his wife and put the videotape up on the Internet. Such stories are not paranoia but in fact part of how the class war goes today. The NSA and other spy agencies will not always admit to the facts, because they would like their quarry to be unaware of NSA efforts.
In the past, vans filled with men and equipment spied on MIM and others. Today, Internet and telephone cables provide much more information more quickly. Visiting the MIM website can make one the object of a scan by the NSA.
For this reason it is important to emit false or trivial information. Since 9/11, MIM has talked many times about how the imperialists can collect all the information they want, but doing something with it is another question entirely. So the struggle against NSA spying is not futile. Quite the contrary, the more NSA spying, the more the economic crisis of imperialism accelerates.
The NSA has 30 to 40,000 employees, twice what the CIA has. NSA employees are more math-oriented than the CIA employees. MIM has reported on spy numbers before. The NSA by itself has more people than all Amerikans calling themselves communist or social-democratic combined. Despite this fact, much strategic and related ideological thinking has yet to catch up. Even people calling themselves "Leninist" often buy into a Liberal or white nationalist view of the united $tates as a free country, perhaps with an occasional aberration. These are people as yet too stupid to be worth discussing politics with directly.
Elbow-to-elbow with spies here in the united $tates, the proletarian camp pretty much has no independence of action. Our central task is to "create public opinion and the independent institutions of the oppressed to seize power." Other organizations in the united $tates have given up on not being state-sponsored. Without saying so and while continuing to use fancy rhetoric, many U.$.-based organizations in fact rely on the state for their own who-oriented intelligence and even their line on questions such as weapons of mass destruction. Most of the attempts at politics we see inside u.$. borders are state-generated.
For this reason, it would be more accurate for Third World comrades to write off the united $tates entirely (including MIM) than to fall for any stupid rhetoric out of supposed communists, socialists or other anti- imperialists in the united $tates. In all likelihood, failing to do this will make one an appendage of the CIA. Even in a rare instance where we might have some success in the struggle, in the foreseeable future that cannot mean a mass movement coming to power in the united $tates. Successful communist movements can at best elevate their leaders to becoming leading imperialists inside the united $tates. Since that fails to change the mode of production, obviously such "success" would be temporary and tactical in nature.
Note:
"America's Most Secret Agency," The Week, 31Aug2007,
http://www.theweekmagazine.com/news/articles/news.aspx?ArticleID=2241