The Crackdown Cometh – by Matt Taibbi – Racket News

You ll read a lot in the coming days about the dangers of apps like Discord, or of online gaming groups, which counterintelligence officials told the Washington Post today are a magnet for spies. The Leaker tale will also surely be framed as reason to pass the RESTRICT Act, the wet dream of creepazoid Virginia Senator Mark Warner, which would give government wide latitude to crack down on communication technology creating undue or unacceptable risk to national security.

The intelligence community has itself been massively interfering in domestic news using illegal leaks for years. Remember the Why Did Obama Dawdle on Russia s Hacking? story by David Ignatius of the Washington Post in January of 2017, outing would-be Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had been captured in intercepts speaking with a Russian ambassador? That was just the first in a string of leak- or intercept-based news stories that dominated news cycles in the Trump years, involving everything from conclusions of the FISA court to supposedly secret meetings in the Seychelles.

When civilians or whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange (in jail for an incredible four years now), Reality Winner and now the Discord Leaker bring leaked information to the public, the immediate threat is Espionage Act charges and decades of jail time. When a CIA head or a top FBI official does it, it s just news. In fact, officials talk openly about using strategic leaks as a P.R. staple. In a world where media currency is becoming the ultimate power, these people want a monopoly. It s infuriating.

Watch how this thing will be spun. It s going to get ugly fast.

via www.racket.news