William Barr Wants to Kill Privacy and Security…’For the Children’

U.S. Attorney General William Barr, along with co-conspirators in the UK and Australia, recently wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg requesting he not move forward with a plan to implement end-to-end encryption across Facebook’s messaging services. A draft of the letter was published earlier this month by Buzzfeed, and it’s worth examining in some detail.

What immediately strikes you is the letter’s emphasis on “protecting the children,” a talking point universally used by authoritarians throughout history to justify both a reduction of public liberty and a transfer of increased power to the state. Though this tactic is transparent and well understood by those paying attention, it’s nevertheless disturbing to observe Barr’s disingenuous and shameless use of it (the words ‘child’ and ‘children’ appear 17 times in the course of this brief letter).

Here’s just one example from the letter:

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A Few Thoughts on Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Suicide’

Did you wear a black armband
When they shot the man
Who said “peace could last forever”
And in my first memories
They shot Kennedy
I went numb when I learned to see
So I never fell for Vietnam
We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all
That you can’t trust freedom
When it’s not in your hands
When everybody’s fightin’
For their promised land

Guns N’ Roses, Civil War

You know things are getting really weird when news of Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a New York City prison operated by the U.S. Department of Justice is the least surprising part of the whole story. Countless people, including myself, assumed this exact sort of thing would happen. Then, just like that, he’s gone.

I continue to think the players involved with Epstein in what appears to have been an intelligence-linked blackmail operation, as well as those at risk of being exposed in more detail, are simply too powerful and connected to the institutions that run this country (and others) for us to ever get real answers. It’s cynical and depressing, but based on what I’ve seen over the past couple of decades, it’s the most likely outcome.

Rule of law in America? Don’t be ridiculous. There are rulers and the ruled. Which bucket do you think you’re in?

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