§2. Notes on Mass Surveillance and Foreign Policy Monetization, 2008 - 2010
Charitable Pretense Dropped
The NSA's data storage facility at Bluffdale, Utah, houses more than a yottabyte of data, equivalent to 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text. The data comes from snooping on every form of communication, every transaction that passes through telephone lines or wireless connections, every keystroke touched by every person in America, accessed by geostationary satellites, intercepts at switching centers, and cell-phone towers.
With the prospect of a Constitutionally impaired president, the spy agencies vastly expanded their surveillance and influence. Future CIA Director John Brennan and future President Barack Obama formed an alliance whose first overt act was the cleansing of the latter's passport records. Soon after, legislation repealing the Constitutional protection against 'unreasonable searches and seizures' was passed, while the U.S. economy was in full meltdown after the bankruptcies of the fourth- and fifth-largest investment banks. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts established by the stealth legislation later operated as a parallel though secret Supreme Court, enabling illegal investigations by the FBI on its own initiative, driven by its officials' personal biases and political preferences.
These years also saw atomic deal-making allowing Russia to acquire control of one-fourth of the uranium in North America, in secret exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. Thus began the monetization of U.S. foreign policy at the highest levels, which blossomed into systematic exchanges of policy favors for investments in companies controlled by politicians' family members, the pretense of charitable purpose having been dropped.
When Clinton's atomic deal with Russia was exposed about five years later, Clinton campaign advisor John Podesta suggested attributing collusion with Russia to Donald Trump, by fabricating non-existent relationships and having the spy agencies solemnly pore over the suspicious details contrived for their investigation. Details for a widely circulated 'dossier' were obligingly supplied by a 'sub-source', one Igor Danchenko, an employee of the Brookings Institution who had offered jobs in the incoming Obama Administration to his co-workers. Future Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein was acquainted with him by virtue of having arrested and prosecuted him for disorderly behavior in public.
Timeline: §2. Monetization of U.S. Foreign Policy, 2008 - June 2010: