2013 Winter ICT Educator Conference - YouTube Presentation Links

YouTube video conversions are complete for presentations from the Winter 2013 ICT Educator Conference in San Francisco.  These provide excellent exposure to resources, content and best practices from ICT industry and ICT educators from across the country.

  

You can download an agenda from the event with embedded links to YouTube presentations here, or following is a list of presentations and links.  Check them out!

 

2013 Winter ICT Educator Conference – Jan 3, 2013

 

1) Society 3.0, Technology Transformations in Society, Work and Higher Education

·        Dr. Tracey Wilen-Daugenti, VP and Managing Director, Apollo Research Institute

 

2) Doing What Matters for ICT Education

·        James Jones, Executive Director, Mid-Pacific ICT Center (MPICT)

3) Meet the New Windows Client – Windows 8

·        Douglas Spindler, IT Instructor, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, California

 

4) Cybersecurity Track Intro and National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Framework

·        Casey O'Brien, Director, National Cyberwatch Center

·        Peggy Maxson, Director, National Cybersecurity Education Strategy, Department of Homeland Security

 

5) ACM CCECC IT Core Competencies Project

·        Robert Campbell, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, New York

6) CPATH and Computational Thinking: Road to the Future

·        Gary Hartley, Dean, Instruction and Technology, Folsom Lake College, Folsom, California

 

7) Using an Interactive Animated Module to Teach Animation Principles to Community College Digital Media Students

·        Daniel Boulos, Assistant Professor, University of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii

 

8) EMC Academic Alliance’s Storage and Cloud Courses Supported by NDG’s NETLAB+

·        Kim Yohannan, Academic Alliance Manager, EMC Corporation, Hopkinton, Massachusetts

·        Rich Weeks, President, Network Development Group

 

9) Coursera: Education for Everyone

·        Relly Brandman, Course Operations, Coursera, Mountain View, California

 

10) Leadership Styles and Security Issues in Small Businesses

·        Debasis Bhattacharya, Interim Vice Chancellor of IT and ICT Faculty, University of Hawaii Maui College, Kahului, Hawaii

 

11) Interactive Internet for 'Small and Medium' Business

·        Stephen Wright, State Director iima4biz, EWD, Thousand Oaks, California

12) Soft Skills: Satisfying the Need in Southern Nevada

·        Warren Hioki, Executive Director, Academic Affairs, College of Southern Nevada, North Las Vegas, Nevada

 

13) Test Drive VMware View (VDI) Hands On Labs

·        Rick Watson, Instruction Support Facilitator, VMware IT Academy Program, Palo Alto, California

 

14) Integrative Programming: The (Oftentimes) Missing Link

·        Ricardo M. Checchi, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston, MA

 

15) Get a Job and Make a Career in Linux and Open Source

·        Ross Branson, Director of Member Services, Linux Professional Institute, CA

 

16) Data Breaches and Password Hashes

·        Sam Bowne, Instructor, CNIT Dept., CCSF, San Francisco, California

 

17) E-books and Mobile Apps for Technician Education (E-MATE)

·        Michael Qaissaunee, Professor and Chair, Engineering and Technology, Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey

 

18) StRUT -Students Recycling Used Technology (ICT Public/Private Partnership)

·        Richard Grotegut, Professor, Ohlone College, Fremont, California

 

19) Teaching Cloud Computing Concepts

·        William Saichek, Professor, Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, California

 

20) California's Open Textbook Legislation to Expand Student Access and Fuel Faculty Innovation

·        Una Daly, Director of Community College Outreach, Open Courseware Consortium, Saratoga, California

 

21) Strengthening Transfer: A Case Study

·        Deborah Boisvert, Executive Director, BATEC

·        Ricardo M. Checchi, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA

 

22) Capacity Building in Cybersecurity

·        Corrinne Sande, CIS Program Coordinator, Whatcom Community College, Bellingham, Washington

 

23) Strengthening Pathways to ICT Education and Careers in San Francisco

·        Olivia Herriford, Associate Director, Mid-Pacific ICT Center, San Francisco, CA

·        Beth Cataldo, Coordinator, Multimedia Studies Program, CCSF, San Francisco, CA

·        Evan Decker, SF ICT Pathways SFUSD Liaison, MPICT, San Francisco, California

·        Ursula Bischoff, Senior Program Associate, WestEd/TechSF, San Francisco, CA

·        Ingrid Dahl, Director NextGen Programs, BAVC, San Francisco, California

 

24) YouTube - Record, Edit and Caption with Your Browser

·        Donna Eyestone, Instructional Designer, CCSF, San Francisco, California

 

25) Introducing Windows Server 2012 to Technology Instructors

·        Douglas Spindler, IT Instructor, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, California

 

26) New Opportunities in Storage & Data Management Education & Careers

·        Mark Conway, Sr. Program Lead, Academic Alliances, NetApp, Lincoln, MA

 

27) Industry Partnerships: The Impact of Cisco Networking Academy Inside & Outside of The Classroom

·        John Bjerke, Area Academy Manager, Cisco, San Jose, California

 

28) Cyber Security Training and the Gender Gap

·        Tony Coulson, Professor, Cal State San Bernardino, San Bernardino, California

 

29) Making SLO Progress: Where and How to Integrate Cloud Computing into Your College’s ICT Curriculum

·        Markus Geissler, Professor, Computer Information Science, Cosumnes River College, Sacramento, California

 

30) Integrating Career Pathways via Bridge Programs

·        Ingrid Dahl, Director, Next Gen, Bay Area Video Coalition, San Francisco, CA

 

31) Virtualization Approach for Online ICT Courses

·        Erick Spengler, PI, CSSIA Center

·        Julie Hietschold, Virtual Lab Manager, Collin Community College

 

32) Teaching VoIP on the Cheap - Version 2

·        William Saichek, Professor, Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, California

 

33) The College of Southern Nevada’s “TechKnoHow Lab”

·        Linda Foreman, Sociology Professor, College of Southern Nevada, North Las Vegas, Nevada

 

34) Collaboration as a Means to Build Capacity: Maryland’s K-12 Cybersecurity Pathway

·        Davina Pruitt-Mentle, Ex Director ETPRO/Co-PI National CyberWatch Center, ETPRO/NCW, Clarksville, Maryland

 

35) Empathy is not for Sissies! Improving ICT Education with Empathy and Perspective

·        Carol Engler, Associate Professor, Educational Administration, Ashland University, Columbus, Ohio

 

36) Tuning Up Your IT Program: Using Partnership and Instructional Checkpoints

·        Louise Yarnall, Sr. Research Social Scientist, SRI International, Menlo Park, California

 

37) Problem-Based Learning & Deep Learning for Success in the 21st Century

·        JaneOstrander, PI, Destination PBL Project, Truckee Meadows Community College, Reno, Nevada

 

38) Test Drive VMware View (VDI) Hands On Labs

·        Rick Watson, Instruction Support Facilitator, VMware IT Academy Program, Palo Alto, California

 

 

 

2013 Winter ICT Educator Conference – Jan 4, 2013

 

1) Keynote: A Tale of Two Cities: The Convergence Between an Increase in Student Diversity, ICT Industry Pipeline Changes, and Small Business Growth in Federal IT Contracting.

·        Karl Cureton, Chairman, National Minority Technology Council, McLean, Virginia

 

2) Gain Insight into Today’s Workforce Needs through a Paid, Relevant, Rich, Revitalizing,

Summer Fellowship

·        Shari Liss, Education Director, Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education, Santa Clara, California

 

3) Using Stackable Certificates to Improve Completions

·        Ann Beheler, Executive Director Emerging Tech Grants, Collin College, Frisco, TX

·        Deborah Boisvert, Executive Director, BATEC National Center

 

4) To MOOC or not to MOOC –How Community College ICT Programs Can Leverage New Interaction Models

·        Una Daly, Director of Community College Outreach, Open Courseware Consortium, Saratoga, California

·        Dr. Preetha Ram, OpenStudy.org and Emory University

 

5) Jobs of the Future: A Look at the Information Security Workforce – 1

·        Laura Coleman, Project Manager, Los Rios Community College District, Center of Excellence, Sacramento, California

 

6) Improve Under-represented Student Success with MPICT’s ICT Diversity Toolkit

·        Olivia Herriford, Associate Director, Mid-Pacific ICT Center, San Francisco, CA

 

7) This is How We Do It: Teaching SAS® at Ohlone College

·        Meili Xu, Instructor, Ohlone College, Fremont, California

 

8) Delivering a Win-Win-Win Workforce with Agile Programming Methods

·        Ron Lichty, Co-Chair, Emerging Technology SIG, SVForum

 

9) Just the Basics, Please: Engaging Nontraditional and Special Population ICT Students

·        Elizabeth Wallner, Equity Consultant, Wallner Consulting Services/JSPAC, Sacramento, California

 

10) Leveraging resources in a grant challenged time

·        Laura Qaissaunee, Director, Grants and Institutional Development, Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey

·        Cheryl Dettrick, M.S., Grant Development Consultant, Resource Development Svcs.

 

11) Jobs of the Future: A Look at the Information Security Workforce – 2

·        Laura Coleman, Project Manager, Los Rios Community College District, Center of Excellence,  Sacramento, California

 

12) Introducing Junos Enablement: IOS to Junos OS: Better Prepare Your Students for Their Career in Networking

·        Nic Xenos, SrManager, Global Academic Alliances, Juniper Networks

 

13) Workshop: Using MIT App Inventor for Creative Engagement in Computer Science Courses – 1

·        Shaileen Pokress, Manager, Education Programs, MIT Center for Mobile Learning, Cambridge, Massachusetts

14) ICT Workforce Preparation for California Initiative

·        Bill Cullifer, Executive Director, WebProfessionals.org, Folsom, California

 

15) Engaging Students with Disabilities Using Universal Design Principles for Instruction

·        Donna Lange, Associate Professor, RIT/NTID, Rochester, New York

 

16) StudentCamps -Empower Your Students to Organize Their Own Regional Technology Conference.

·        David Nielsen, Co-founder, None, Mountain View, California

 

17) Impact of the NSF/ATE Cyber Security Centers on the US Cybersecurity Workforce

·        John Sands & Terryll Bailey, CSSIA

·        John Sener & Vera Zdravkovich, Cyberwatch National Center

 

18) Easily Add TCP-IP basics and Wireshark To Your class: How, What and Why

·        John Gonder, Cisco Academy Director, Las Positas College, Livermore, California

 

19) Workshop: Using MIT App Inventor for Creative Engagement in Computer Science Courses – 2

·        Shaileen Pokress, Manager, Education Programs, MIT Center for Mobile Learning, Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

20) Certifying Creativity: Driving College and Career-Readiness with the Adobe Certified Associate

·        Melissa Jones, WW Education Program Manager, Adobe, San Francisco, California

21) Completion Matters! Assisting Nontraditional & Special Population Students in Attaining their Education and Career Goals

·        Elizabeth Wallner, Equity Consultant, Wallner Consulting Services/JSPAC, Sacramento, California

 

22) The National Cyber League -Reflections After The First Year

·        Dan Manson, Professor, Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona, California

 

23) Benefits of Having Business Own Your Programs

·        Mark Dempsey, Program Manager, Collin College, Frisco, Texas

·        Ann Beheler, PI, Convergence Technology Center, Collin College, Frisco, TX

 

24) @One: Tools, Training and Opportunities to Improve ICT Education

·        Micah Orloff, Interim Co-Director, @ONE, Menifee, California

 

25) Hands-on SQL Injection Attack and Defense

·        Sam Bowne, Instructor, CCSF, San Francisco, California

 

26) Industry Trends In Digital Publishing

·        Dave Gillespie, Senior Account Director, MEI, Lake Havasu City, Arizona

 

27) Retaining Female Students by Teaching to Their Learning Style

·        Donna Milgram, Executive Director, Institute for Women in Trades, Technology & Science (IWITTS), Alameda, California

 

28) Center for Academic Excellence Two-Year (CAE2Y) Program

·        Vera Zdravkovich, Senior Advisor, National CyberWatchCenter, Prince George's Community College, Largo, Maryland

 

29) Scenario Delivery and Virtualization Platform

·        Brad McPeak, Co-PI, Midwest Center for IT, Omaha, Nebraska

30) Citrix IT Academy: Opportunities for Community Colleges

·        Dan Myers, Global Academic Program Manager, Citrix, Castle Pines, Colorado

31) An Appropriate Alternative to MOOCs for Community Colleges

·        Michael McKeever, Instructor, Santa Rosa Junior College, Petaluma, California

Read More

Inspiring the next generation of IT workers

Analysis & Insight 6 May, 2013 JoVona Taylor   ITPro

 

 

Could better engagement between tech vendors and schools solve the UK's IT skills crisis? JoVona Taylor reports.

Promoting IT as a career path to primary and secondary school students would, industry experts claim, help close the IT skills gap.

It is an initiative the Government has already thrown its weight behind by agreeing to shake-up the ICT GCSE curriculum, but stimulating an interest in IT from a young age is still proving a challenge.
"A child is more likely to want to be a police officer, doctor, firefighter, soldier, astronaut than anything else because those people are the role models and heroes in our society," said Michael Sonenshine, an investment manager at financial advisors Symfonie Capital.

"I have difficulty imagining a third grader [an eight year-old] enthusiastically saying something like 'I really want to design relational databases and computer networks,'" he continued.

Richard Nott, website director for IT recruitment site CWJobs.co.uk, said it is an issue that urgently needs addressing to ensure the future growth of the UK IT sector.

"The talent that's going to come into the market in the next 10 to 15 years are the people in early education at the moment," he told IT Pro.

But the scarcity of skilled IT workers in the employment pool is already affecting many UK businesses, prompting calls for more technology firms to play an active role in promoting IT to students at primary and secondary- school level.

Tamar Newberger, vice president of marketing for virtualisation security company Catbird, said this type of intervention would benefit the entire tech industry.

I have trouble imagining an eight year-old enthusiastically saying they want to design relational databases and computer networks when they grow up.

"It's just good business because we cannot staff these jobs and there are not enough good people pursuing technology careers," she told IT Pro.

Meanwhile, Nott claims more industry involvement will benefit technology firms, students and the country as a whole.

"That will enable companies to push up the GDP of the UK, and the country as a whole becomes stronger and more known for IT, thereby attracting more investment from overseas and internally," he said.

Making IT "Cool"

 The introduction of a new GCSE ICT syllabus is a step in the right direction, said Adrian Culley, technical consultant at IT security company Damballa.

This is because the current one fails to equip students with the kind of IT skills the industry is looking for.

"There are still some very bright children out who are interested in IT that go away and figure things out for themselves, but they'd do that anyway, the problem is the syllabus should support all the children and it clearly doesn't," he said.

This is because, Culley claimed, many aspects of IT, like programming and coding, are not covered because they are often considered too difficult to teach.

According to a report by the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission, just 35 per cent of ICT teachers are specialists in the field, opposed to more than 80 per cent for core subjects like maths and English.

"We have got to have well-trained teachers and well-equipped schools," said Dave Smith, school improvement advisor of ICT for Havering School Improvement Services.

Smith said students would also benefit from more exposure to technology in the classroom.

Catbird's Newberger said technology should be integrated into every discipline of early education such as maths, science and English through the use of tablet devices and interactive whiteboards, for example.

"iPads have become an enormous educational tool, schools that are well-funded and equipped make iPads mandatory," she said.

"But they're not just [there] for the sake of having an iPad. If you're learning about volcanoes, it's better to see a volcano erupt on an iPad than reading about it in a book."

Not all students have access to technology at home, which puts them at a disadvantage too, she added.

The F-word

  Lack of role models is also thought to have put many young women off a career in tech, with some industry estimates suggesting female IT professionals account for just 14.4 per cent of the workforce.
"It's a bad statistic but it also represents an opportunity to populate our tech workforce," said Newberger.

"Leaving half of our workforce out of the technology sector is just bad business and we obviously need to start early [in their education]," she added.

Damballa's Culley said giving students access to hands-on IT experience could make a career in IT seem a much less scary prospect.
Just as subjects like reading and writing are important in early education, IT should be given the same level of attention, he added.

"I'm all for any projects or initiatives that gives people the opportunity to develop their skills, to be exposed to new aspects of information technology and that removes the mystique," he said.

Industry involvement

 A few corporations have already created initiatives aimed at fostering an interest in IT within the primary and secondary school student community.

For example, tech giant Microsoft launched a competition called the Kodu Kup in January 2012 that encouraged students aged seven to 14 to develop computer games using visual programming language, Kodu.

“If the UK is to continue to remain economically competitive, it’s essential that we get our young people excited about Computer Science from the earliest age possible," said Steve Beswick, director of education for Microsoft UK, in a statement at the time.

"It’s this sense of being given the freedom to think and design creatively that we are hoping to capture with the Kodu Kup," he added.

Meanwhile, Google collaborated with the Raspberry Pi Foundation earlier this year to provide 15,000 of its Raspberry Pi Model B devices, which many education establishments have seized on to help students develop an interest in coding.

"Google’s approach to technology and education resonate well as an example of how IT businesses can benefit from such a calculated outreach," said industry analyst, Clarence Villanueva.

"Google influenced the technology preferences of an entire incoming workforce—IT leaders recognise this – and that’s one of the factors contributing to the consideration of BYOD [Bring Your Own Device] and BYOA [Bring Your Own Application] programmes," he added.

Toni Marshall, head of learning and development at IT consultancy Excelian said her company has also made an effort to encourage secondary school students to consider a career in tech.

Last year the company started a work placement programme for students aged 16 and over through Career Academies UK.

"The feedback from our staff is that they find it useful and they’re doing something good by encouraging people to follow their careers,"said Marshall.

She also noted that young workers bring a new, more simplified, perspective to company projects and have helped staff improve their soft skills through interacting with the students.

Although a few industry players are taking steps to encourage more young people to work in IT, Culley said more can be done.

In particular, he’d like to see businesses doing more to help train up primary and secondary schools teachers in IT.

"By giving a class of children, especially at the primary level, a computer to build as a science project could be the greatest gift they have ever been given," he added.

"This matter is as important as giving them pens and paper 100 years ago," he added.

Read more: http://www.itpro.co.uk/strategy/19760/inspiring-next-generation-it-workers#ixzz2ScgcvvKY

Read More

College Finds Flexibility and Growth with Certification-centric IT Curriculum

by Janet Pinkerton Monday, May 06, 2013     CompTIA               

---

College of DuPage Professor Clyde Cox coaches students during CIT 1111, the college's Computer and Internetworking Technologies course that corresponds to the CompTIA A+ 220-701 exam.
 

Ten years ago, the College of DuPage, in Glen Ellyn, Ill., began to redesign its computer hardware and networking curricula to embed the goals of IT industry certifications into the program. The college sought to grow the program by offering clearly defined ways for its diverse student population to gain IT career-relevant skills and industry credentials.

The college's Computer and Internetworking Technologies (CIT) program now offers two Associate in Applied Science (A.A.S.) degrees and 10 certificate options built around CompTIA and other IT industry certifications. As a result, from 2006 to 2011, the CompTIA Academy Partner's CIT program grew nearly 13 percent annually, expanding into additional classrooms and labs, plus four off-site locations.

Teaching to Industry Needs

In 2002, Professor Clyde Cox was new to the College of DuPage when he realized his department, then named Digital Microprocessor Technologies, needed to change its approach. The wake-up call came when recently laid-off Bell Labs IT employees — many with master's and doctorate degrees on their resumes — came to his college office, looking for ways to re-start their careers.
"For these people to get another degree was absolutely ludicrous," said Cox, who was previously a Bell Labs networking engineer. "We realized that we had to rethink our curriculum and go with certifications."

So with the backing of college administrators, Cox worked with his colleagues, Professors Joanne Wagner and Tony Chen, to begin the laborious process of redesigning curriculum. Renaming the program Computer and Internetworking Technologies (CIT), the three professors worked to use industry certifications as a model for the knowledge and skill outcomes each course would offer.
Chen firmly believes that students need specialized courses that prepare them for their careers. "You need to get ready earlier and sooner," he said. "CompTIA certification exams serve as a third-party validation that a person has the skills employers look to hire for a job."

The department had long taught toward the Cisco Certified Network Administrator certification, but in 2002 added a CompTIA partnership. Courses that trained students for the CompTIA A+ certification began in 2003. With each year, the department added courses that addressed more certifications, including CompTIA Network+ and CompTIA Security+.

"Student response was pretty immediate," said Cox. "Every time we added something, the classes got bigger and bigger."

Booming Student Interest

If I'm teaching CompTIA classes, I know the material is up-to-date. I know CompTIA is watching that.
 

Clyde Cox, Professor of Computer and Internetworking Technologies, College of DuPage

The college's current Computer and Internetworking Technician A.A.S degree prepares a student to pass numerous certification exams from CompTIA, Cisco and Microsoft. Degree-required courses teach to CompTIA A+, Cisco CCNA, Microsoft MCITP, CompTIA Network+ and the CompTIA Security+ certifications. Electives include courses for the Cisco CCNP and the CompTIA Project+ credentials.

The CIT also recently began offering an Information Systems Security (INFOSEC) A.A.S. degree that's certified by the Committee on National Security Systems and the National Security Agency. The INFOSEC degree includes courses for CompTIA A+, CompTIA Security+ and, as an elective, CompTIA Linux+.

Cox likes how structuring his curriculum around industry certifications keeps courses relevant. "If I'm teaching CompTIA classes, I know the material is up-to-date," said Cox. "I know CompTIA is watching that."

Expanding enrollment for CompTIA A+ courses five years ago prompted the CIT program to offer courses at two off-site locations, including a dual-credit program at Naperville Central High School.
Enrollment in the college's CompTIA A+ courses has climbed from about 145 in 2003 to 740 in 2012, and Cox estimates the CIT program has grown 12.5 percent annually from 2006 to 2011, requiring the program to add classrooms, laboratories, and additional faculty.

In fall 2012, the CIT program began offering courses in two additional off-site locations (for a program total of four), and the college became a Pearson VUE testing center, allowing students to take their certification exams on campus.

The CIT program strongly recommends, but does not require, that students take the exams for the certifications associated with their courses, and the college does not track students who take or pass certification exams.

Addressing Diverse Needs

Operating within a community college, the CIT program addresses a wide variety of student goals. Thirty-eight percent of CIT students are "traditional" students, recently out of high school. The "non-traditional" balance includes workers seeking to upgrade skills, unemployed individuals seeking to gain new skills, participants in employer training programs, and high school students earning dual-credit.

Only 18 percent of CIT students pursue an A.A.S. degree; the rest take courses as they can and need, with some earning one of the CIT program's 10 certificate options.

The certification-centric CIT curriculum provides "nice entry points and exit points for people looking for specific specialty needs," said John Kronenburger, Associate Dean of Technology for the College of DuPage's Business and Technology division.

"The industry-centric curricula provide very defined goals and specifies outcomes that students can obtain in each course," he added. "They are very focused towards what people are doing in the real world."

Working within the local community, the CIT program has built cooperative education / internship programs with companies such as Argonne National Laboratory and Chicago Computers, as well as a referral network for student job placement. The CIT program aims to further expand its network within the community. "The employers who know us, love us, and love our students," said Kathy Kotowski, the academic and career advisor for CIT students who also works as the department's liaison to local businesses.

College of DuPage faculty and administrators are working to align the hardware/networking oriented CIT program with its software/programming-oriented Computer Information Systems program to offer courses and programs that launch the next-generation of IT professionals. The goal, says Kronenburger, is to optimize the two programs and more finely tune courses to address newer IT technologies such as computer forensics, cloud computing, virtualization, and mobile applications. CompTIA, Microsoft and Cisco certifications will continue to be an integral part of the program, Kronenburger said.

"The fact that we have classes that prep for those certification exams help students develop skills that are in demand," said Kotowski. "It's giving them a credential that's definite, objective, measurable."

Read More

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

The Guardian

A former FBI counterterrorism agent claims on CNN that this is the case

 

Former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente, on CNN, discussing government's surveillance capabilities Photograph: CNN screegrab

 

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.

On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."

"All of that stuff" - meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant - "is being captured as we speak".
On Thursday night, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that "all digital communications in the past" are recorded and stored:

 

 

Let's repeat that last part: "no digital communication is secure", by which he means not that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital communications - meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like - are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is.

There have been some previous indications that this is true. Former AT&T engineer Mark Klein revealed that AT&T and other telecoms had built a special network that allowed the National Security Agency full and unfettered access to data about the telephone calls and the content of email communications for all of their customers. Specifically, Klein explained "that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T" and that "contrary to the government's depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists . . . much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic." But his amazing revelations were mostly ignored and, when Congress retroactively immunized the nation's telecom giants for their participation in the illegal Bush spying programs, Klein's claims (by design) were prevented from being adjudicated in court.

That every single telephone call is recorded and stored would also explain this extraordinary revelation by the Washington Post in 2010:

Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.

It would also help explain the revelations of former NSA official William Binney, who resigned from the agency in protest over its systemic spying on the domestic communications of US citizens, that the US government has "assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens" (which counts only communications transactions and not financial and other transactions), and that "the data that's being assembled is about everybody. And from that data, then they can target anyone they want."

Despite the extreme secrecy behind which these surveillance programs operate, there have been periodic reports of serious abuse. Two Democratic Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, have been warning for years that Americans would be "stunned" to learn what the US government is doing in terms of secret surveillance.

Strangely, back in 2002 - when hysteria over the 9/11 attacks (and thus acquiescence to government power) was at its peak - the Pentagon's attempt to implement what it called the "Total Information Awareness" program (TIA) sparked so much public controversy that it had to be official scrapped. But it has been incrementally re-instituted - without the creepy (though honest) name and all-seeing-eye logo - with little controversy or even notice.

Back in 2010, worldwide controversy erupted when the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates banned the use of Blackberries because some communications were inaccessible to government intelligence agencies, and that could not be tolerated. The Obama administration condemned this move on the ground that it threatened core freedoms, only to turn around six weeks later and demand that all forms of digital communications allow the US government backdoor access to intercept them. Put another way, the US government embraced exactly the same rationale invoked by the UAE and Saudi agencies: that no communications can be off limits. Indeed, the UAE, when responding to condemnations from the Obama administration, noted that it was simply doing exactly that which the US government does:

"'In fact, the UAE is exercising its sovereign right and is asking for exactly the same regulatory compliance - and with the same principles of judicial and regulatory oversight - that Blackberry grants the US and other governments and nothing more,' [UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef Al] Otaiba said. 'Importantly, the UAE requires the same compliance as the US for the very same reasons: to protect national security and to assist in law enforcement.'"

That no human communications can be allowed to take place without the scrutinizing eye of the US government is indeed the animating principle of the US Surveillance State. Still, this revelation, made in passing on CNN, that every single telephone call made by and among Americans is recorded and stored is something which most people undoubtedly do not know, even if the small group of people who focus on surveillance issues believed it to be true (clearly, both Burnett and Costello were shocked to hear this).

Some new polling suggests that Americans, even after the Boston attack, are growing increasingly concerned about erosions of civil liberties in the name of Terrorism. Even those people who claim it does not matter instinctively understand the value of personal privacy: they put locks on their bedroom doors and vigilantly safeguard their email passwords. That's why the US government so desperately maintains a wall of secrecy around their surveillance capabilities: because they fear that people will find their behavior unacceptably intrusive and threatening, as they did even back in 2002 when John Poindexter's TIA was unveiled.

Mass surveillance is the hallmark of a tyrannical political culture. But whatever one's views on that, the more that is known about what the US government and its surveillance agencies are doing, the better. This admission by this former FBI agent on CNN gives a very good sense for just how limitless these activities are.

Read More