prism (przm) n.

1. A solid figure whose bases or ends have the same size and shape and are parallel to one another, and each of whose sides is a parallelogram.
2. A transparent body of this form, often of glass and usually with triangular ends, used for separating white light passed through it into a spectrum or for reflecting beams of light.
3. A cut-glass object, such as a pendant of a chandelier.
4. A crystal form consisting of three or more similar faces parallel to a single axis.
5. A medium that misrepresents whatever is seen through it.

[Alternatively...]

prism noun ˈpri-zəm

[...]

4. a medium that distorts, slants, or colors whatever is viewed through it

The ongoing 'NSA surveillance scandal' has many parallels, and some direct links, with the disclosures made by WikiLeaks, the organisation its leader Julian Assange described as the "the intelligence agency of the people".

While we took satisfaction in seeing government and corporate crimes come back to haunt their perpetrators, SOTT.net remained cautious about lauding Assange or the WikiLeaks organisation as heroic. What did any of the 'Iraq War Logs' or U.S. State Department 'diplomatic cables' reveal that was not already publicly available information? Obviously some details were new, but they didn't change the fact that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was illegal under international law and that everyone involved had either committed or were ancillary to war crimes. Nor did anything so damaging come out to bring the perpetrators to justice or to catalyse real political change that would actually improve ordinary people's welfare.

Things, as you may have noticed in recent years, have only gotten worse for the masses.

So is Edward Snowden, the U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower currently 'on the run' after disclosing 'top secret documents' to major media outlets, a hero or traitor? Is he neither? We discussed this and more in last Sunday's SOTT Talk Radio show on the NSA leaks. Have a listen:

Cybersecurity Law Is No Threat To Privacy: NSA Chief Gen. Alexander

It doesn't surprise. On June 8, Haaretz headlined "What was the Israeli involvement in collecting US communications intel for NSA?" More on that below. On April 3, 2012, James Bamford headlined "Shady Companies with Ties to Israel Wiretap for US for the NSA.

He said NSA chief General Keith Alexander's "having a busy year." He's "cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency's greatly expanded eavesdropping network."

"In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia."

France's Former Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, has stated in a televised program on LCP that UK government officials not only told him about preparations for war in Syria two years prior to the start of the fake revolution there in 2011, and the subsequent 'civil war' conducted by Western intelligence agencies that has killed 100,000 civilians to date, they also tried to enlist him to support their evil cause.

The reason Dumas gives for this war is that Syria is perceived by Israel to be a regional competitor and thus became a target for Western-backed 'régime change'.

The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges once famously wrote of a great Empire that created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire itself. The actual map itself grew and decayed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory. When the Empire finally crumbled, all that remained was the map. In some sense we can say that it is the map in which we live; we occupy a location within a simulation of reality. Although semanticists say that 'the map is not the territory', within this digitised age the territory is increasingly becoming the map and the separation between the physical and the digitised rendition is blurring. In this context, to 'know the map' gives priority to intervene upon the physical. In recent years many of us have been scrambling to get 'on the Net' and thus be 'mapped'; within a few years we may find that living 'off the Net' will no longer be an option.

It is my argument that the future direction of present technological emergence is one that seeks to go beyond networks; rather it is towards ubiquitous technologies that offer a complete immersive (or rather 'sub-mersive') experience of a digitised environment. With networks there is always the possibility of moving into the grey and illusive areas in-between. These are the areas where the networks do not, or cannot, cover; neglected zones of poverty and risk, and insecure zones of warlord regions, and smuggling zones. With immersive technological mapping there may one day be no 'spaces in-between'; the distinction between 'in' and 'out' dissolved; boundaries melted away under the digital gaze. In this article I argue that the US military-industrial complex is attempting to gain full dominance over the complete information spectrum, including dominating the electro-magnetic spectrum and the Internet, in order to gain full total coverage for purposes of containment and control.