rawr

The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable.

The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network.

But privately, American diplomats are pushing hard to kill a provision of the Brazilian and German draft which states that "extraterritorial surveillance" and mass interception of communications, personal information, and metadata may constitute a violation of human rights. The United States and its allies, according to diplomats, outside observers, and documents, contend that the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to foreign espionage.

There is no extraterritorial obligation on states "to comply with human rights," explained one diplomat who supports the U.S. position. "The obligation is on states to uphold the human rights of citizens within their territory and areas of their jurisdictions."

The International Court of Justice, the U.N. Human Rights Committee, and the European Court have all asserted that states do have an obligation to comply with human rights laws beyond their own borders, he noted. "Governments do have obligation beyond their territories," said Dakwar, particularly in situations, like the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where the United States exercises "effective control" over the lives of the detainees.

Both PoKempner and Dakwar suggested that courts may also judge that the U.S. dominance of the Internet places special legal obligations on it to ensure the protection of users' human rights.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/20/exclusive_inside_americas_plan_to_kill_online_privacy_rights_everywhere

tlllll;drrrr

There is no extraterritorial obligation on states "to comply with human rights," explained one diplomat who supports the U.S. position. "The obligation is on states to uphold the human rights of citizens within their territory and areas of their jurisdictions."

Drone Strikes, Water-Boarding, and other War-Crimes..?
Perhaps you should stick to policing your own Jurisdictions? Or is that too much a lost cause?

Culture
Just south of the Watergate Complex on the Potomac River lies the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Kennedy Center is the home of the National Symphony Orchestra and numerous other theatrical and musical exhibitions. At the eastern edge of the neighborhood is the Corcoran Gallery of Art, whose permanent collection contains works from Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Edward Hopper, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Gene Davis, among others. On Virginia Avenue is the Simon Bolivar Memorial. George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium and Smith Center are frequently home to major concerts, as is DAR Constitution Hall.

History

In 1765, the German town of Hamburg was established on what would become the area between 24th and 18th NW Street.

The Foggy Bottom area was the site of one of the earliest settlements in what is now the District of Columbia, when German settler Jacob Funk subdivided 130 acres (0.53 km2) near the meeting place of the Potomac River and Rock Creek in 1763. The settlement officially was named Hamburgh, but colloquially was called Funkstown.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foggy_Bottom

Foggy Bottom, along with the rest of Washington D.C, was designed using the L'Enfant Plan, which created squares of housing with open space left in the middle. Foggy Bottom’s alley life issue emerged during the 1860s when an influx of Irish and German immigrants attempted to move into Foggy Bottom.[6] This influx was a result of the large amount of industrial buildings that were located in Foggy Bottom.[6] There were no immediate houses available for these new immigrants, so they were forced to move into the uninhabited alleys that were located in the middle of the squares. The situation became worse after the Civil War when a wave of newly freed blacks moved to Washington and began populating the alleys.

Construction of the alleys continued until 1892 because the government needed to reduce overcrowding in residential areas.[7] For the next decade, the government largely left the alleys untouched. However, at the turn of the 20th century, the government began relegating more responsibilities and authority to the Health Department, which began demolishing the alleys because of the copious amounts of crime and disease. The living conditions of the inhabitants were quite abysmal, with half of the population sharing or having no toilet facilities[8]

The name Foggy Bottom often is used as a metonym for the United States Department of State because its headquarters is in the neighborhood, as are the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Friendship Lodge Odd Fellows Hall; and the infamous Watergate complex, site of the Watergate burglaries which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. GWU has grown significantly over the past decades and now covers much of the neighborhood, which has many historic old homes and numerous mid-rise apartment buildings.

The southern edge of Foggy Bottom is home to many federal government offices, including the State Department. The Main Interior Building (headquarters of the Department of the Interior), the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters, and the Federal Reserve Board buildings all lie on or around Virginia Avenue. To the east lies the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, home to the Executive Office of the President of the United States and the Office of the Vice President of the United States. On the other side of the office is the White House, which is not in the neighborhood.

Foggy Bottom is also home to numerous international and American organizations. The World Bank buildings, the International Finance Corporation, the International Monetary Fund, the Office of Personnel Management, DAR Constitution Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the American Pharmacists Association, the American Red Cross National Headquarters, the Pan American Health Organization, and the Organization of American States are all located in the neighborhood.

nuke plz funky-bum

hmm...

Watergate scandal
The affair began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) connected cash found on the burglars to a slush fund used by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, the official organization of Nixon's campaign.

In July 1973, as evidence mounted against the president's staff, including testimony provided by former staff members in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee, it was revealed that President Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and he had recorded many conversations.[3][4] Recordings from these tapes implicated the president, revealing he had attempted to cover up the questionable (and illegal) goings-on that had taken place after the break-in.[2][5] After a protracted series of bitter court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the president had to hand over the tapes to government investigators; he ultimately complied.

Coverup and its unraveling
Initial coverup

Within hours of the burglars' arrest, the FBI discovered the name of E. Howard Hunt in the address books of Barker and Martínez. Nixon administration officials were concerned because Hunt and Liddy were also involved in another secret activity, known as the White House Plumbers, which was set up to stop security "leaks" and to investigate other sensitive security matters.

The White House Plumbers, sometimes simply called the Plumbers, were a covert White House Special Investigations Unit, established July 24, 1971, during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Its task was to stop the leaking of classified information, such as the Pentagon Papers, to the news media. Its members branched into illegal activities while working for the Committee to Re-elect the President, including the Watergate break-in and the ensuing Watergate scandal.

Where was the NSA? ^^
just watching quietly?

As laid out by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the Chinese containment policy of the United States (aka The Vietnam War) was a long-run strategic effort to surround Beijing with the USSR, its satellite states, as well as:
a) The Japan-Korea front,
b) The India-Pakistan front, and
c) The Southeast Asia front

More specifically, the papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scale of the Vietnam War with the bombings of nearby Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which were reported in the mainstream media.[3]

Flag of the National Security Agency
Agency overview
Formed     November 4, 1952 (61 years ago)
Preceding Agency...

The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced back to April 28, 1917, three weeks after the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany in World War I.

Despite the American Black Chamber's initial success, however, it was shut down in 1929 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who defended his decision by stating that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail".[20]

Anything to show for 90 years and billions of dollars?
besides Guarding and Exploiting Insecurities?