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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 9/22/14

Is Edward Snowden Just Another Canary in the Coal mine?

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Prior to "Patriot Act," and the construction of the department of Homeland Security, most Americans would have considered it inconceivable that our government would engage in torture, renditions, holding people without the benefit of haebus corpus, and putting America (and most of the rest of the world) under warrantless surveillance. Nor would we have believed that the USG would deploy on quick notice, heavily armed militarized inner city police forces to quell a racial skirmish, or that the USG would insert malware into US exported products, permanently undermining its own business reputation. Nor would we have believed that our government would undermine and cheat in International negotiations, or that in the face of all of this clearly unethical and criminal behavior, that, what would act as a "stand-in" for Congressional oversight, the FISA court, would fail so utterly -- almost as if it were designed for failure.

Part three of the book is devoted to what the massive data collections and the growing infrastructure used to collect them, is about and what it really means for American freedom. Given that what we are now faced with is a "runaway secret National security State apparatus" that so far has proven to be resistant to all attempts to "rein it in," every American should be concerned with this section. After reading it, it will become imminently clear why Mr. Snowden concluded that he had run completely out of options.

Defiantly, leaders like Mr. Obama, did not back-off even when Snowden's revelation proved to be an internationally embarrassing smoking gun: Mr Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice, were caught "red-handedly" with their fingerprints all over the cookie jar. But with an unlimited budget, total lack of unaccountability to the public, they "doubled-down," and Mr. Obama, as he is wont to do, "slimed his way out of" yet another international crisis, one that Mr. Snowden had precipitated.

But sadly, in less than a year after the Snowden revelations, the US national Security apparatus is back on track, up to its old tricks: still playing the al Qaeda card, and now has added to that repertoire a companion, "the ISIS card." Both are just thin pretexts to extend NSA's vast powers, powers that it has consistently used to further suppress American freedoms and instill fear in "we the people."

Greenwald's essay in this section of the book, deserves to be read and reread. And pursuant to that course, I have summarized this part as an essay that I hope will whet the reader's appetite so that they will go out and buy the book. The health of our Democracy depends on understanding what is really being done in our names out at NSA.

Why Mr. Snowden's revelations are important to America

As much as anything else, our privacy defines our humanity. It is where we do our thinking, creating, and experiencing. In short, our privacy is where we "decide to be." It is the core condition of being a free person. When we either lose, or, are denied privacy, our freedom of choice is severely restricted. When choice is severely restricted we are, for all intents and purposes, no longer free; and invariably the missing freedom is replaced by fear of those who have used their power to take our freedom away from us.

Those who are religious know best how this "fear and restricted freedom" syndrome works. They know that it is "God's all-seeing eye" that actually puts "the fear of God" in them. It is the fear of both his everlasting wrath and the prospect of being punished in hell's ever-lasting fires that puts a chill on their bad behavior, forcing them to act according to His rules, religious norms and orthodoxy. This obedience is first compelled out of sheer terror of God's all-seeing eye and His unlimited powers. But over time, the fear of God becomes internalized and operates within us unconsciously, on auto-pilot. When God's fear has become internalized, the religious authorities have done their job.

The same is true of the "fear and restricted freedom" syndrome used by the authorities of the state. As in the case of religion, the goal is to reach a stage of "self-enforcement," a stage at which every citizen will feel that he is doing something wrong if he does not conform to every state sanctioned edict.

Some feel comforted with this arrangement of having the intimidating blanket of God's wrath hanging over their heads, or blindly obeying edicts handed down by the state, knowing full well that their every thought and intention is being carefully monitored by these authorities. In short, some people need "God's or Big Brother's Hammer" hanging over their heads, like a sword of Damocles just to make them do what is expected. Others consider God and Big Brother tyrants who prey on weaker more fearful minds, constantly socially adjusting those minds to compel conformity to religious or state doctrine and orthodoxy.

The point is that if you believe you are always being watched and judged you are not really a free human being no matter that the authority in question is a god or a state. If it happens to be a state instead of a God, then what is internalized is a fear and reluctance to act as a full democratic citizen. We become shy about criticizing our government, reluctant to engage in dissent, or even to vote. In such circumstances, it is easy to see that it is in the interest of all oppressive authorities to impress upon their subjects this one vital truth: nothing you do can escape their authority, or their censoring all-knowing eyes. In short, we are slowly led to believe -- whether entirely true or not -- that our thoughts are always under higher control. And thus, even when this is only a remote possibility, we still internalize the fear and automatically act as if we are continuously being watched. The result is predictable: we are turned into compliant beings, fearful of raising our heads above the crowd to be critical or to voice dissent; accepting the state's lies and rationalizations as our only reality. In short, we learn to readily comply, obey, and conform uncritically to societal rules, norms and orthodoxy.

What Mr. Snowden's example teaches us is that this should not happen in a free society. A free society is exactly the opposite of this tyrannical arrangement -- whether it be political or religious. It does not matter if you think your government or your god is doing the right things, freedom is where you decide on your own what is right or wrong. It is the incubator for creativity, for formulating ideas of dissent, for self-construction, and for mounting, wherever necessary, critical challenges to any and all kinds of societal rules, norms and orthodoxy, and most of all against all authorities, including gods and states. The right to dissent is the life-blood of a democracy. That the U.S. is a nation that honors and prizes open dissent and self-criticism, must always remain the hallmark of our democracy. When this ceases to be true, when the first and fourth Amendments get trampled upon, as they are being done by the NSA in the Snowden case, then we all cease to be free and America ceases to be the nation we have known for the last 250 years.

As of today, Mr. Obama's NSA no longer needs a specific reason or rational for invading people's private communications. They do it simply because they can, and they are now big and bad enough to brag about the fact that their mission is to collect everything, collect it all, all across the entire globe. Its motto should be: leave no datum behind, not a single one.

The additional electronic storage space being completed in Bluffdale, Utah, is dramatic confirmation and testimony to this fact. If we can already store a terabyte of data on a thumbnail drive, why would NSA need a 900,000 square foot structure in Bluffdale to house and store its emerging "take" of electronic data? It begs an important question that obviously Mr. Snowden must have had in the back of his mind when he saw no way out: Surely all this space is not needed just for a ragtag bunch of desert thugs like al Qaeda? What else might NSA have in mind for all of this additional storage space?

Certainly from where Mr. Snowden sat, deep within the belly of the beast, it was not difficult for him to imagine other scenarios: that with increased internal dissension and the widening gap between rich and poor, and the rising discontent with the ruling classes within the U.S. as well as across the Western world, the oligarchs who control our politicians, have only two options: placate the populations with symbolic concessions, or fortify their control over our freedoms through mass surveillance in order to try to minimize the harm done to their interests.

All of Mr. Obama's symbolic efforts so far have been exposed for what they are: "mere crumbs" that have slipped from the tables of his "Big Dog" contributors. Thus, except for his Healthcare initiative, all of his symbolic efforts have failed. And if the truth were told, the Republicans, like virtually all of our morally-challenged Congressmen, are proudly in bed with the oligarchs too.

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Retired Foreign Service Officer and past Manager of Political and Military Affairs at the US Department of State. For a brief time an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Denver and the University of Washington at (more...)
 
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