Surveillance
State evils
"Th[e National Security Agency's]
capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no
American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor
everything:telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would
be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it
to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."
_____________
That dramatic warning comes not from an individual who is
typically held up as a symbol of anti-government paranoia. Rather, it was issued by one of the most admired and influential
politicians among American liberals in the last several decades: Frank Church
of Idaho, the 4-term U.S. Senator who served from 1957 to 1981. He was, among
other things, one of the Senate's earliest opponents of the Vietnam War, a
former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Chairman of
the Committee (bearing his name) that in the mid-1970s investigated the
widespread surveillance abuses committed under every President since FDR (that
was the investigation that led to the enactment of FISA, the criminal law
prohibiting the Executive Branch from intercepting the communications of
American citizens without first obtaining a warrant from a court: the law which
the Bush administration got caught violating and which, in response, was gutted
by the Democratic-led Congress in 2008, with the support of then-Senator Obama;
the abuses uncovered by the Church Committee also led to the enactment of
further criminal prohibitions on the cooperation by America's telecoms in any
such illegal government spying, prohibitions that were waived away when the
same 2008 Congress retroactively immunized America's telecom giants from having
done so).
At the time of the Church Committee, it was the FBI that
conducted most domestic surveillance. Since its inception, the NSA was strictly
barred from spying on American citizens or on American soil. That prohibition
was centrally ingrained in the mindset of the agency. Church issued that
above-quoted warning out of fear that, one day, the NSA's massive, unparalleled
surveillance capabilities would be directed inward, at the American people.
Until the Church Committee's investigation, most Americans, including its
highest elected officials, knew almost nothing about the NSA (it was referred
to as No Such Agency by its employees). As James Bamford wrote about Church's
reaction to his own findings about the NSA's capabilities, "he came away
stunned." At the time, Church also said: "I don't want to see this country ever
go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total
in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that
possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so
that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no
return."
Of course, that bridge has long ago been crossed, without
even much discussion, let alone controversy. In the immediate aftermath of
9/11, George Bush ordered the NSA to spy on the communications of Americans on
American soil, and they've been doing it ever since, with increasing aggression
and fewer and fewer constraints. That development is but one arm in the
creation of an American Surveillance State that is, literally, ubiquitous -- one
that makes it close to impossible for American citizens to communicate or act
without detection from the U.S. Government -- a state of affairs Americans have
long been taught since childhood is a hallmark of tyranny. Such are the times --
in both America generally and the Democratic Party in particular -- that those
who now echo the warnings issued 35 years ago by Sen. Church (when surveillance
was much more restrained, legally and technologically) are scorned by all
Serious People as radical hysterics.
Yesterday, Democracy Now had an
extraordinary program devoted to America's Surveillance State. The show had
three guests, each of whose treatment by the U.S. Government reflects how
invasive, dangerous and out-of-control America's Surveillance State has become:
William Binney: he worked at the NSA for almost
40 years, and resigned in October, 2001, in protest of the NSA's turn to
domestic spying. Binney immediately went to the House Intelligence Committee to
warn them of the illegal spying the NSA was doing, and that resulted in nothing.
In July, 2007 -- while then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was testifying
before the Senate about Bush's warrantless NSA spying program -- Binney's home
was invaded by a dozen FBI agents, who pointed guns at him, in an obvious
effort to intimidate him out of telling the Senate the falsehoods and omissions
in Gonzales' testimony about NSA domestic spying (another NSA whistleblower,
Thomas Drake, had his home searched several months later, and was subsequently
prosecuted by the Obama DOJ -- unsuccessfully -- for his whistleblowing).
Jacob Appelbaum: an Internet security expert and
hacker, he is currently at the University of Washington and engaged in some of
the world's most important work in the fight for Internet freedom. He's a key
member of the Tor
Project, which is devoted to enabling people around the world to use the
Internet with complete anonymity: so as to thwart government surveillance and
to prevent nation-based Internet censorship. In 2010, he was also identified as
a spokesman for WikiLeaks. Rolling Stone dubbed him "The Most Dangerous Man in Cyberspace,"
writing: "In a sense, he's a bizarro version of Mark Zuckerberg: If Facebook's
ambition is to "make the world more open and connected,' Appelbaum has
dedicated his life to fighting for anonymity and privacy. . . . 'I don't
want to live in a world where everyone is watched all the time,' he says. "I
want to be left alone as much as possible. I don't want a data trail to tell a
story that isn't true'."
For the last two years, Appelbaum has been repeatedly detained and harassed at American airports upon his return to the country,
including having his laptops and cellphone seized -- all without a search
warrant, of course -- and never returned. The U.S. Government has issued secret orders to Internet providers demanding they
provide information about his email communications and social networking activities. He's never been charged with,
let alone convicted of, any crime.
Laura Poitras: she is the filmmaker about whom I wrote
two weeks ago. After producing an Oscar-nominated film on the American
occupation of Iraq, followed by a documentary about U.S. treatment of Islamic
radicals in Yemen, she has been detained, searched, and interrogated every time
she has returned to the U.S. She, too, has had her laptop and cell phone seized
without a search warrant, and her reporters' notes repeatedly copied. This
harassment has intensified as she works on her latest film about America's
Surveillance State and the war on whistleblowers, which includes -- among other
things -- interviews with NSA whistleblowers such as Binney and Drake.
So just look at what happens to people in the U.S. if they
challenge government actions in any meaningful way -- if they engage in any
meaningful dissent. We love to tell ourselves that there are robust political
freedoms and a thriving free political press in the U.S. because you're allowed
to have an MSNBC show or blog in order to proclaim every day how awesome and
magnanimous the President of the United States is and how terrible his GOP
political adversaries are -- how brave, cutting
and edgy! -- or to go on Fox News and do the opposite. But
people who are engaged in actual dissent, outside the tiny and narrow
permissible boundaries of pom-pom waving for one of the two political parties --
those who are focused on the truly significant acts which the government and
its owners are doing in secret -- are subjected to this type of intimidation,
threats, surveillance, and climate of fear, all without a whiff of illegal
conduct (as even The New York Times" most celebrated investigative
reporter, James Risen, will
tell you).
Read rest of Greenwald's
article here.
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