The great revelation in these great revelations is that there are no longer "checks and balances" and there is no more privacy. That is a long-term, crippling blow to any progressive resistance or organizing in this country.
Those who have doubted that the government has a long-term strategy for control of information and communications should now be convinced. There is no practical purpose for such a massive and resource-gobbling surveillance and analysis program other than complete control.
It's sometimes difficult for people to comprehend what a threat the Internet is to the world's governments. It respects no national boundaries, provides a flood of information that destroys all disinformation campaigns, brings people into contact in ways unexperienced up to now, establishes non-commercial alternatives for just about everything that is sold, and, perhaps most threatening, it allows people to communicate and organize massively, quickly, and effectively, creating an alternative society in which all voices can express ideas and everyone can listen to everyone else.
The world's rulers don't know what to do about that. Each country's government has its own approach. The Chinese and several Arab countries practice an absolute but unavailing censorship. Others open things up freely and then closely monitor what's said. In the United States, the goverment believes that control can be exercised through capture. If, in the future, you do something that they consider dangerous, they have all your communications since about 2009. Now all you have to worry about is what, in the future, they will consider dangerous.
Is it dangerous when persistent unemployment coupled with deadly cuts in social safety-net programs (all of which are hitting now) force masses of people into the streets as they have in dozens of other countries this past year? Is it dangerous when people in this country start taking over Congress (which has a lower than 10-percent-approval rating) as some have already done in state legislatures? Is it dangerous when people, frustrated by the inhumanity and brutality of their local leaders, start taking over cities? Or is organizing that may lead up to that kind of thing "dangerous"? Or, in fact, is my mention of it just now a clear and present "danger"?
These questions can be summarized by another: what will it take to get a government to declare this a police state?
Remember that the answer may be very different for Barack Obama than for an extreme right-wing President. That makes it difficult to answer a question already made challenging because we're never had to answer it as a practical matter. We in the Left have long worried about "police-state tactics". Now we have to confront the police-state structure. It's here and it can morph into a real police state with very little effort. Opposing and dismantling it should now be among our top priorities.
Those who have doubted that the government has a long-term strategy for control of information and communications should now be convinced. There is no practical purpose for such a massive and resource-gobbling surveillance and analysis program other than complete control.
It's sometimes difficult for people to comprehend what a threat the Internet is to the world's governments. It respects no national boundaries, provides a flood of information that destroys all disinformation campaigns, brings people into contact in ways unexperienced up to now, establishes non-commercial alternatives for just about everything that is sold, and, perhaps most threatening, it allows people to communicate and organize massively, quickly, and effectively, creating an alternative society in which all voices can express ideas and everyone can listen to everyone else.
The world's rulers don't know what to do about that. Each country's government has its own approach. The Chinese and several Arab countries practice an absolute but unavailing censorship. Others open things up freely and then closely monitor what's said. In the United States, the goverment believes that control can be exercised through capture. If, in the future, you do something that they consider dangerous, they have all your communications since about 2009. Now all you have to worry about is what, in the future, they will consider dangerous.
These questions can be summarized by another: what will it take to get a government to declare this a police state?
Remember that the answer may be very different for Barack Obama than for an extreme right-wing President. That makes it difficult to answer a question already made challenging because we're never had to answer it as a practical matter. We in the Left have long worried about "police-state tactics". Now we have to confront the police-state structure. It's here and it can morph into a real police state with very little effort. Opposing and dismantling it should now be among our top priorities.
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