Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
WASHINGTON - Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home..."Show all mail to supv" - supervisor - "for copying prior to going out on the street," read the card. It included Mr. Pickering's name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word "confidential" was highlighted in green.
So, here we go again. Paranoia in government is something that, once allowed to roam freely, does just that. It goes forth looking for things to feed upon, and always finds an abundance. Everywhere they look they find citizens up to stuff that raises new questions. Questions are unknowns, and unknowns are the high-test fuel for paranoia. What are "they" up to, they wonder. Must look closer, deeper. And the deeper they look, the more information they collect, and the more information they collect the more questions they have, and the more unknowns they find.
People, it seems, are layered creatures, complicated, hard to nail down... and when "trouble" is afoot in the nation or the world, millions of individuals who are up to stuff that can't be nailed down are, well, dangerous -- potential threats to national security.
And so they double and redouble and redouble again their probes, their snoops. The trajectory of all this behavior is well known. By the time the Stalinist East German regime fell their snoops, the Stasi, literally had a file on every citizen, even their own family members, some of whom were actively spying on one another, unbeknownst to them.
That's where all this ends up, unless someone steps in and puts a stop to it. Back in the 1970's Congress became concerned by conduct, and misconduct, of our intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA. They held hearings.. open hearings.. that today are know as "The Church Committee." And that boil burst.
Of course the old hats in the intel world claimed - and continue to this day to claim... that the Church Committee weakened our intelligence apparatus and revealed all kinds of "sources and methods."
What the hearings actually did was to cram the paranoia genie back into its bottle. An examination of the information collected by them during the Vietnam era turned out to be largely useless and mostly wrong. Not that that made them any better at their jobs later. After all, right up to the time the Soviet Union collapsed, our intelligence agencies were still warning that the commies were on the verge of taking over the free world. In fact the only thing the commies were on the verge of was fiscal and social collapse.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 uncorked that bottle again and let the genie out. And, as it always does, it grew like a tumor on steroids, consuming, consuming, consuming. Like the meat-eating plant in the musical, Little House of Horrors, planted by GW Bush and Dick Cheney, and now cared for by Obama, it grew and grew and everyday its plaintive cry echoed in the Oval Office: "Feed me Barry, I'm huuunnngry."
And he did. And he will continue doing so, as will the next president, and the next until, like Stasi, they have a file on all of us. And they are asking parents to report on their children. And their children to report on their parents. Hyperbole? It may have already begun:
Where the National Security Agency isn't so secret: Schools
Washington Post: The National Security Agency is the super-secret organization that has been in the news because of disclosures that it has, for years, been conducting U.S. surveillance programs. But in at least one area, the NSA hasn't tried to be so secret: schools...The work of the NSA is based on highly advanced math, and the agency is the largest employer of mathematicians in the country. To advance its interest in seeing that more students graduate with high-level skills to do the kind of cryptological work done at the agency, it has outreach programs for students at every grade level.
So, is it time for another Church Committee? No. It's past time. And time is running out. Already you and I can be certain this post will find its way into my file, as will your email to me saying, whatever. And, if you send me a letter, don't put a return address on it. I'd rather see it lost in the mail than have you added to "the list."
I don't think I am going on a limb to say that this has all gotten out of hand, way the hell out of hand. Demand Congress launch open hearings on the full range of US intel and law enforcement surveillance. Demand reviews of every single program; domestic drones, mail scanning, phone scanning, Internet scanning, all of it. It has now reached a point where, taken individually or as a whole, it's about as un-American as anything I can recall. Even Nixon and Hoover didn't go this far... not to say they wouldn't have if they could have. The technology just wasn't available to them.
But it is now. And it's being misused, abused and threatens everything we consider special and important about what we like to call, "Freedom."
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