Civil rights and the National Security Agency (NSA)
In the post-9/11 America, all citizens have witnessed a gradual erosion of their civil rights. However, the National Security Agency (NSA) whistle blower, Edward Snowden's startling revelations of secret government surveillance has alarmed the nation that the NSA has access to your emails and Facebook accounts. It has secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans. Through a secret court, it has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its demands for access to their users' data. While I was writing this article it was reported on Thursday, Sept 5, that the NSA has bypassed or altogether has cracked much of the encryption used by businesses and everyday Web users.
Perhaps, Georg Orwell's worst nightmare has come true in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations. Writing under the title, "So Are We Living in 1984?" Ian Crouch of New Yorker argued that Edward Snowden, sounded, in the Guardian interview in which he came forward, like he'd been guided by Orwell's pen. The book aims to serve as a warning for what can happen when government overextends its powers; the term "Orwellian" has become associated with the idea of a totalitarian society. The haunting, but much-loved, book celebrated its 60th anniversary on June 6 amid the backdrop of real-life controversy that made the novel seem more prophetic than fictional.
Not surprisingly, sales of 1984 have been soaring in the wake of startling revelations of secret government surveillance. Are we living in "Nineteen Eighty-Four", the New Yorker asked and added: The technological possibilities of surveillance and data collection and storage surely surpass what Orwell imagined .
Thanks to NSA surveillance, Americans are now more worried about civil liberties than terrorism. A Pew survey in July last finds that "a majority of Americans -- 56% -- say that federal courts fail to provide adequate limits on the telephone and internet data the government is collecting as part of its anti-terrorism efforts." And "an even larger percentage (70%) believes that the government uses this data for purposes other than investigating terrorism." Moreover, "63% think the government is also gathering information about the content of communications." That demonstrates a decisive rejection of the US government's three primary defenses of its secret programs: there is adequate oversight; we're not listening to the content of communication; and the spying is only used to Keep You Safe. [The Guardian - July 29, 2013]
But the most striking finding is this one: "Overall, 47% say their greater concern about government anti-terrorism policies is that they have gone too far in restricting the average person's civil liberties, while 35% say they are more concerned that policies have not gone far enough to protect the country. This is the first time in Pew Research polling that more have expressed concern over civil liberties than protection from terrorism since the question was first asked in 2004. " [The Guardian - July 29, 2013]
On July 16, in San Francisco, 19 organizations including Unitarian church groups, gun ownership advocates, and a broad coalition of civil and political advocacy organizations filed suit against the National Security Agency (NSA) for violating their First Amendment right of association by illegally collecting their call records.
In another realm of surveillance -- the government's broad use of location tracking devices -- the Justice Department was in federal court on August 15 defending its refusal to release memos containing information about its policies governing the use of GPS and other potentially invasive technologies. The American Civil Liberties Union had brought the lawsuit to demand that the department make the memos public. The memos were prepared after a 2012 Supreme Court ruling, United States v. Jones, which held that placement of a hidden tracking device on a suspect's car constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. That case left lots of questions unanswered, including whether GPS tracking always requires a warrant based on probable cause, and how the Fourth Amendment applies to tracking someone 24/7 with cellphone location technology.
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism?
It is a common adage that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism," however in the post-9/11 America, dissent has become unpatriotic.
A string of similar "terror" prosecutions around the country take aim at the First Amendment protection of free speech and political expression. The authorities have already branded select participants in Occupy Wall Street and anti-NATO protests as "terrorists." Last year, heavily-armed "domestic terrorism" commandos raided Occupy Wall Street protesters' homes in Washington and Oregon, using battering rams and stun grenades. The commandos were authorized to seize all "anti-government or anarchist literature or material." As with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, also guaranteed under the First Amendment, has not been officially repealed. The reality, however, is that political assembly is already a semi-criminal activity in America. Political protests are routinely met with vastly disproportionate police mobilizations, confinement to oxymoronic "free speech zones," "kettling" (in which protesters are surrounded and forcibly moved in one direction or prevented from leaving an area), beatings, tear gas, pepper spray, stun grenades or rubber bullets. The standard government response to a political protest is a massive show of force, complete with police snipers on rooftops. [Tom Carter - Information Clearing House, May 14, 2013]
There is also an escalation of the government's effort to neutralize critical online opinion. Here are few examples:
Justin Carter, a Texas teenager was arrested on February 14 and jailed as a "terrorist" for a Facebook post. On the basis of a Facebook post, he was charged with making a "terroristic threat" to "impair public/government service. Police arrested him at work. Subsequent police searches and investigations yielded no weapons, no plans to acquire weapons, no motive, no target, no intended victims, no conspiracy, no membership in a terrorist group , and no plans to carry out an attack on a particular day or at a particular place. Justin Carter is being prosecuted on the basis of the Facebook post alone.
The judge vindictively set the bond for Justin Carter's release at $500,000, implying that the teenager was a serious threat to the community. The high bond was also calculated to encourage Justin and his family to accept the prosecutor's offer of a guilty plea in return for eight years in prison.
In July he was released after an anonymous donor posted his bond. The anonymous donor donated the full half million to cover the fee. However, Justin Carter's legal troubles are by no means over. His trial is scheduled for next year, and he still faces up to ten years in prison if convicted.
In another similar example, in May, Massachusetts teenager Cameron D'Ambrosio was arrested and charged with "terrorism" for posting rap lyrics to his Facebook account. He was subsequently released when a grand jury refused to indict him, but not before he spent several weeks in jail. Earlier this year, Michigan high school student Alex David Rosario was arrested and charged with "domestic terrorism" for allegedly making threats on Twitter about his co-workers at a Subway restaurant. Two teenage girls in Louisiana were arrested in January and charged with 10 counts of "terrorism" for emails they sent to other students and faculty at their high school.
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