"Everybody's a target; everybody with communication is a target."--A senior intelligence official previously involved with the Utah Data Center
The recent revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers, with the complete blessing of the Obama administration, should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention over the past decade.
by ElectronicFrontierFoundation
As I document in my new book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (at Amazon.com), what we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).
What too many fail to realize, consumed as they are with
partisan politics and blinded by their own political loyalties, is that the
massive bureaucracies--now computerized--that administer governmental policy
transcend which party occupies the White House.
This
explains why the civil liberties abuses carried out by the Bush Administration
have not been corrected by the Obama Administration. Rather, they have been
expanded upon. Take, for instance, the warrantless wiretapping program
conducted during the Bush years, which resulted in the NSA monitoring the
private communications of millions of Americans--a program that continues
unabated today, with help from private telecommunications companies such as
AT&T. The program recorded 320 million phone calls a day when it first
started. It is estimated that the NSA has intercepted 15 to 20 trillion communications of American
citizens since 9/11.
To
our misfortune, the Obama White House has proven to be even worse than the Bush
White House when it comes to invading the privacy rights of Americans. As Yale
law professor Jack Balkin notes, "We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization
and legitimization of a national-surveillance state. [Obama has] systematically
adopted policies consistent with the second term of the Bush Administration."
Unfortunately, whereas those on the Left raised a hew and cry over the Bush
administration's constant encroachments on Americans' privacy rights, it
appears that the political leanings of those on the Left have held greater sway
than their principles. Consequently, the Obama administration has faced much
less criticism for its blatant efforts to reinforce the surveillance state.
Insisting
that terrorists "will come after us if they can and the only thing that we have
to deter this is good intelligence to understand that a plot has been hatched
and to get there before they get to us," Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who
chairs the Senate intelligence committee, is defending the NSA's actions, as
well as the secret court order requiring Verizon to turn over its phone records
to government agents. It's a tired, overused line that preys on Americans' fear
of another terrorist attack and offers phantom promises of security while
ensuring neither safety nor greater freedom. Even the vague and unsupported
claim put forth by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.)
that the NSA surveillance program "helped thwart "a significant case' of
terrorism in the United States "within the last few years'" fails to justify a
program of this magnitude, which makes everyone a target and turns us all into
a nation of suspects.
Clearly,
the age of privacy in America is coming to a close. We have moved into a new
paradigm in which surveillance technology which renders everyone a suspect is
driving the bureaucratic ship that once was our democratic republic. It will
not be long before no phone call, no email, no Tweet, no web search is safe
from the prying eyes and ears of the government. People going about their daily
business will no longer be assured that they are not being spied upon by
federal agents and other government bureaucrats.
Thus,
the question looms before us. Can
freedom in the United States continue to flourish and grow in an age when the
physical movements, individual purchases, conversations, and meetings of every
citizen are constantly under surveillance by private companies and government
agencies?
Whether
or not the surveillance is undertaken for so-called "worthy" (read: politically
expedient) reasons such as preventing another terrorist attack, does not
surveillance of all citizens gradually poison the soul of a nation and render
us all data collected in government files? Does not such surveillance
completely eviscerate our right to be free from unreasonable searches and
seizures as guaranteed by our Constitution?