"POLICE STATE" AMERICA SPIES MOSTLY ON ITS OWN
By Sherwood Ross
One
characteristic of a totalitarian state is that it is as determined to
subjugate its own citizens as it is to conquer foreigners. That's why
Edward Snowden could tell the National Press Club by live video link
from his Russian exile that when he was a contractor for the National
Security Agency(NSA) he was appalled to see NSA "collecting more
information about Americans in America than it is about Russians in
Russia."
"When you pick up the phone and when you make a
phone call, when you make a purchase, when you buy a book---all of that
is collected. And I could see it at my desk, crossing my screen…NSA
analysts…were abusing these tools to monitor their wives, their
girlfriends, their lovers," Snowden said.
According to
the May 26 issue of "The Nation," whistleblower Snowden thought NSA had
become "a runaway surveillance train…without an emergency brake on the
inside" and so passed the documentary evidence of its vast wrong-doing
on to journalist Glenn Greenwald and documentary film maker Laura
Poitras, to be made public.
Defending NSA
in Capitol Hill testimony, its former Director Gen. Keith Alexander
said, "Take away the National Security Agency’s ability to tap into
telephone records, and the nation is left unsecure."
Journalist
James Bamford said that when he visited Greenwald in Rio, he was shown a
memo (apparently uncovered by Snowden) in which Gen. Alexander
suggested going not after terrorists or criminals but "radicalizers,"
including innocent Americans, by searching the Internet for their
vulnerabilities, such as visits to porn sites."
Then, by
secretly leaking this information, Alexander said, "the NSA could
discredit them in the eyes of their followers." (Doesn't a response this
foolish make you wonder how the man ever got to run an intelligence
agency?)
Of course,
many Americans think, "I've done nothing wrong. Why should I care if the
NSA taps my phone?" This response, however, puts their private
information in the hands of officials who secretly break the law daily.
Their repeated
crimes against the innocent, at home and abroad, make them dangerous.
The question Americans should be asking, is, "Do I want the staffs of
these high officials monitoring my private conversations and those of my
children?" Remember, President Obama has already killed Americans
without legal authorization.
John Whitehead
of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization based in
Charlottesville, Va., says, "Thanks to an insidious partnership between
Google and the National Security Agency (NSA) that grows more invasive
and more subtle with every passing day, “we the people” have become
little more than data consumer commodities to be bought, sold and paid
for over and over again."
Whitehead
warns, "With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every
Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer
card we use for purchases—whether at the grocer’s, the yogurt shop, the
airlines or the department store, and every credit and debit card we use
to pay for our transactions, we’re helping Corporate America build a
dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think,
how we spend our money, and how we spend our time."
As
for the benefits of NSA's vast spy operation, they have yet to appear.
Activist David Swanson of Charlottesville, asserts, "Obama’s own panel
and every other panel that has looked into it found zero evidence that
the new abusive NSA programs have prevented any violent attacks."
"Far
from halting or apologizing for the abuses of the NSA, Obama defends
them as necessitated by the danger of a new 911," says Swanson, of "War
is a Crime.org".
"While drones over Yemen and
troops in Afghanistan and 'special' forces in three-quarters of the
world are widely understood to endanger us, and while alternatives that
upheld the rule of law and made us safer would not require secrecy or
human rights violations, Obama wants to continue the counterproductive
and immoral militarism while holding off all blowback through the
omniscience of Big Brother." Swanson adds, "Massive bulk collection of
everybody’s data will continue unconstitutionally."#
(Sherwood
Ross has reported for the Chicago Daily News and wire services. He is a
member of the National Press Club. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
sherwood ross
