Below is my column in this week’s U.S. News & World Report, which is part of a debate over the question: Should Americans Be Worried About the National Security Agency’s Data Collection? On the other side was former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Professor John Yoo who answered the question in a predictable no. I suppose my answer was equally predictable.
The response of the White House and congressional allies to the disclosure of a massive surveillance program of all calls by all Verizon customers is eerily reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” Various leaders like Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., assured citizens that there is nothing to fear in having the government collect all of your calls, including details like their duration, location, time and your associations. Call it the sequel: “Dr. Obamalove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love a Police State.” Our leaders are assuring us that such databanks will help them protect us from others, but who will protect us from our protectors?
The disclosure of the secret order for every call by every citizen (domestic or international) comes on the heels of a scandal involving the investigation of reporters by the administration. It came before the disclosure of another massive data-mining program that seized e-mail, photos and other private communications from some of the biggest Internet companies. It is all part of the same growing surveillance system in the United States – a system demanding absolute transparency of reporters and citizens alike.
[Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.]
Years ago, civil libertarians raised an outcry over the Total Information Awareness data-mining project, an operation viewed as so dangerous to privacy and civil liberties that it was formally stopped by Congress. It was designed to allow the government to follow citizens in real time by linking massive databanks and electronic systems. While many celebrated an increasingly rare victory for civil liberties, it now appears that the intelligence community merely broke the system into smaller pieces.
Each of these intrusions has been justified as making us safer, but collectively that creates a fishbowl society where privacy is little more than an illusion. We are approaching the tipping point in our system, where liberty is giving way to authoritarian power. While our current leaders may be benign, we are increasingly dependent on their good motivations and discretion for our liberty. It is precisely the system that the framers rejected at our founding. Benjamin Franklin warned of the siren’s call for power by government officials when he observed that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
If we allow these officials to strip us of our privacy, we have not failed the Framers. We have failed ourselves.
JONATHAN TURLEY is the Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University
U.S.News & World Report, June 7, 2013
It had to happen
There are a few here who may state they are willing to “sacrifice some of my privacy if it means they will put an end to some of the most disturbed heinous criminally insane.” But I submit there is no such thing as “security.” If someone wants to commit an act of terrorism (and just what qualifies as terrorism – the 21st century “buzz” word for post-pre-9/11 fear?) he/she will find a way to succeed. We cannot possibly create a bubble of “security” strong enough to prevent it. The only way to reach a level of calm and peace is to stand for those principals for which we say we are based – and to quit living in fear (that fear that is used even by our own government officials in order to divide and anger).
It is our actions in the world that create many of those who would want to hurt us.
It is our understanding of this and a desire to change that behavior that will be our salvation.
If one sells arms to everyone on the planet, using both sides of every argument in order to make more money from war, if one uses and abuses others in an attempt to bully and take advantage of them and if one treats everyone else as if they are :other” then, iof course, there will be those who learn to hate us.
I can see the acceptance of data mining going the way of Obamacare. There will be so many people able to opt out that only us regular folks will suffer consequences.
Years of social psychology research suggests that when people are given power and are trusted to use their own virtuous character to wield it wisely, they tend to fare poorly, especially as time goes on. Each small lapse or moral compromise (maybe just this once…) becomes the norm, and virtue is eventually lost to expediency and a host of rationalizations. The best way to prevent abuse of power is a system of empowered oversight.
Jennifer, people like you ARE the problem.
<<< And you wonder why this guy is my perennial avatar
Barack “Body Count” Obama. All the dystopia of Deputy Dubya Bush only without the dyslexia. Heading backwards while “looking forward” to: .
He did promise “change.” He just didn’t say in which direction.
He did promise “hope.” He just didn’t say for whom.
The Silence of the Lamb Chops
Let us bow our heads in silence
Let us close our shuttered eyes
Let us ask no pointed questions
Let us rather swallow lies
Let our government mislead us
Let them wallow in the waste
Let us eat the crap they feed us
Let us grow to like its taste
Let them praise their stalwart courage
Let us meekly toe the line
Let the rich cut all their taxes
Let the poor ones pay the fine
Let us do no thing unbidden
Let us ask permission first
Let them keep the water hidden
Let us rather die of thirst
Let them keep our business secret
Let us not know what they do
Let them keep us safe from knowing
Let us smile while us they screw
Let the dead come home to quiet
Let them spare us from the sight
Let us never start a riot
Let them send some more to fight
Let us never raise our voices
Let them whisper in our ear
Let them order us to slaughter
Let us live in abject fear
Let authority compel us
Let them prod the panicked herd
Let them with cheap jargon quell us
Let us scatter at their word
Let them mumble mealy mouthfuls
Let them bumble, lean, and tilt
Let them tumble, trip, and falter
Let them crumple all we’ve built
Let them loan us Chinese money
Let them keep us all in pawn
Let them dine on milk and honey
Let us let them lead us on
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2008
Jennifer, this is for you: “…in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.” Following the logic train of the big net, we should lock everyone living in the plains states indoors most of the year to keep them safe from lightning.
Science fiction, not unlike humor, sometimes comes true?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUa3np4CKC4?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360%5D
The Movie is discussed below and it had a great affect on me when I saw it at age 20. Although at times farcical, the essential satiric point was that most of the people we see acting as our leaders/experts are much less informed and competent that we’ve been led to believe and many of them are crazy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove
So true.
“I don’t believe there is any theoretical basis stopping Congress from reigning in the executive. However, practically speaking, I believe this is a difficult task. That is because the Congress is complicit in lawlessness and they benefit from it in power and wealth.”
Jill gets to the essence of the problem which is they are almost all in it together. The only bi-partisanship that exist inside the Beltway is the agreement to make the Intelligence/Military/Industrial/Corporate Complex (IMICC) and its’ partisans as the “Experts” keeping the country safe from its enemies. Professor Turley has the correct analogy using the film “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” as a model. That film, in masterful satire, says more about America, its IMICC and the insanity behind it than do a hundred tomes.
OKY, WordPress has you flagged as a Nazi.
For whatever reason wordpress didn’t seem to like me using the words spy orgs are a …… then using the word national ……followed by the word security, with, threat to us all, .
I took a bit of time this morning to call a US Senator’s office, that sits of the oversight committee of DHS.
I requested that his office opens an investigation into whether or not people or groups are illegally using the NSA’s & other govt Gestapo type spy organizations to blackmail or other influence congressmen, judges & other gov’t servants.
Further, I & others believe these govt Gestapo type spy org’s are a ** edit……. threat to us all. **
Maybe some of you can find the time to call/right or talk into your dishwasher, (for real 😉 ),so the govt will know how you feel about this illegal govt spying.
test
The government is spying on everyone, homeland security is buying bullets by the billions, our local LEOs are becoming para-military outfits and citizens are being arrested for filming police arrests. What’s there to worry about?
I took a bit of time this morning to call a US Senator’s office, that sits of the oversight committee of DHS.
I requested that his office opens an investigation into whether or not people or groups are illegally using the NSA’s & other govt Gestapo type spy organizations to blackmail or other influence congressmen, judges & other gov’t servants.
Further, I & others believe these govt Gestapo type spy org’s are a national security threat to us all.
Maybe some of you can find the time to call/right or talk into your dishwasher, (for real 😉 ),so the govt will know how you feel about this illegal govt spying.
There is another angle to this that isn’t being covered. Campaign contributors for the Surveillance-Industrial Complex pay members of Congress and other government officials. Instead of the new technology operating within the constitutional rule of law, they instead pervert the rule of law to conform to the new technology. It’s really about money and power (similar to 99% voter support for the Do Not Call list that almost didn’t overcome the money vote), the voters and Bill of Rights really aren’t the focus here – it’s profits! Today all three branches of government appear to be on the gravy train!