Thursday, July 18, 2013

SHORT ESSAY: WILL BIG BROTHER WIN? MAYBE HE HAS.


                               WILL BIG BROTHER WIN?   

                                         By Keith Shirey

“We need to have a national conversation about freedom versus security,” says the president, echoed by the mass media and other politicians.  Well, where is it?  Not only that, but the American people, with the collective memory of a gnat, I fear will forget—if they ever knew it—that a major component of freedom, privacy, has been taken away.  I pray that I am overly pessimistic.

Privacy is gone and with it much of our freedom.   As Edward Snowden reminds us, “The government has the capability, without a search warrant, to search for, seize, and read your communications.”  The U.S. government denies this but they lie, as we shall see. 

The many loopholes allowing the government to obtain information from texts, mail, e-mails, and  ‘phone calls is well documented by Patrick C. Tooney, the ACLU and many others. 

The Washington Post reports that there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counter-terrorism.  Most collect information on people in the United States. We hear about the NSA having stored billions of records of conversations and e-mails, but let’s not forget the FBI.  It has more than 1.5 billion government and private sector records about US citizens from commercial databases, government information, and criminal investigations.

And our friends at Homeland Security:  They have over 126 million Americans in their sights based on fingerprints, photographs, and biographical information What is astonishing is that Homeland Security and counter-terrorism spy agencies do business with over 1,900  private companies.  Of course, one of these is Booze Allen Hamilton, a company that Edward Snowden worked for.  Major corporations have accounts with many of these companies.  Can we be sure that data from these entities are not sold to them?  I think a strong dose of skepticism is in order.

The focus in the corporate media has been on Edward Snowden, not on the details of the fascist/soviet type spying by the U.S. government.  The extent of secret surveillance obviously poses a grave threat to our democratic republic.  Privacy as well as the freedom of the individual is at stake.  I doubt that there will be any sort of prolonged conversation about the real issue here: It is not the issue of liberty verses security, that is a false dilemma, rather it is about controlling the power of Big Brother government to destroy the foundations of our democracy.

The balance between state and society has been destroyed by the fascistic, anti democratic actions of the state.

What can those of this who care about freedom and liberty do to curb the power of Big Brother?  I think massive non-violent civil disobedience is our hope.  Some will despair of support by ordinary people, whom Norman Mailer called “the wad.” 

But we must keep the faith.  The future of our country must be in our hands, not those of the politicians who so terribly over-reacted to 9/11.

Osama Bin Laden said he hoped a terrorist attack would forever alter the way the United States.  It has. And we must change that or that despicable hater of what is true and good in our traditions will have won.   Indeed, let us have a national conversation, but we must march with our fee

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