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.
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