Peeping Tom Government
"So the first thing I want you to think about is, when you hear Patriot Act, is that we changed the law and the bureaucratic mind-set to allow for the sharing of information. It's vital. And others will describe what that means. Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
-President George W. Bush
That's an old quote and it's seen a lot of mileage, but it's more and more relevant every day. That's a man who's hiding something and just sure he's not gonna get caught, ain't it? Good thing he did get caught. When you read that quote instead of hear it spoken, the obfuscation is as plain as day. First he states what the current US law on searches and surveillance (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA) statute requires, "a wiretap requires a court order." He then says "we're talking about" getting one. Next he says that "constitutional guarantees are in place," but you'll notice he doesn't say they're being enforced. He says "we value the Constitution," but he doesn't say he protects it. Strip away that core-pone accent and there's a liar telling you what to think while he's lying to your face.
I've been reading as much as possible about warrantless wiretaps recently. There seem to be a few schools of thought in defending warrantless wiretaps, which I'll try to articulate as best I can. The most common I've encountered is similar to the defense of torture: "What if the use of warrantless wiretaps (or torture) is the only way to prevent another 9-11?" The next most common seems to be: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about, do you?"
The most common response, that warrantless wiretaps are necessary to prevent another 9-11 is a seductive one. It seems unimpeachable, until you consider that one of the only pieces of "actionable intelligence" about the September 11 terror attacks, the so-called Phoenix Memo (as reported by the 9-11 Commission) was generated by an FBI field officer, not an electronic intercept of an American citizen. For those of us who don't have total recall," The Phoenix Memo is a letter sent to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001 by FBI special agent Kenneth Williams, then stationed in Phoenix, Arizona, recommending the assembling of a worldwide listing of civil aviation schools. At the time Williams was investigating students at some of these schools for possible terrorist links."
(if you'd like to read the memo, visit www.thesmokinggun.com and search for The Phoenix Memo)
Not only was the memo generated by a human, not a data mining program, it is suggested that it was "One of the failures that led to the 9-11 attack" (See the 9-11 Commission Report) it was subsequently IGNORED by humans. Perhaps someone can explain to me how MORE memos and raw surveillance intercepts, some good, most useless, will prevent a cataclysmic terror attack. Let's not forget, many of the very few CIA translators of Farsi, Arabic and other Mideastern and Central Asian languages have been fired, not for incompetence, or for security breaches, but for being gay.
It's possible to defend the position that warrantless wiretaps are critical for our nation's defense, I'm sure, but gosh, since the intel's obtained illegally, isn't it impossible for anyone to cite court records or show proof of any kind that an attack was foiled? Aside from the hilarious Miami "Seas of David" terrorist karate school from last summer or the other non-threats "leaked" to the media, that is. Isn't it not only a system that can never be proven effective, but a system that just BEGS for abuse?
There's my position, which is simple, I emphatically oppose warrantless domestic surveillance of American citizens. I hope I make it pretty clear why I hate and fear our government's willingness to search without warrants and then lie about it. I'm sure you'll at least respect my position after reading this and not just think I'm a paranoid tinfoil hat crazy.
There's the position of our Founding Fathers, and our Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees us against searches made without warrants or probable cause. That's really the backbone of my opposition to this illegal policy, that not only does the Constitution of the United States guarantee I won't be searched without a court order, President George W. Bush swore a holy oath to GOD to defend it.
There's the position of the Bush administration, which seems to be that warrantless wiretaps are desirable not because they're warrantless, but because they're ILLEGAL. If you can prosecute someone with illegally obtained evidence that a judge did not review, why it could be anything, right? Or more frighteningly, it could be nothing.
There are THINKING PEOPLE who will rhetorically ask me, "Well Brian, if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about, now do you?" This one I'll have to admit is tricky and devilish, but ultimately it's the refuge of someone who believes they will not be surveilled but that I will, and who also believes our government will tell the truth and do what they promise without anyone watching them or holding them to their obligations.
I have nothing to hide from the government, why should I be scared? Right? What under Heaven could possibly interest the US Government about me? I'm not a terrorist. I don't know any terrorists. I don't even know any militia members, nor do I sell anything that could fund terrorism, nor do I donate money to any organization that could possibly fund terrorism.
Gee, is it possible I neglected to declare some income over the past ten or fifteen years? Could be, I don't know. Did I sign any petitions? Probably. Did I donate to any charities? Am I a member of a church? Did I talk any shit about my government? Nah, couldn't be. It is likewise impossible that any friend, acquaintance, or friend's acquaintance spoke ill of either major party or the US Government. Right?
Once, when I was twelve or thirteen, a friend of mine and I pulled The Anarchist Cookbook from some bulletin board with my Mom's Kaypro and a modem, just to see if we could do it. Should my mom's house be searched without a warrant, should she be arrested based on the secret evidence obtained, and detained without charges, based on her dot matrix having been used to print out a scary document eighteen years ago? Does that act make me a terrorist?
If you haven't already, it's high time you look up ECHELON and the Information Awareness Office. Those projects are only the ones we know about, and they were created to intercept ALL data that travels on the Internet, not just your piddly, personal traffic (no matter what your .torrent ratio is). Bank of America surveils and gets surveilled. AT&T's in on it. So's Verizon, and virtually every other American phone and internet carrier with the exception of QWEST (the CEO of which has been retaliated against by the NSA and the Justice Department, it is alleged). They're helping strangers spy on you. There hasn't been any real oversight yet, no one to make sure they don't use your information for undeclared and unlawful purposes.
Don't take my word for it, look at the public information on these programs. In a nutshell, ECHELON is a global eavesdropping and analysis network operated by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and of course, the United States; the Information Awareness Office is DARPA's "Total Information Awareness" project, a mass surveillance system. Funding for Total Information Awareness (TIA) went dark in 2003.
Look up "AT&T Surveillance Code," and think about when the original software was developed (1990 or so) and what it was for. This is software created for marketing, and has been turned into a tool for our government to break the law and eavesdrop on all of us. Gives me the fucking creeps. First it was used to sell me stuff, now it's used to prosecute people with secret evidence.
"Aha," these thinking people will say, "don't you want your government to protect you?" Yes I do. My government should make sure no one spies on me or infringes on my Constitutional rights without holding a national referendum on whether to modify the Fourth Amendment or not.
Thanks to our beleaguered freedom of the press, I now know that the Executive Branch of my government has no regard for my Constitutional rights, nor any regard for the other branches of government. We won't even get into any of the "Self-Evident, and inalienable" rights we're guaranteed in our patriotic founding documents.
Recently, recently, after making warrantless wiretapping legal, Congress asked the White House for all documents relating to the current NSA wiretapping program. Those documents would disclose not only when the program began (which is almost certainly prior to 9-11), but which corporations (in addition to the ones we already know about) assisted the government in breaking the law. The White House responded by offering the documents on the condition that any companies involved be given blanket immunity on grounds of (you guessed it) National Security. To the credit of Congressional Democrats, Pat Leahy refused to give retroactive immunity to telecoms involved in the program.
The current NSA eavesdropping program, it turns out, was conceived a year prior to 9-11, according to a suit filed against Verizon. The suit also alleges AT&T activated their listening posts just 11 days after the inauguration of George W. Bush, a full seven months before 9-11.
That's January 2001, so let's all quit pretending that the program was either a response to the attacks of September 11 OR AT ALL EFFECTIVE. Let's see, illegal mass surveillance and data mining on US citizens began in January 2001 or before. Which major terror attack was prevented?
I won't pretend that illegal eavesdropping by the US government on its citizens is anything new. The ECHELON electronic eavesdropping program was reported as early as 1988, just a TEENY bit before 9-11. Project Minaret and Project Shamrock are both from the 60's.
The concept behind ECHELON is nothing new either, reading citizens ' mail has been done before (see Cabinet Noir), there just wasn't anywhere near as MUCH mail as there is today, and the methods for analysis were nowhere near as sophisticated. Project Minaret and Project Shamrock were both joint NSA/CIA eavesdropping programs for intercepting telegraph transmissions, the companies involved were ITT, RCA and Western Union, and intercepts were recorded and analyzed by hand.
Today, it's companies like AT&T and Verizon assisting our government in unconstitutionally and illegally invading the privacy of their customers, and it's the most powerful supercomputers and analysis algorithms on the planet crunching the data.
If it's ok to unlawfully search my phone calls and emails, with no legal record or court authorization of it being done, why not my house? Hasn't it been decided that the US Government should be able to search my personal data to ensure I'm not a terrorist? Isn't the only way to REALLY make sure I'm not guilty to search my house? My GPS? My Google searches? My car? My person? Shouldn't I have to notify law enforcement and show my papers to cross state lines?
Am I not guilty now until proven innocent?
That stuff's important, right? For you and your family, for any political or religious ideas you might have? This is about more than just Republicans versus Democrats, it has to do not so much with what our leaders are ALLOWED to do, but with what our leaders can get away with. That alone should worry you, that we're having a national conversation about what they can and can't get away with, that our trustworthy, honorable, elected officials want to "get away" with anything, and that they're asking for immunity for some of the largest companies in the world for activities that haven't been disclosed yet.
And so it goes. This story is playing out faster than I can really keep track of it, and that's just the public record stuff. Let's hope our elected representatives are able to safeguard our rights and have our best interests at heart. Right now it's just a turf war between Executive and Legislative.
Where is this all going? Gosh, what could possibly go wrong? I can see a major security fiasco within the next five years where huge government databases of our personal data are breached,"misplaced" lost or just plain stolen. I can see a shitload of bona fide terrorist prosecutions getting bungled because of half-assed warrantless prosecutions on the horizon. Within ten years if we don't elect people who will stop it, it'll be so normal that those failed prosecutions will fade away as secret evidence becomes more and more common.
If this stuff matters to you, the Wired.com blog Threat Level and Rawstory.com have had great coverage and the digg.com users submit stories on this and related topics regularly. I recommend those sources, along with a healthy dose of Wikipedia to keep up to date. You never know how soon it will come to your doorstep, your phone, your inbox and your search history. Unless you're an AT&T or Verizon customer, in which case it probably already has.
