June 11, 2013
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The surveillance state is even bigger, and scarier, than we thought.
And,
as a result, it's time that we broke up the failed national security
experiment known as the Department of Homeland Security. Returning to
dozens of independent agencies will return internal checks-and-balances
to within the Executive branch, and actually make us both safer and less
likely to be the victims of government snooping overreach.
Last Wednesday, the Guardian's
Glenn Greenwald revealed that the National Security Agency is secretly
collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon users. The agency
received authorization to track phone "metadata" over a 3 month period
from a special court order issued in April.
We now also know that what the Guardian uncovered
is just the tip of the iceberg of an ongoing phone and internet records
collection program that likely includes almost all major U.S.
telecommunications companies.
President
Obama - who promised the "most transparent administration ever" - now
finds himself and his DHS at the center of yet another civil liberties
controversy. That controversy has deepened in the wake of two reports
published last night in both the Washington Post and the Guardian that
outlined a different NSA snooping program – a data mining initiative
code-named "PRISM."
PRISM
– which was created in 2007 during the Bush Administration – is almost
certainly the most far-reaching surveillance program ever created. By
reaching into the servers of 9 different major U.S. internet companies -
including Facebook, Google and Apple - the NSA has access to millions
of users' personal data, including emails, chats and videos.
Although
PRISM is supposed to only be used to gain information about "foreign
individuals" suspected of terrorism – the very methods used to access
such information inevitably suck up the private data of American
citizens
As the Washington Post pointed out:
"Even
when the system works just as advertised, with no American singled out
for targeting, the NSA routinely collects a great deal of American
content. That is described as "incidental," and it is inherent in
contact chaining, one of the basic tools of the trade. To collect on a
suspected spy or foreign terrorist means, at minimum, that everyone in
the suspect's inbox or outbox is swept in."
These
startling revelations about American intelligence agencies raise a
number of questions, the first being, of course, who's the Guardian's source?
We don't know for sure just yet, but I'd bet on WikiLeaks. The Guardian has
always been the go-to paper for the group – and exposing the NSA could
be its payback for the trial of Bradley Manning, which started this week
at Fort Meade in Maryland. Or, it could be somebody in the DHS who sees
what a monster Bush created when he borrowed the word "Homeland" from
the last generation's Germans and used it to create a huge national
security agency.
Ultimately, however, the biggest question here is, "What have we become as a nation?"
Because
here's the scariest thing of all: PRISM, just like the NSA's phone
records collection program, is perfectly legal. Arguably
unconstitutional and totalitarian, yes, but, at the moment, legal. PRISM
is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the
NSA's metadata sweeps are allowed under the broad guidelines of Section
215 of the PATRIOT Act – both acts of Congress.
The
frightened little men of the Bush Administration took us into some dark
places after 9/11 – but Congress and President Obama have tragically
continued these exact same policies. Just this past December, Congress
reauthorized an amended version of the FISA act and the President signed
it without complaint.
We're
supposed to have "checks and balances." But the very branches of
government who are supposed to keep the intelligence agencies in check
have rubber-stamped their abuses. Caught up in the hysterical spirit of
the times, our elected representatives have signed away our most
precious Constitutional liberties in the name of "national security."
This is an institutional failure of the highest level.
Our
nation now finds itself at a crossroads when it comes to Constitutional
rights and civil liberties. Even Wisconsin Congressman Jim
Sensenbrenner, one of the primary authors of the 2001 Patriot Act, is
now backing away from a law he helped write and pass, and calling for
new restrictions on its use in intelligence gathering.
But we need to go even further.
We need to repeal the Patriot Act altogether and end our obsession with "Homeland Security."
Concentration
of responsibility becomes concentration of power – and because most of
our intelligence and police power has been concentrated in one agency –
the DHS - that agency has become way too powerful, with no checks and
balances. In effect, it's created an entire surveillance industry around
itself, and it's time to shut it down.
How did this happen? In a way, it was predictable, a replay of Eisenhower's warning.
As Deep Throat famously told Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – "Follow the money."
Who
benefits from our nation's addiction to out-of-control "security"? The
military-industrial-security complex. Providing support and equipment
and consultants to DHS has now become a trillion-dollar for-profit
industry.
This is not good for the United States.
When
the worst abuses of the old East German STASI become the standard
policies of what Thomas Jefferson once called "the world's last best
hope" – it is time for a change.
Because as Jefferson's fellow founder, Benjamin Franklin said, "those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."
Repeal the PATRIOT Act, dissolve the DHS, and let's return to sanity.
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