July 6, 2013
By Mickey Friedman
We are human. Fraught with frailty. Our failures are manifest.
So it’s hard for me to believe that most of us have nothing to hide. That, because we’re not terrorists, we should not complain when the government, and its million-strong army of private contractors, collect information from our phone calls, emails, Facebook postings and tweets, from our Google searches. We can all be shamed and embarrassed by the public airing of our all-too-human failings. And only the most compelling circumstances justifies the invasion of our privacy.
I think those who kill and maim innocent civilians should be stopped, imprisoned, killed if necessary, but I am old-fashioned when it comes to the Bill of Rights. I cherish freedom of speech. I have the greatest appreciation for freedom of the press. Even when those who use these rights, sometimes try our patience, or take advantage of them to be stupid, cruel, or tasteless.
Dictators don’t allow their critics to speak, to write, or let the people freely assemble. The people are under constant surveillance. Comedians are jailed because one man’s joke is another man’s treason.
Once upon a time in America there was innocent until proven guilty. Reasonable doubt. Probable cause. And the burden lay with the state to prove guilt. You had to have a compelling reason to convince a judge to wiretap an American, to read his mail, to invade his privacy.
But sadly those days are gone.
President Obama and the NSA will say this massive surveillance has stopped terror attacks but the evidence is scant. According to CNN, Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence stated, “Gen. Alexander’s testimony yesterday suggested that the NSA’s bulk phone records collection program helped thwart ‘dozens’ of terrorist attacks, but all of the plots that he mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection methods.”
Most often spying has more to do with controlling people than it does with keeping them safe. Whistleblowers like Snowden offer important information to the majority while embarrassing the minority. And the powers-that-be in Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, or Washington D.C. hate to be caught lying or stealing, their incompetence made public.
Der Spiegel reports that the latest Snowden documents show the NSA was spying on our European allies, intercepting their emails and reading their secret communications. You start spying on al Qaida and end up spying on everyone.
Sadly lost in the hub-bub about where Edward Snowden is was a McClatchy news report about President Obama’s “Insider Threat Program,” the administration-wide effort to make sure employees don’t disclose information to the press. It talks about classified material, but its “catchall definitions of ‘insider threat’ give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.”
According to McClatchy “some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for ‘high-risk persons or behaviors’ among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.”
A June 1, 2012 Defense Department strategy document for the Inside Threat Program states: “Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States.”
So if you work at the IRS and see your bosses using taxpayer money to stay at ritzy hotels and you tell the Washington Post, you’re aiding our enemies?
McClatchy reports: “Employees must turn themselves and others in for failing to report breaches.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194513/obamas-crackdown-views-leaks-as.html
According to Amy Goodman: “The Department of Education has told its employees that, quote, ‘certain life experiences … might turn a trusted user into an insider threat.’ These experiences include, quote, ‘stress, divorce, financial problems’ or ‘frustrations with co-workers or the organization.’”
Ever experience stress, been divorced, have financial problems? Ever been frustrated with a co-worker? Ever been human?
The real story here is the death of the Bill of Rights. Our government is storing massive amounts of information about all of us. And this information can be accessed by a 29 year old employee of a private company working for the government.
That Edward Snowden couldn’t live with this inappropriate power means the United States government will do its best to throw him in jail. He hated the secrets and lies. Sadly they’ll do a far better job making Edward Snowden’s life miserable than they’ve done with the bankers who swindled millions of Americans, or those who stole eight billion dollars during the Iraq War.
The NSA will say this is legal but this was/is a secret program based on a secret interpretation of several different statutes, twisting words to serve their purpose. The court they rely on is the super-secret FISA court which never says no.
More than a million people can access your personal information. That’s a million people to mistrust.
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A day after this was published in The Berkshire Record, a friend told me the following joke:
President Obama has just given a speech in Paris, France when he is surrounded by admirers. A young boy tugs on his jacket and Obama looks down. The boy says: “President Obama, my father tells me you have been listening to our telephone conversations and reading our mail…”
President Obama leans down to whisper: “He’s not your father …”
Some other articles to check:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/17/apple-reveals-us-surveillance-requests
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/15/facebook-microsoft-release-surveillance-figures
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/18/yahoo-u-s-made-between-12000-and-13000-user-data-requests/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/17/opinion/bergen-nsa-spying/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html