According to published reports (U.S.
News Here; Salon here
and here) the Associated Press has now been swept by
the vast surveillance state set up by the Bush Administration, and then
expanded broadly by the Obama Administration (see Here,
and Here,
and Here,
and Here,
and Here
for some of my thoughts on this issue). Glenn
Greenwald has made a career of dealing with this issue. And I have to say – AP why are you surprised?
History is repleat with examples of surveillance states, all
probably set up due to the PERCEPTION of an existential threat , that grow and
morph and begin to consume the very societies that they are meant to
protect. It happened in the Soviet
Union, it happened in Nazi Germany – it happened here during WWII resulting in
internment camps for Japanese citizens (among other horrible domestic
abuses). It happened under Nixon, and it
happened under Johnson as Vietnam raged.
So why in the world did anyone think that the vast (and
often contractor led) surveillance state cobbled together in the 9/11 ashes of
the Cold War would be any different?
Because it started was pitched to focus on “terrorists”, which is really
code for Muslims? Because it was run by
the federal government? On what basis di
all these media types, and telcom bosses, and ordinary citizens believe they would
be immune from NSA’s purported billion emails a day capturing and filtering
capability?
Look, we as American citizens have to make a choice, and
then we have to start acting on it and keep acting on it. We can either have a free state, where the
government really and truly works for us, or we can have a safe state, where
the government really and truly listens to us behind our backs, arrests and
detains us for no reason and without due process, and murders
us using determinations for the President that never see the light of day. But we can’t have both, and expect them to be
mutually co-existent.
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