Please excuse me for bringing the topic of American communication surveillance into this space. It's simply too important not to broach the subject wherever I can.Since Sept. 11, 2001, certain agencies and interests in the federal government have become heavily invested in keeping U.S. citizens under broad and seemingly illegal surveillance in order to, as the story goes, protect those citizens from the not quite alleged (but also not quite pervasive) threat of international terrorism.
In 2001, thousands of Americans were killed by terrible violence. In 2006, the American population has begun to find out that aside from the retaliatory, self-righteous, extralegal, denied, hidden or simply inhumane policies and strategies of the federal government -- which, over time,
have ended or degraded perhaps 1,000 times more lives than those lost on Sept. 11 -- we now hear and read that we are the ones being placed on watchlists and into databases. And the justification offered -- the distraction, the excuse -- is that this will provide protection and forewarning against other attacks. That this will help to strengthen the country's security and vigilance.
These, I think, are restatements of the same official lie... all the moreso when one considers today's news [below] that the warrantless call-monitoring program that was said to be in place only for inbound international calls is, in fact, keeping track of millions of domestic communications. We are the ones being watched. We are the subjects of classified surveillance. We, collectively, are regarded as potential threats to security -- which begs the question: whose security is the administration seeking to ensure?
Since this is a situation that was not requested by the people, nor was it given sanction by the legislative or judicial branches of the government, then it is well past time for people to seek redress by all available, constructive and creative means, and to resist and reject these policies of abuse, control and deception undertaken by the executive branch, whenever, wherever and however possible.
We Americans have to speak, write, act and convene in accordance with what is just, conscious and supportive of community and humanity because it is trifling, troublesome nonsense such as this -- along with ecological and economic exploitation, warmaking (and the fiscal, cultural and spiritual damage it causes), the abuse of position, perceived authority and power -- that endangers not only the rights and resources that we Americans are fortunate to have, but also the integrity, stability and destiny of all people in the world.
So long as freedom and liberty are used as convenient justifications for the ugly, dishonest and destructive actions of the United States, then its citizens (as well as the rest of the world) will remain locked in a prison of insecurity, inequity and imbalance.
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The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY."
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The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter."
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Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program."
"Newly released government documents show that even having a high-level security clearance won't keep you off the
Transportation Security Administration's Kafkaesque terrorist watch list, where you'll suffer missed flights and bureaucratic nightmares."
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It did not surprise many security analysts to learn Thursday from USA Today that the NSA is applying [social network analysis] technology to billions of phone records. The NSA declined to comment. But several experts said it seemed likely the agency would want to assemble a picture from more than just landline phone records. Other forms of communication, including cell phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, likely are trackable targets as well, at least on international networks if not inside the U.S.
"The NSA has proven itself adept at capturing communications or at least analyzing traffic information.
The Echelon program, for example, is known to have tapped into satellite, microwave and fiber-optic phone links — including undersea cables — in order to gain insights into what the rest of the world was talking about."
And finally, something that made me laugh:Gathering data may not violate privacy rights, but it could be illegal.
