[Peace-discuss] Quis custodiat?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Question: which is the larger group, (1) police - federal, state, and local - 
watching AWARE; or (2) viewers of "AWARE on the Air"?]

MONDAY, DEC 20, 2010 06:21 ET
The government's one-way mirror
BY GLENN GREENWALD

One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian government is its fixation on hiding 
everything it does behind a wall of secrecy while simultaneously monitoring, 
invading and collecting files on everything its citizenry does.  Based on the 
Francis Bacon aphorism that "knowledge is power," this is the extreme imbalance 
that renders the ruling class omnipotent and citizens powerless.

In The Washington Post today, Dana Priest and William Arkin continue their "Top 
Secret America" series by describing how America's vast and growing Surveillance 
State now encompasses state and local law enforcement agencies, collecting and 
storing always-growing amounts of information about even the most innocuous 
activities undertaken by citizens suspected of no wrongdoing.  As was true of 
the first several installments of their "Top Secret America," there aren't any 
particularly new revelations for those paying attention to such matters, but the 
picture it paints -- and the fact that it is presented in an establishment organ 
such as The Washington Post -- is nonetheless valuable.

Today, the Post reporters document how surveillance and enforcement methods 
pioneered in America's foreign wars and occupations are being rapidly imported 
into domestic surveillance (wireless fingerprint scanners, military-grade 
infrared cameras, biometric face scanners, drones on the border).  In sum:

The special operations units deployed overseas to kill the al-Qaeda leadership 
drove technological advances that are now expanding in use across the United 
States. On the front lines, those advances allowed the rapid fusing of biometric 
identification, captured computer records and cellphone numbers so troops could 
launch the next surprise raid. Here at home, it's the DHS that is enamored with 
collecting photos, video images and other personal information about U.S. 
residents in the hopes of teasing out terrorists.

Meanwhile, the Obama Department of Homeland Security has rapidly expanded the 
scope and invasiveness of domestic surveillance programs -- justified, needless 
to say, in the name of Terrorism:

[DHS Secretary Janet] Napolitano has taken her "See Something, Say Something" 
campaign far beyond the traffic signs that ask drivers coming into the nation's 
capital for "Terror Tips" and to "Report Suspicious Activity."

She recently enlisted the help of Wal-Mart, Amtrak, major sports leagues, hotel 
chains and metro riders. In her speeches, she compares the undertaking to the 
Cold War fight against communists.

"This represents a shift for our country," she told New York City police 
officers and firefighters on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary this fall. "In a 
sense, this harkens back to when we drew on the tradition of civil defense and 
preparedness that predated today's concerns."

The results are predictable.  Huge amounts of post/9-11 anti-Terrorism money 
flooded state and local agencies that confront virtually no Terrorism threats, 
and they thus use these funds to purchase technologies -- bought from the 
private-sector industry that controls and operates government surveillance 
programs -- for vastly increased monitoring and file-keeping on ordinary 
citizens suspected of no wrongdoing.  The always-increasing cooperation between 
federal, state and local agencies -- and among and within federal agencies -- 
has spawned massive data bases of information containing the activities of 
millions of American citizens.  "There are 96 million sets of fingerprints" in 
the FBI's data base, the Post reports.  Moreover, the FBI uses its "suspicious 
activities record" program (SAR) to collect and store endless amounts of 
information about innocent Americans:

At the same time that the FBI is expanding its West Virginia database, it is 
building a vast repository controlled by people who work in a top-secret vault 
on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington. This one 
stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who 
are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting 
suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.

To get a sense for what kind of information ends up being stored -- based on the 
most innocuous conduct -- read this page from their article describing 
Suspicious Activity Report No3821.  Even the FBI admits the huge waste all of 
this is -- "'Ninety-nine percent doesn't pan out or lead to anything' said 
Richard Lambert Jr., the special agent in charge of the FBI's Knoxville office" 
-- but, as history conclusively proves, data collected on citizens will be put 
to some use even if it reveals no criminality.

To understand the breadth of the Surveillance State, recall this sentence from 
the original Priest/Arkin article:  "Every day, collection systems at the 
National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls 
and other types of communications."  As Arkin and Priest document today, there 
are few safeguards on how all this data is used and abused.  Local police 
departments routinely meet with neoconservative groups insisting that all 
domestic Muslim communities are a potential threat and must be subjected to 
intensive surveillance and infiltration.  Groups engaged in plainly legal and 
protected political dissent have been subjected to these government surveillance 
programs.  What we have, in sum, is a vast, uncontrolled and increasingly 
invasive surveillance state that knows and collects more and more information 
about the activities of more and more citizens.

But what makes all of this particularly ominous is that -- as the WikiLeaks 
conflict demonstrates -- this all takes place next to an always-expanding wall 
of secrecy behind which the Government's own conduct is hidden from public 
view.   Just consider the Government's reaction to the disclosures by WikiLeaks 
of information which even it -- in moments of candor -- acknowledges have caused 
no real damage:  disclosed information that, critically, was protected by 
relatively low-level secrecy designations and (in contrast to the Pentagon 
Papers) none of which was designated "Top Secret."

It's crystal clear that the Justice Department is engaged in an all-out crusade 
to figure out how to shut down WikiLeaks and imprison Julian Assange.  It is 
subjecting Bradley Manning to unbelievably inhumane conditions in order to 
manipulate him into providing needed testimony to prosecute Assange.  Recall 
that in 2008 -- long before anyone even knew what WikiLeaks was -- the Pentagon 
secretly plotted on how to destroy the organization.  On Meet the Press 
yesterday, Joe Biden was asked whether he agreed more with Mitch McConnell's 
statement that Assange is a "high-tech terrorist" than with those comparing 
WikiLeaks to Daniel Ellsberg, and the Vice President replied:  "I would argue 
that it's closer to being a high tech terrorist. . . ."  "A high-tech 
terrorist."  And consider this pernicious little essay from Eric Fiterman -- a 
former FBI special agent and founder of Methodvue, "a consultancy that provides 
cybersecurity and computer forensics services to the federal government and 
private businesses" -- that clearly reflects the Government's view of WikiLeaks:

In the WikiLeaks case, a fringe group led primarily by foreign nationals 
operating abroad is illegally obtaining, reviewing and disseminating American 
intelligence information with the stated intent of hurting the United States 
(WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange himself made this declaration). That not only 
meets the definition of aggressive, hostile and war-like activity, but squarely 
targets America's diplomatic positions and intelligence interests while 
inflicting collateral damage against our financial institutions and service 
providers who cut-off their relationship with WikiLeaks. This, folks, is war.

That's the mindset of the U.S. Government:  everything it does of any 
significance can and should be shielded from public view; anyone who shines 
light on what it does is an Enemy who must be destroyed; but nothing you do 
should be beyond its monitoring and storing eyes.  And what's most remarkable 
about this -- though, given the full-scale bipartisan consensus over it, not 
surprising -- is how eagerly submissive much of the citizenry is to this 
imbalance.  Many Americans plead with their Government in unison:  we demand 
that you know everything about us but that you keep us ignorant about what you 
do and punish those who reveal it to us.  Often, this kind of oppressive 
Surveillance State has to be forcibly imposed on a resistant citizenry, but much 
of the frightened American citizenry -- led by most transparency-hating media 
figures -- has been trained with an endless stream of fear-mongering to demand 
that they be subjected to more and more of it.

Obviously, every state is necessarily authorized to exercise powers that private 
citizens are barred from exercising themselves (governments can legally put 
people in cages, but if a private citizen does that, it constitutes felonies:  
kidnapping and false imprisonment).  But the imbalance has become so extreme -- 
the Government now watches much of the citizenry behind a fully opaque one-way 
mirror -- that the dangers should be obvious.  And this is all supposed to be 
the other way around:  it's government officials who are supposed to operate out 
in the open, while ordinary citizens are entitled to privacy.  Yet we've 
reversed that dynamic almost completely.  And even with 9/11 now 9 years behind 
us, the trends continue only in one direction.  WikiLeaks is one of the very few 
entities successfully subverting this scheme, which is why -- from the view of 
the Government and its enablers -- it must be stopped at all costs.

  http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/20/surveillance/index.html