Are Manning and Snowden patriots? That depends on what we do next

[Luminous Animal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/are-manning-and-snowden-patriots-that-depends-on-what-we-do-next/2013/08/16/2ee445e4-0376-11e3-88d6-d5795fab4637_story.html
Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.”

Those who speak for that apparatus, preeminently the president, assert that the interests of the state and the interests of the country are indistinguishable. Agencies charged with keeping Americans safe are focused on doing just that. Those who leak sensitive information undermine that effort and therefore deserve to feel the full force of law.

But what if the interests of the state do not automatically align with those of the country? In that event, protecting “the homeland” serves as something of a smokescreen. Behind it, the state pursues its own agenda. In doing so, it stealthily but inexorably accumulates power, privilege and prerogatives.

Wars — either actual hostilities or crises fostering the perception of imminent danger — facilitate this process. War exalts, elevates and sanctifies the state. Writing almost a century ago, journalist Randolph Bourne put the matter succinctly: “War is the health of the state.” Among citizens, war induces herd-like subservience. “A people at war,” Bourne wrote, “become in the most literal sense obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that naive faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care of them.”

Bourne’s observation captures an essential theme of recent U.S. history. Before the Good War gave way to the Cold War and then to the open-ended Global War on Terror, the nation’s capital was a third-rate Southern city charged with printing currency and issuing Social Security checks. Several decades of war and quasi-war transformed it into today’s center of the universe. Washington demanded deference, and Americans fell into the habit of offering it. In matters of national security, they became if not obedient, at least compliant, taking cues from authorities who operated behind a wall of secrecy and claimed expertise in anticipating and deflecting threats.

[Luminous Animal]

1. Kick

[Catherina]

2. Activists have NO choice but to do something with it.

"If you do not use your eyes to see, you will need them to weep."
Jean-Paul Sartre, Exploiting Our Amnesia


From Spying on "Terrorists Abroad" to Suppressing Domestic Dissent: When We Become the Hunted

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Truthout recently spoke with Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, about the ever-expanding government/corporate surveillance state.

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Heidi Boghosian: (...) Several other factors add to the urgency of this challenge: The Obama administration is on the defensive after Edward Snowden's disclosures and will likely invest even more resources to protect its perpetual "war on terror" campaign and the corporate partners that profit from this manufactured war. As the public, and certain legislators, express apprehension about mass surveillance, the executive branch and the NSA may enact more stringent measures to fortify and safeguard their highly sophisticated spying infrastructure.

On top of that, CEOs of telecommunications and defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon and Microsoft are allied with the administration, guiding telecommunications and anti-terrorism policies through the president's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. And in addition to the lucrative business of data mining, corporations continue to adapt and refine technologies of war, from laser microphones to motion sensing capabilities, with which to monitor civilians.

...

We have created an entire new class of society that gathers and has access to classified information - an elite class that promises to grow as private companies seek increased revenue and as the government operates in unparalleled secrecy.

The majority of national intelligence, an astonishing 70 percent, is carried out by contractors. That translates into tens of thousands of analysts from more than 1,900 private firms who have performed intelligence functions over the past few years. Large contractors conduct most of the work, including Booz Allen Hamilton (which according to The New York Times, derived $1.3 billion in revenue from intelligence contracts), Northrop Grumman, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation (with 39,600 employees, a reported $11.17 billion in revenue as of 2013, and a recent $6.6 billion contract from the Defense Intelligence Agency).

In 2012, an estimated 1.1 million private contractors had security clearance. The number of federal employees with security clearance is 2.6 million.

...

Not only is it easy for the US and its contractors to focus on activists, it is imperative that they do so. They must target social advocates in order to justify maintaining their budgets and their livelihoods. There are simply not enough "terrorists" in existence for the government to warrant the current level of intelligence spending. As a result, enormous federal resources are devoted to identifying and tracking activists who are portrayed as "extremists." Individuals who have helped bring about changes in corporate policies, such as animal rights or environmental advocates, are labeled domestic terrorist threats by the FBI.

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MORE: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18292-from-spying-on-terrorists-abroad-to-using-massive-surveillance-to-suppress-domestic-dissent-when-we-become-the-hunted#.UhU5L4gTrVo.facebook

[Luminous Animal]

3. !! I just finished reading that!

Thanks for adding it to my thread.

[Catherina]

4. A blast from the past: NSA illegally tracked 1000s of civil rights & antiwar activists 1952 to 1974

US NSA illegally tracked thousands of civil rights & antiwar activists from 1952 to 1974

By David Burnham, Published: March 27, 1983

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A Federal Court of Appeals recently ruled that the largest and most secretive intelligence agency of the United States, the National Security Agency, may lawfully intercept the overseas communications of Americans even if it has no reason to believe they are engaged in illegal activities. The ruling, which also allows summaries of these conversations to be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, significantly broadens the already generous authority of the N.S.A. to keep track of American citizens.

...

Over the years, this virtually unknown Federal agency has repeatedly sought to enlarge its power without consulting the civilian officials who theoretically direct the Government, while it also has sought to influence the operation and development of all civilian communications networks. Indeed, under Vice Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, N.S.A. director from 1977 to 1981, the agency received an enlarged Presidential mandate to involve itself in communications issues, and successfully persuaded private corporations and institutions to cooperate with it.

... In a nation whose Constitution demands an open Government operating according to precise rules of fairness, the N.S.A. remains an unexamined entity. With the increasing computerization of society, the conflicts it presents become more important. The power of the N.S.A., whose annual budget and staff are believed to exceed those of either the F.B.I. or the C.I.A., is enhanced by its unique legal status within the Federal Government. Unlike the Agriculture Department, the Postal Service or even the C.I.A., the N.S.A. has no specific Congressional law defining its responsibilities and obligations. Instead, the agency, based at Fort George Meade, about 20 miles northeast of Washington, has operated under a series of Presidential directives. Because of Congress's failure to draft a law for the agency, because of the tremendous secrecy surrounding the N.S.A.'s work and because of the highly technical and thus thwarting character of its equipment, the N.S.A. is free to define and pursue its own goals.

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'' If such forces were ever turned against the country's communications system, Senator Church said, ''no American would have any privacy left. ... There would be no place to hide.'' Over the years, N.S.A. surveillance activities have indeed included Americans who were merely stating their political beliefs. The agency first became involved in this more questionable kind of surveillance in the early 1960's when either Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy or the F.B.I. asked it to monitor all telephone calls between the United States and Cuba. This list of international calls was significantly enlarged during the Johnson Administrtion as Federal authorities became concerned that foreign governments might try to influence American civil-rights leaders. The N.S.A. gradually developed a ''watch list'' of Americans that included those speaking out against the Vietnam War.

According to the subsequent investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, a total of 1,200 Americans were targeted by the N.S.A. between 1967 and 1973 because of their political activities. The subjects - chosen by the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency -included members of radical groups, celebrities and ordinary citizens. When it appeared that Congress might learn about the eavesdropping, the surveillance halted.

The Senate intelligence committee also discovered a second illegal surveillance program, under which the N.S.A., and its military predecessors, examined most of the telegrams entering or leaving the country between 1945 and 1975. The program was abruptly halted in May 1975, a date coinciding with the Senate committee's first expression of interest in it.

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Using the information thus gathered, the N.S.A. between 1952 and 1974 developed files on approximately 75,000 Americans, some of whom undoubtedly threatened the nation's security. However, the agency also developed files on civil-rights and antiwar activists, Congressmen and other citizens who lawfully questioned Government policies. For at least 13 of the 22 years the agency was building these files, the C.I.A. had access to them and used the data in its Operation Chaos, another computerized and illegal tracking system set up during the Vietnam War. At its peak, the Chaos files had references to more than 300,000 Americans.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/27/magazine/the-silent-power-of-the-nsa.html

Decades later, after they're busted again, we're expected to believe that they reigned in their scruples. Bullshit, it's more of the same with better computers.