Glenn Greenwald: U.S. gov't is seen as one of the greatest threats to privacy and other liberties"

[Better Believe It]

Government-created climate of fear
January 10, 2011

So much of what the U.S. Government has done over the last decade has been devoted to creating and strengthening this climate of fear. Attacking Iraq under the terrorizing banner of "shock and awe"; disappearing people to secret prisons; abducting them and shipping them to what Newsweek's Jonathan Alter (when advocating this) euphemistically called "our less squeamish allies"; throwing them in cages for years without charges, dressed in orange jumpsuits and shackles; creating a worldwide torture regime; spying on Americans without warrants and asserting the power to arrest them on U.S. soil without charges: all of this had one overarching objective. It was designed to create a climate of repression and intimidation by signaling to the world -- and its own citizens -- that the U.S. was unconstrained by law, by conventions, by morality, or by anything else: the government would do whatever it wanted to anyone it wanted, and those thinking about opposing the U.S. in any way, through means legitimate or illegitimate, should (and would) thus think twice, at least.

That a large percentage of those brutalized by this system turned out to be innocent -- knowingly innocent -- is a feature, not a bug: that one can end up being subjected to these lawless horrors despite doing nothing wrong only intensifies the fear and makes it more effective. The power being asserted is not merely unlimited and tyrannical, but arbitrary. And now, the Obama administration's citizen-aimed, due-process-free assassination program, its orgies of drone attacks, its defense of radically broad interpretations of "material support" criminal statutes, and its disturbing targeting of American anti-war activists with subpoenas and armed police raids are all part of the same tactic. Those contemplating meaningful opposition to American action are meant to be frightened. The anguished, helpless cries of 18-year-old American Gulet Mohamed, after a week of being disappeared and brutalized by America's close ally, serves an important purpose.

Consider how this expresses itself with regard to WikiLeaks. Jacob Appelbaum was first identified as a WikiLeaks volunteer in the middle of 2010. Almost immediately thereafter, he was subjected to serious harassment and intimidation when, while re-entering the U.S. from a foreign trip, he was detained and interrogated for hours by Homeland Security agents, and had his laptop and cellphones seized -- all without a warrant. He was told he'd be subjected to the same treatment every time he tried to re-enter the country (and his belongings, months later, have still not been returned). And he was one of the individuals singled out in the DOJ's court-issued subpoena to Twitter.

Beyond the erosion of freedom, there's a serious cost to all of this. Virtually the entire world uses Twitter now, and the efforts by the U.S. Government to invade people's accounts -- including an elected member of Iceland's Parliament -- made headlines around the world. Many Americans may not perceive it, but much of the world, as a result of such actions, sees the U.S. not as "Leaders of the Free World" but one of the greatest threats to privacy and other core liberties. Watching people afraid to fly through the U.S. -- including its own citizens -- is just remarkable. And the spectacle of Homeland Security agents detaining whomever they want, and then unilaterally stealing their laptops and cellphones and keeping them and digging through them for as long as they want -- all without a warrant -- is a powerful sign of how far things have fallen.

Read the full article at:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/10/fear/index.html


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http://twitter.com/ioerror/status/24176712921120769


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[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. We're #1!

:woohoo:

[MadHound]

2. This isn't anything new,

It is just being amplified, again.

The creeping police state, the loss of our civil liberties has been ongoing for decades, and has been a bipartisan effort. It did take a quantum leap after 9/11 however.