In the aftermath of the revelations about the illegal and unconstitutional total-information-awareness surveillance program by the U.S. government, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, denounced the reporting by theguardian.
Disclosure of the massive surveillance of phone records and internet communications risks “long-lasting and irreversible harm” to US national security, the director of national intelligence says.
Late on Thursday night US time James Clapper issued a bullet-point defence of the surveillance programs disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post, saying they contained “numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties”. To correct the “misleading impression left in the article” – apparently a reference to the Guardian’s original story – Clapper said he approved the declassification of his defence of the National Security Agency’s collection of every phone record from millions of Verizon customers.
By now, this is a familiar theme by these government officials. They keep claiming that they need to implement these massive surveillance systems in order to protect us from terrorism.
“The collection is broad in scope,” Clapper wrote, “because more narrow collection would limit our ability to protect the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it may assist counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities.”
Here's the thing: No free society can ever have total security. It is impossible. If you want total security, then what you're asking for is for a totalitarian police state. If you want to live in a free democracy, then you're going to have to understand that a certain level of crimes committed by regular people will happen.
Why is that? Well, being truly free means that you have privacy, that the government can't just cast a wide net over the entire society trying to prevent crime from happening.
That freedom, that privacy, allows you to have a certain range of action, and depending on your proclivities or inclinations, some of those actions could be criminal in nature.
In a free society, then and only then, can you be subjected to sanctions for having committed a crime.
Think of it this way... Let's say you have a hundred random people living "under freedom and democracy." Any one of the one hundred people could commit a crime, including violent crimes.
So the potential for the commission of crimes is more or less evenly divided within those 100 people, and thus it is highly diffused.
Because of it, the potential for becoming victim of a crime is also highly diffused (and thus, unlikely), if one factors in a legal system operating under a constitutional framework.
In a Security (Authoritarian) Surveillance Police State, it may be possible to implement a very draconian system that removes (or highly diminishes) the "freedom" and "opportunity" necessary for any given individual to commit a crime.
But then what you've done is to transfer that power to the State (by giving up your personal freedom in the name of security).
And once you acquiesce to the transfer of such power to the government, you will see massive crimes committed at that level. One good example is the wholesale looting of the entire U.S. economy by Wall Street criminal cartels, and the complicit cover up by corrupt government officials that once worked for law firms focusing on protecting Wall Street interests.
There are many examples, including the current and ongoing torture of Guantanamo Base prisoners by the Obama administration, the illegal assassination of U.S. citizens extra-judicially, and the massive looting and war crimes committed by the Bush administration.
And once you've done that, you have basically become a slave to the State, which is a complete subversion to the concept of a "Government of the people, by the people, for the people."
The issue of giving up your freedom in the name of security, to the Government, is obviously bad enough, but when you factor in a situation where you basically have corporatist business cartels controlling the government, then what you have is a proto-fascist state.
Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform—the primary role of liberal, democratic institutions—we are left defenseless against corporate power.
- Chris Hedges
The emphasis is mine
This country's history is replete with warnings by our Founding Fathers, and by many, many intellectual, philosophers and writers, about the dangers of giving up freedom in the name of security.
The latest revelations of the massive illegal and unconstitutional total-information-surveillance regime expanded by the Obama administration should be of great concern to people who value and appreciate freedom and democracy.
Ultimately, living in a totalitarian police state is not worth it...
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
- Patrick Henry