A new totalitarian America?
By (name withheld by request)
Starting in "late spring 2004", there will be no more free speech in
the United States. Thanks to a new passenger profiling system known
as CAPPS II, you could now lose your right to travel by air if the
government does not like you. CAPPS II will consist of an immense
database comprised of comprehensive personal data of everyone
attempting to travel by air. According to a January 18th article in
the Washington Post, each traveler will be given a color code
specifying their "threat level," and those receiving anything other
than a "green" will be interrogated and arrested, possibly without
due process. Given the way our government has criminalized dissent,
labeling hundreds of harmless activist groups as "terrorists", it is
very possible that they could do the same to individual citizens who
hold alternative views, blackballing them from participation in air
travel, commerce and eventually, from society itself. One thing is
clear. To the Department of Homeland Security, you are no longer an
American, you are a potential terrorist. Something as simple as
paying in cash, or booking a one way flight sets off CAPPS II
alarms. Airport security is undoubtedly important, but why not zero
in on suspects based on real evidence of wrongdoing, rather than
circumstantial cues which more often than not, may indicate nothing
worthy of suspicion?
On November 18th 2003, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in
California ruled that it is legal for the FBI to use cars' dashboard
computing systems to listen in on conversations taking place inside
vehicles, but only when they do not disable the Onstar safety
system's ability to assist in an emergency. Over 4 million cars in
the United States alone are equipped with an Onstar computing
system, and in 15 years it is estimated that the majority of cars on
the road will use similar dashboard computing. Like most post 9/11
erosions of civil liberties, this one is surreptitiously bypassing
the public eye, and being sold under the guise of "safety"
and "security".
As part of a "traffic survey" in September of 2000, 48,000 motorists
who had traveled along a Maryland interstate received letters from
the Maryland Mass Transit Administration which stated: "Your vehicle
was seen traveling on southbound I-95 near I-195 on Wednesday, Sept.
27. Please provide the following information: Where were you going?
Who was with you? What was the purpose of your trip?" No matter
where we go, it is becoming impossible to escape the eye in the sky,
hidden and not-so-hidden surveillance cameras. Soon it will be
possible for you and I to be tracked down through the jeans we wear,
the razors we buy, or the cars we drive. How? The answer is Radio
Frequency Identification tags. Send it a specific radio signal, and
it sends back its serial number through the air. Attach it to
anything and you can locate its host with high precision. These
undetectable miniature radio transmitters and receiver units are
already in widespread use.
The Gillette Corporation has ordered 500 million of the tags, Wal-
Mart has followed suit, American Express and Mastercard have created
RFID-enabled credit card prototypes, and the US Military requires
that equipment used to carry and transport goods be equipped with
these RFID tags starting 11 months from now. Today's luxury cars
come outfitted with RFID "immobilizer" circuits that won't let the
cars' engines start unless the right RFID-compatible car key is put
into the ignition. In the paranoid post 9/11 climate, it's not out
of the question for a policing agency to use RFID frequencies to
immobilize an unfairly targeted person's vehicle, pinpoint their
location using the transmitters on their razors or even erase all
credit on a person's MasterCard account. RFID is getting closer to
becoming an industry standard at a scary rate, and considering
the "developed" world's absolute dependence on hi-tech products, the
inner workings of which the vast majority of people are clueless
about, it is not hard to imagine RFID tags leading to an all-
pervading police surveillance state, in which the average person
would be even more a slave to the products they buy.
An August 16th 2003 article in the Washington Times reported
that "More than a third of Fortune 500 companies scan their
employees' medical files before making hiring, firing and promotion
decisions." Life insurance providers are acquiring their clients'
genetic information without permission, and using this knowledge to
drop coverage or reject applicants who might develop an illness
others in their family have had. Even more disconcerting was
learning that "internet information brokers sell an individual's
complete medical file" to anyone with 400 dollars. The dubiously
named Matrix plan, is an Orwellian information-pooling project
headed by a coalition of Florida, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
New York, Michigan, Iowa and North Carolina, which share a multitude
of personal details on every resident of these states. On the one
hand it may make law enforcement's job easier, but at what cost?
Proponents of civil liberties compare it to the terrorism "data-
mining" plan which recieved public criticism and also lost
Congressional funding in 2003.
Where will the violations of our rights to privacy stop? Sadly,
privacy is not the only civil liberty we are slowly being forced to
say goodbye to. Donald Rumsfeld's Patriot Act has allowed all
intelligence agencies to share any and all data, in effect merging
the NSA, CIA, FBI, DEA and many other organizations into a giant all
seeing eye. The Patriot Act has erased years of civil rights
progress and awarded "our" government with total authority to
collect intelligence on American citizens and imprison them for long
periods without due process. Pardon me if I'm wrong, but
isn't "intelligence" something a military gathers on the enemy, not
on its own people? Now we are the enemy. There was once a time when
legality and morality were one and the same. That time is long gone.
It is now legal for intelligence agencies to tap our phones without
the consent of a judge. The fourth amendment of the constitution has
been made null, police and FBI agents can legally conduct
unreasonable searches and seizures without our permission and
without first consulting a judge. It is now legal for any person
suspected of "terrorism" (read: dissent and the ability to inspire
in others further dissent) to be imprisoned for an indefinite period
and processed by a military tribunal with no regard for civil
rights. Thanks to Rumsfeld, I could be legally detained tomorrow,
for writing this article and be held prisoner forever, with my
captors not obliged to state what crime I am charged with or even
required to even prove my guilt. That's exactly what happened to
Rabih Haddad, an innocent Muslim cleric who was arrested in 2001 and
has been held in prison for over two years by the Justice Department
for a minor immigration violation. The San Francisco Chronicle
called Rumsfeld's new measures "instruments of repression, used by
totalitarian states." In addition, the fact that the majority of
post 9/11 so-called terrorism arrests were actually for minor
infractions like document fraud, identification theft and
immigration violations has raised serious doubts about the
efficiency of the new measures.
After the horror of September 11th, some say we should willingly
give up many of our liberties for the goal of communal safety. Who
cares if some government official knows a few thousand details about
your life? Who really needs privacy? The answer is, we all need
privacy very badly. Privacy is not only a morally sound practice,
but also must necessarily be respected by law. The Human Rights Act
gives us all a right to privacy for private and family life. The
Data Protection Act 1998 was introduced to ensure that all your
personal data is processed in a manner that is lawful and fair and
therefore should your employer monitor your communications then it
should not intrude on the employees' 'privacy and autonomy'.
But is lack of privacy really a cause for concern for law abiding
citizens? Many argue that the erosion of privacy is not a problem,
as long as the government is not tyrannical, and has the public's
interest at the forefront of its plans. This is the case with our
friends in the White House, right? This same government that values
its people's wellbeing sends many thousands of its youths to risk
their lives to kill people they don't even know halfway around the
globe, resulting in over 530 dead and 3000 maimed, in a conflict the
majority opposes and many claim has more to do with oil profits in
the pockets of the global elite than with anything else.
Despite 11 million people in dozens of nations simultaneously taking
to the streets on February 15th, 2003, protesting the war on the
Iraqi people, in the biggest popular gathering in history for any
reason, the U.S. government and its lackeys' worldwide violated the
popular will by going on with the assault on Iraq. Despite millions
of law abiding world citizens declaring that imperialism was not a
way of life worth bombing for, or worth drafting and killing their
own working class young men for, corporate interest behind the Iraqi
conflict supercedes the wishes of the people. I guess the 17 Billion
dollars the Pentagon awarded to Dick Cheney's Lockheed Martin are
more important than the wellbeing of human beings. What a
peculiar "democracy" we have when the selected rulers spend more
money developing new ways to kill people (400 Billion to be exact),
than they do developing ways to help people live more productive
lives.
Whose interests do our "elected representatives" serve? It is clear
that we of the popular citizenry are powerless to change where
resources are directed. Our taxpayer dollars help fund deplorable
wars we don't support, for the goal of profit which won't be ours.
Echoing the sentiments of one of our forefathers, Thomas Jefferson,
I believe that to force people to finance with their taxes the
propagation of ideas in which they don't believe and in fact hate is
evil and tyrannical. Yet this and further destruction of our civil
liberties happen every day. This is because our world is a
corporatocracy; directed and managed by military industrial
behemoths. Volumes could be written on the instances where the
governments of the world have acted against the popular wellbeing
throughout recent history, actions which could easily be interpreted
as tyrannical. Bush's idea of democracy is not one where the
majority of the people dictate what action the leaders take, but one
where the people with the majority of the money dictate what action
is taken, and this is why it has been so easy for our rights to
personal confidentiality to have been trampled upon.
The existence of the corporate media ensures that the perspective of
the ruling establishment is first and foremost in people's minds. In
response to the one sided views the media bombards us with, a free
speech movement has emerged. The Internet has amplified the voice of
the common person. Americans are excited about this new power and
freedom, and we should be suspicious of a politician who seeks to
limit that freedom. Meanwhile, we have a president who believes in
Internet censorship. With regards to a website criticizing his
politics, Bush stated at a televised press conference that "there
ought to be limits to freedom". Thanks to the corporate media's
weapons of mass distraction and disinformation, the increasing
threat to freedom of expression online (the U.N. has proposed to
censor the internet), the FCC takeover of the radio airwaves which
are supposed to be public domain, and the hostile militarized police
forces worldwide which illegally launch violent assaults on harmless
protesters, free speech is limited and the venues through which
common people can broadcast their uncensored opinions are few.
Without a doubt, dissidence is key to democracy. Without freely
broadcasted dissenting opinions, America stops being not America.
The British Government is suspected of being a part of a coalition
that is currently pressuring the European Union to make sure that
Internet Service Providers and phone companies keep a record of all
of the nation's telephone calls, faxes, and internet and email usage
from the past seven years. Whether you have a one phone connection
or dozens of electronic communications devices, chances are that
what you say and what you do is being scrutinized. Enter Echalon,
the shadowy global spy system that intercepts and scans through all
world communications and records the personal data of individuals
mentioning sensitive keywords. It was for years kept under a veil of
secrecy, but some concerned intelligence officials in New Zealand
leaked information about Echalon to writer Nicky Hager, who
describes his findings in the book, `Secret Power'. In a turn of
events that confirms Hager's findings, the agency known as the
Defense Signals Directorate of Australia which is allegedly involved
in Echelon, has recently admitted to the existence of UKUSA, the
network of five national intelligence agencies that reportedly
governs the system. It is supposedly an effort to pick up on enemy
communications. Unfortunately, "enemy communications" is an
extremely vague term, and an enemy could be made out of anyone
vexing the rich and powerful. Conversations between harmless peace
advocates could be deemed "enemy communications" and this coupled
with the USA Patriot Act could land any one of us in jail for simply
questioning authority.
Invasion of privacy, the filtering of acceptable and unacceptable
information is all part of the same plan. The reality of these
worldwide surveillance systems, is that they seek to identify
dissent, for the eventual purpose of squashing difference of
opinion. The powers that be are monitoring messages we express and
messages we take in, and are actively stepping in to suppress the
dissemination of those messages that conflict with their agenda.
Thomas Jefferson once said "When governments fear the people, there
is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
One of the things our nation sorely needs is not an increase in
paranoia, but an amplified awareness of the battle for our minds and
of the existing system of political control. The federal government
must be our servant, not our master. Why do we allow our government
to maintain extreme levels of secrecy regarding many of their
actions when we are not even allowed to keep a basic level of simple
privacy? Surveillance leads to the suppression of dissent, and that
can only lead to a police state, nothing else. Why do we, the people
of the United States, so easily accept the obvious misuse of power
we see before us? Perhaps this 2000 year-old quote from Julius
Caesar can enlighten us. "Beware of the leader who beats the drums
of war in order to whip the citizenry into patriotic fervor, for
patriotism is a double-edged sword. It emboldens the blood and
narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached fever pitch
and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader
will have no need to seize the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the
citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer
up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know?
For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."