By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is just when people are all engaged in snooping on themselves and one another that they become anesthetized to the whole process. As information itself becomes the largest business in the world, data banks know more about individual people than the people do themselves. The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.\u201d\u2014Marshall McLuhan,\u00a0From Cliche To Archetype<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We\u2019re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors.<\/p>\n
This government of Peeping Toms is watching\u00a0everything<\/a>\u00a0we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend.<\/p>\n
Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government\u2019s choosing.<\/p>\n
This far-reaching surveillance has paved the way for an\u00a0omnipresent, militarized fourth branch of government<\/a>\u2014the Surveillance State\u2014that came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum.<\/p>\n
Indeed, long before the National Security Agency (NSA) became the agency we loved to hate, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were\u00a0carrying out their own secret mass surveillance<\/a>\u00a0on an unsuspecting populace.<\/p>\n
Even agencies not traditionally associated with the intelligence community are part of the government\u2019s growing network of snitches and spies.<\/p>\n
Just about every branch of the government\u2014from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between\u2014now has its own surveillance sector<\/a>, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been\u00a0photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail<\/a><\/em>\u00a0for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans\u2019 texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service\u2019s law enforcement division, the\u00a0Internet Covert Operations Program<\/a>\u00a0(iCOP) is reportedly\u00a0using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities<\/a>, to ferret out potential troublemakers with \u201cinflammatory\u201d posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid \u201cpotentially volatile situations<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies\u2014the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.\u2014and make it accessible for all those in power. And that doesn\u2019t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics\u2014our faces, irises, voices, genetics, even our gait\u2014runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique \u201cidentifiers,\u201d and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.<\/p>\n
All of those internet-connected gadgets we just have to have (Forbes<\/em>\u00a0refers to them as \u201c(data) pipelines to our intimate bodily processes<\/a>\u201d)\u2014the smart watches that can monitor our blood pressure and the smart phones that let us\u00a0pay for purchases with our fingerprints and iris scans<\/a>\u2014are setting us up for a brave new world where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.<\/p>\n
For instance, imagine what the government could do (and is likely already doing) with voiceprint technology, which has been likened to a fingerprint. Described as \u201cthe next frontline in the battle against overweening public surveillance,\u201d the collection of voiceprints is a booming industry for governments and businesses alike. As\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0reports, \u201cvoice biometrics could be used to pinpoint the location of individuals<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
We are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall mass surveillance that makes the spy programs spawned by the USA Patriot Act look like child\u2019s play.<\/p>\n
Fusion centers. See Something, Say Something. Red flag laws. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps.<\/p>\n
These are all part and parcel of the widening surveillance dragnet that the government has used and abused in order to extend its reach and its power.<\/p>\n
The COVID-19 pandemic has succeeded in acclimating us even further to being monitored, tracked and reported for so-called deviant or undesirable behavior.<\/p>\n
Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.<\/p>\n
This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America\u2019s reality.<\/p>\n
Despite the fact that its\u00a0data snooping has been shown to be ineffective<\/a>\u00a0at detecting, let alone stopping, any actual terror attacks, the government continues to operate its domestic spying programs largely in secret, carrying out\u00a0warrantless mass surveillance<\/a>\u00a0on hundreds of millions of Americans\u2019 phone calls, emails, text messages and the like.<\/p>\n
The question of how to deal with government agencies and programs that operate outside of the system of checks and balances established by the Constitution forces us to contend with a deeply unsatisfactory and dubious political \u201csolution\u201d to a problem that operates beyond the reach of voters and politicians: how do you hold accountable a government that lies, cheats, steals, sidesteps the law, and then absolves itself of wrongdoing?<\/p>\n
Certainly, the history and growth of the NSA tracks with the government\u2019s insatiable hunger for ever-great powers.<\/p>\n
Since its official start in 1952, when President Harry S. Truman issued a\u00a0secret executive order<\/a>\u00a0establishing the NSA as the hub of the government\u2019s foreign intelligence activities, the agency\u2014nicknamed \u201cNo Such Agency\u201d\u2014has operated covertly, unaccountable to Congress all the while using taxpayer dollars to fund its secret operations. It was only when the agency ballooned to 90,000 employees in 1969, making it the\u00a0largest intelligence agency<\/a>\u00a0in the world with a significant footprint outside Washington, DC, that it became more difficult to deny its existence.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of Watergate in 1975, the Senate held meetings under the Church Committee in order to determine exactly what sorts of illicit activities the American intelligence apparatus was engaged in under the direction of President Nixon, and how future violations of the law could be stopped. It was the first time the NSA was exposed to public scrutiny since its creation.<\/p>\n
The investigation revealed a sophisticated operation whose surveillance programs paid little heed to such things as the Constitution. For instance, under Project SHAMROCK, the NSA spied on telegrams to and from the U.S., as well as the correspondence of American citizens. Moreover, as the\u00a0Saturday Evening Post<\/em>\u00a0reports<\/a>, \u201cUnder Project MINARET, the NSA monitored the communications of civil rights leaders and opponents of the Vietnam War, including targets such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohammed Ali, Jane Fonda, and two active U.S. Senators. The NSA had launched this program in 1967 to monitor suspected terrorists and drug traffickers, but successive presidents used it to track all manner of political dissidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senator Frank Church (D-Ida.), who served as the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence that investigated the NSA, understood only too well the dangers inherent in allowing the government to overstep its authority in the name of national security. Church recognized that such surveillance powers \u201cat any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn\u2019t matter. There would be no place to hide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noting that the NSA could enable a dictator \u201cto impose total tyranny\u201d upon an utterly defenseless American public, Church declared that he did not \u201cwant to see this country ever go across the bridge\u201d of constitutional protection, congressional oversight and popular demand for privacy. He avowed that \u201cwe,\u201d implicating both Congress and its constituency in this duty, \u201cmust see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.<\/p>\n
The result was the\u00a0passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act<\/a>\u00a0(FISA), and the creation of the FISA Court, which was supposed to oversee and correct how intelligence information is collected and collated. The law requires that the NSA get clearance from the FISA Court, a secret surveillance court, before it can carry out surveillance on American citizens. Fast forward to the present day, and the so-called solution to the problem of government entities engaging in unjustified and illegal surveillance\u2014the FISA Court\u2014has unwittingly become the enabler of such activities, rubberstamping almost every warrant request submitted to it.<\/p>\n
The 9\/11 attacks served as a watershed moment in our nation\u2019s history, ushering in an era in which immoral and\/or illegal government activities such as surveillance, torture, strip searches, SWAT team raids are sanctioned as part of the quest to keep us \u201csafe.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the wake of the 9\/11 attacks,\u00a0George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance<\/a>\u00a0on Americans\u2019 phone calls and emails. That wireless wiretap program was\u00a0reportedly ended in 2007<\/a>\u00a0after the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reported on it, to mass indignation.<\/p>\n
Nothing changed under Barack Obama. In fact, the\u00a0violations worsened<\/a>, with the NSA authorized to secretly collect internet and telephone data on millions of Americans, as well as on foreign governments.<\/p>\n
It was only after whistleblower\u00a0Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations in 2013<\/a>\u00a0that the American people fully understood the extent to which they had been betrayed once again.<\/p>\n
Even so, nothing really changed.<\/p>\n
Since then, presidents, politicians, and court rulings have come and gone, but none of them have done much to put an end to the government\u2019s \u201ctechnotyranny.\u201d<\/p>\n
At every turn, we have been handicapped in our quest for transparency, accountability and a representative democracy by an establishment culture of secrecy: secret agencies, secret experiments, secret military bases, secret surveillance, secret budgets, and secret court rulings, all of which exist beyond our reach, operate outside our knowledge, and do not answer to \u201cwe the people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet the surveillance sector is merely one small part of a shadowy permanent government comprised of unelected bureaucrats who march in lockstep with profit-driven corporations that actually runs Washington, DC, and works to keep us under close watch and, thus, under control. For example,\u00a0Google openly works with the NSA<\/a>, Amazon has built a massive\u00a0$600 million intelligence database<\/a>\u00a0for the CIA, and the\u00a0telecommunications industry is making a fat profit by spying on us<\/a>\u00a0for the government.<\/p>\n
Most recently, the Biden Administration indicated it may be open to\u00a0working with non-governmental firms<\/a>\u00a0in order to warrantlessly monitor citizens online.<\/p>\n
This would be nothing new, however. Vast quantities of the government\u2019s digital surveillance is already being\u00a0outsourced to private companies<\/a>, who are far less restrained in how they harvest and share our personal data.<\/p>\n
In this way,\u00a0Corporate America is making a hefty profit<\/a>\u00a0by aiding and abetting the government in its militarized domestic surveillance efforts.<\/p>\n
Cue the dawning of what\u00a0The Nation\u00a0<\/em>refers to as \u201cthe rise of a new class in America: the cyberintelligence ruling class<\/a>. These are the people\u2014often referred to as \u2018intelligence professionals\u2019\u2014who do the actual analytical and targeting work of the NSA and other agencies in America\u2019s secret government. Over the last [20] years, thousands of former high-ranking intelligence officials and operatives have left their government posts and taken up senior positions at military contractors, consultancies, law firms, and private-equity firms. In their new jobs, they replicate what they did in government\u2014often for the same agencies they left. But this time, their mission is strictly for-profit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The snitch culture has further empowered the Surveillance State.<\/p>\n
As Ezra Marcus\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0for the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, \u201cThroughout the past year, American society responded to political upheaval and biological peril by turning to an age-old tactic for keeping rule breakers in check: tattling.\u201d<\/p>\n
This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government\u2019s post-9\/11 \u201cSee Something, Say Something\u201d programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, technologically-wired age.<\/p>\n
Marcus\u00a0continues<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\u201cTechnology, and our abiding love of it, is crucial to our current moment of social surveillance. Snitching isn\u2019t just a byproduct of nosiness or fear; it\u2019s a technological feature built into the digital architecture of the pandemic era \u2014 specifically when it comes to software designed for remote work and Covid-tracing\u2026 Contact tracing apps \u2026 have started to be\u00a0adapted for other uses, including<\/a>\u00a0criminal probes by the Singaporean government. If that seems distinctly worrying, it might be useful to remember that the world\u2019s most powerful technology companies,\u00a0whose products<\/a>\u00a0you are likely using to read this story, already use a business model of mass surveillance, collecting and selling user information to advertisers at an unfathomable scale. Our\u00a0cellphones track us everywhere<\/a>, and\u00a0our locations are bought and sold<\/a>\u00a0by data brokers at incredible, intimate detail.\u00a0Facial recognition software<\/a>\u00a0used by law enforcement trawls Instagram selfies.\u00a0Facebook harvests the biometric data<\/a>\u00a0of its users. The whole ecosystem, more or less, runs on snitching.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As I make clear in my book\u00a0Battlefield America: The War on the American People<\/em><\/a>, what we are dealing with today is not just a beast that has outgrown its chains but a beast that will not be restrained.<\/p>\n
WC: 2299<\/p>\n