|
July 17, 2002
Mike Ferner
War
Incorporated
Gary Leupp
Bush, Burqas
and the Oppression of Afghan Women
July 16, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Faith-based
Capitalism in
the Ruins of the Market
Kurt Nimmo
How My
35mm Camera Almost Became a Tool of Treason
Robert Fisk
The Kashmir
Distraction
Salam al-Marayati
When
is Terrorism
Not Defined as Terrorism?
Kathleen Christison
The
Image Problem:
Anti-Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush
July 15, 2002
Gavin Keeney
In One
of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other
CounterPunch Wire
Nader in
Cuba
Ralph Nader
The Secret
World of Banking
Dave Marsh
Vincible:
Michael Jackson, Racism and the Music Cartel
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
July 14, 2002
Bill Christison
The
DOA (Poem)
David Vest
I'll Never
Get Out of This Band Alive
July 13, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
A Process
of Dehumanization
Gavin Keeney
Go Tell
Karl Rove!
Matt Vidal
Corporate
"Ethics" Red Herrings
Ed Whitfield
Lessons
from Independence Day
July 12, 2002
Sean Donahue
The Other
Harken Energy Scandal: Oil, Death Squads
and Colombia
Walt Brasch
Sin Tax
Scam
"Psst. Cigarettes. A Buck Each."
Steve Perry
A Tale
of Two Twits
Wall Street Burns, Bush Fiddles, But Where's Wellstone?
July 11, 2002
Lloyd Marbet
Arrested
by the Chamber
of Commerce
David Krieger
Law vs.
Force
David Vest
Fountain
of Foo:
Strike Three Called
Irit Katriel
A Deep
Ideological Crisis
Richard Glen Boire
Dangerous
Lessons:
Public School Drug Testing
July 10, 2002
CounterPunch Wire
Third Party
Woes
South Carolina Denies Kevin Alexander Gray Ballot Status
Nassar Ibriham &
Majed Nassar
Bush's
Middle East Plan: Always Changing, Never Changing
Robert Fisk
Ain't That
America:
A Strange Kind of Freedom
Dave Marsh
The Return
of CREEP:
Record Cartel Accounting
Bernard Weiner
Hope and
Despair in
the Body Politic
Gary Leupp
European
Worries and
Bush's Terror War
July 9, 2002
St. Clair / Cockburn
The Atomic
Clock is Ticking:
All Roads Lead to Yucca Mtn.
Jack McCarthy
Florida:
a Terrorist Sanctuary for Bush's Bloody Pals?
Robert Fisk
How a Saudi
Billionaire
Does Beirut
Stanton and Madsen
God, Incorporated
Kurt Nimmo
IDF, Gangbanging
with Tanks
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies
of the US Part 3:
What Can We Do About It?
July 8, 2002
Rick Mercier
Yucca
Mountain Bound
Lev Grinberg
The
BUSHARON Global War
Tariq Ali
How Bush
Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
July 7, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
White
House Crooks
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
July
17, 2002
Who's Reading Over Your Shoulder?
by Zara Gelsey
I hate the feeling of someone reading over my
shoulder. Not only is it superficially distracting, but it often
affects how I respond to the text. Being conscious of being watched
inhibits my thinking because I find myself reading through my
watcher's eyes. It makes me suddenly self-conscious, wondering
if the stranger is making faulty suppositions about me based
on the book in my hand. The bored businessman next to me on the
train isn't a big deal, but the thought of the FBI peering over
my shoulder in the public library definitely puts me on edge.
Since the USA PATRIOT Act was passed
in October 2001, the FBI has been reading over shoulders by visiting
libraries across the US to demand library patron's reading records
and other files. Under the PATRIOT Act, the FBI doesn't have
to demonstrate "probable cause" of criminal activity
to request records. In fact, the so-called "search warrant"
is issued by a secret court. Once granted, it entitles the FBI
to procure any library records pertaining to book circulation,
Internet use or patron registration. Librarians can even be compelled
to cooperate with the FBI in monitoring Internet usage. This
sort of secrecy is not only chilling, it is ripe for potential
abuse. A similar Cold War version of library monitoring was called
the Library Awareness Program, through which FBI agents specifically
targeted Soviet and Eastern European nationals. The American
Library Association effectively fought the <L.A.P>. then,
and is now standing up to the PATRIOT Act searches. They unequivocally
oppose "the use of any governmental prerogatives which leads
to the intimidation of the individual or the citizenry from the
exercise of free expression." (ALA Policy on Governmental
Intimidation (1981)). The ALA sees the new FBI policy for what
it is: blatant intimidation of readers.
But beyond FBI intimidation tactics,
the new library surveillance program is bound to backfire. What
you read does say something about your interests, but it may
say different things to different people. If one only sees a
few details about someone else's life, their actions can easily
be contorted to fit the observer's version of reality. This is
a classic sit-com plot line: an observer misconstrues a sequence
of unrelated details, and then has a skewed perception of the
protagonist. Perhaps the observer reads a personal letter that's
lying on a coffee table, but doesn't know it is part of a novel-in-progress.
Based on this bit of information, the observer constructs conclusions,
with a succession of trivial actions seemingly reinforcing the
observer's misperceptions, all to the delight of the omniscient
audience.
By seeking to discover what books certain
people are reading, the FBI falls right into the role of the
ill-informed observer in a similar plot line being played out
in libraries across the country. Only it's not so delightful
when the FBI concludes you're a terrorist because you're doing
research at your local library for an article on suicide bombings,
and have amassed a circulation record they deem suspicious. A
person who reads a book intending to make a bomb could be a suspect,
as could anyone doing research on terrorist bombings in order
to prevent them. The same knowledge can be used for "good"
or "evil." The fateful tree in the Garden of Eden represented
the Knowledge of Good and Evil-opposing values intertwined on
one tree. The FBI can't possibly know the intent of knowledge
harvested from books, and affording them the opportunity to pretend
they can is incredibly dangerous.
Just as a person wearing rose-colored
glasses sees everything rosy, so the FBI is predisposed to find
suspicious facts. If the FBI wants to scour libraries looking
for "suspicious" reading records, they're going to
find them, but their perception is inherently skewed by their
intent. I view reading as access to information; the FBI views
it as an indictment. They suddenly fear domestic suicide bombings,
so reading lists are examined and suddenly an innocent researcher
is a suspect. In the worst cast scenario, details could be dragged
from the one's past, which seemingly support suspicions. In the
best case scenario, the FBI has just wasted a lot of time tracking
a fictional suspect who they've created from a list of books.
Meanwhile, all of us feel the presence of Big Brother reading
over our shoulders.
Yes, we want protection from terrorists
and we want our government to root out those who intend to harm
us. But surveillance always spreads beyond it's original purpose,
justified each step of the way by manufactured fear and "better
safe than sorry" rationales. We saw this winter how the
War on Drugs was deftly tied to the tail of the War on Terrorism:
today the FBI is looking for records of people who check out
books on bomb-making, tomorrow they're likely to question why
you've checked out books about the Columbian drug war.
While the FBI may never visit your library
(not that you'll know if they do as librarians are barred by
law from disclosing the FBI's presence), this program of surveillance
still has a chilling effect on cognitive liberty. The feeling
of being monitored inhibits freedom of thought. Take for instance
Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984. When Winston gets up the nerve
to hide from the omnipresent telescreen to indulge in writing
with pen and paper, an act not expressly forbidden, but punishable
nonetheless, he "seemed not merely to have lost the power
of expressing himself, but even to have forgotten what it was
he originally intended to say." Excessive surveillance trained
him to self-censor, thereby stifling his creative and cognitive
abilities. Likewise, the FBI's surveillance is bound to have
a chilling effect on seekers of knowledge who rely on the public
library system. It's implied that you'd better watch what you
read-because they'll be watching too. Intimidating readers in
such a manner is, in effect, controlling what we read and how
we think.
Freedom of thought and the freedom to
read are intertwined. And while monitoring library records is
not as direct as banning books, it is bound to cause self-censorship
among readers, which may be the intended result anyway. The government
may not be able to ban a book, so instead it will make you a
suspect if you read that book. The FBI is merely circumventing
the First Amendment by threatening readers rather than prohibiting
what they read.
We may not always like what people do
with some of the information they access, but that's what ensures
our right of access to information. As Supreme Court Justice
Kennedy recently observed, "The mere tendency of speech
to encourage unlawful acts is not sufficient reason for banning
it.... First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government
seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible
end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech
must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning
of thought." (Majority opinion: Ashcroft v. Free Speech
Coalition).
Under the guise of protecting us from
terrorism, this surveillance program intimidates library patrons
by spying over our shoulders, collecting reading lists and tracking
Internet usage. The FBI is policing our minds by purporting to
read them. Of course we want to be kept safe, but not to the
extent that we ourselves are patrolled and treated as suspects.
Giving up privacy rights can't guarantee physical safety, but
it will almost certainly inhibit intellectual freedom and limit
cognitive liberty. Americans who cherish our freedom, we should
seriously consider whether or not this is a compromise we are
willing to make.
Zara Gelsey
is Director of Communications
for the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics. Zara can
be reached at: zara@cognitiveliberty.org
Today's Features
Mike Ferner
War
Incorporated
Gary Leupp
Bush,
Burqas and the Oppression of Afghan Women
Pierre Tristam
Faith-based Capitalism's Plunge into
the Abyss of the Market
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|