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CounterPunch
December
10, 2002
Spies, Snitches and Eyes in
the Sky
by LINDA S. HEARD
Making headlines in the US in recent months: medical
students incarcerated when a nosy co-diner thought they were
planning terrorist attacks; a passenger on a plane thought to
be a hijacker when he took out his comb, and now, a man who jokingly
talked about 'burning bushes' in a bar has been sentenced to
38 months in jail. What on earth is going on?
As speedily as Communism was dismantled
in the former Soviet Union to be replaced with relative democratic
freedoms, American citizens are willingly sacrificing many of
their civil liberties, much of their privacy, while some are
even prepared to become snitches--all on the altar of Homeland
Security. Eat your heart out you former KGB bosses. George Bush
is achieving what you did by force, using a heady mix of psychology,
patriotism and paranoid poppycock.
If, as President George W Bush is fond
of saying 'they are jealous of our freedoms', whoever 'they'
might be will certainly now be harbouring little envy for the
rapidly diminishing freedoms enjoyed today by the average American.
Such supine acquiescence by a fearful
citizenry was, indeed, predicted by former President Nixon's
National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
during a 1992 speech given in Evian, France. "...the one
thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this
scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for
the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world
government," he said.
Kissinger, a savvy elder statesman and
a firm favourite of Washington's version of the 'old boy network',
is, of course, the perfect choice to head a long overdue commission
to investigate September 11--at least, from the point of view
of the American president.
George Bush, no longer able to resist
pressure to authorise such an investigation, has nominated a
man who believes that truth ranks way below the protection of
national security. Indeed, the infamous Nixon tapes serve to
show that Kissinger is a fervent protector of government secrets.
But even if Americans may not be destined
to discover just why their secret services and law enforcement
agencies failed to protect them in the past, they can now look
forward to a dynamic new integrated authority--The Department
of Homeland Security to do just that.
Biggest Bureaucracy
Ron Paul, M.D., who represents the 14th
Congressional District of Texas, calls the new department "the
biggest new federal bureaucracy since WW2".
Paul not only worries about its effectiveness
but is also deeply troubled by "searches without warrant,
forced vaccinations of entire communities, neighbourhood snitch
programmes, federal information databases, and a sinister new
'Information Awareness Office' at the Pentagon that uses military
intelligence to spy on domestic citizens".
The Pentagon's new Total Information
Awareness program comes under the umbrella of the Defence Advanced
Research Projects Agency, known for its state-of-the-art technologies.
Heading up the program is retired Admiral
John Poindexter, formerly Ronald Reagan's national security adviser.
In 1990, Poindexter was convicted for defrauding the government
and destroying evidence in the Iran-Contra scandal. The sentence
was quashed in 1991 in return for his testimony before a Congressional
Committee.
Now, Poindexter, thanks to Total Information
Awareness, will have access to unlimited information about the
American people. The scheme will use Genoa, a surveillance device
that is a combination cutting edge search engine, sophisticated
information harvesting programme and a file sharing system to
glean as much information about both U.S. and <non-U.S>.
citizens as possible.
Information gathered may include credit
purchases, flight and telephone records, while the system will
be able to intercept emails and maintain dossiers on any 'terrorist
suspect'.
But even before the new Homeland Security
bill was passed into law and the Total Information Awareness
Programme comes into effect, the Patriot Act passed as a knee-jerk
response to September 11 had already eroded personal privacy
in the U.S. This act afforded the American government new powers,
including being able to investigate an individual's reading material.
A University of Illinois study of 1,020
libraries, undertaken earlier this year, showed that the government
agents had demanded information from 85 libraries concerning
their members. Worse, bookstores or libraries are gagged from
telling anyone about the investigation. Violators of the gag
order risk imprisonment.
But surveillance of the reading habits
of Americans is just a drop in the ocean of dwindling personal
privacy. The Washington Post recently reported that the FAA (Federal
Aviation Authority) is planning to test an airport profiling
system, which analyses passengers' living arrangements, travel
history, real estate purchases, ethnicity and financial circumstances.
Each passenger will then be assigned
a 'threat rating' and those who feature high on the threat index
will be taken aside at ports and airports for intensive interrogation
and intrusive searches.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(Nasa) is currently developing monitoring devices able to analyse
brain wave and heart beat patterns. It wants to embed electronic
sensors in airport gates to pick up tiny electric impulses emitted
by the brain and the heart.
The pattern of these impulses would then
be fed into computers programmed to correlate physiological profiles
with data from 'hundreds of thousands of data sources' according
to Nasa reports.
Political correctness cast aside, U.S.
authorities are upfront now concerning the racial profiling carried
out by immigration officers at the country's borders with the
main targets being male Arab and Muslim travellers. Thousands
of Muslim visitors were arrested inside the U.S. post-September
11 and incarcerated for months for minor or trumped up visa violations.
Now, nationals of certain, mostly Arab,
countries have until January 10 to submit themselves to fingerprinting.
Strangely, this requirement has been scarcely publicised and
visitors could find themselves unwittingly breaking the law,
the consequences of which we will no doubt witness early next
year.
Big Brother is also watching these days...
and recording. An FBI memorandum, which recently came to light,
showed that as far back as early 2000, its agents illegally videotaped
suspects, intercepted emails and recorded telephone calls. Attorney
General John Ashcroft is unapologetic saying: "We are doing
everything we can to identify those who would hurt us, to disrupt
them, to delay them, to defeat them."
In the meantime, the CIA is expanding
its domestic role and increasing its field staff. The CIA's domestic
field officers attempt to recruit foreigners who are temporarily
in the US studying or on business as spies for the agency once
they have returned home.
There is now another option open to the
U.S. government for monitoring suspects. Applied Digital Solutions
Inc. has recently begun sales of an FDA approved identification
chip, which has been designed for implantation underneath a person's
skin. This could be just the thin end of the wedge. An era when
all newly born babies will be designated a unique number and
fitted with a depersonalising electronic sliver may not be far
away.
And as the American government increases
its authority, the president has been slowly working on gaining
greater powers too. He has already received a mandate from Congress
for a preemptive strike against Iraq and the ability to personally
negotiate trade deals. As Commander-in-Chief, he now has the
power to arrest and imprison U.S. citizens and to hold them without
charge, without evidence and without due process for an indefinite
period.
Disintegration
With the 'War on Terror' likely to be
an everlasting Quixotic exercise resulting in semi permanent
or permanent new laws, we may well be witnessing the disintegration
of America as a democratic republic. Senator John Warner, head
of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says that he wants to
break down the constitutional barriers currently restricting
the involvement of the military in civilian life.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has
already displayed his preference for a more active military quoting
the ancient maxim: 'In time of war, the laws are silent'. Peculiarly
silent are the American people, previously renowned for fiercely
defending their civil rights and personal freedoms.
Ironically, the very way of life they
are told that their government is in the process of defending
may soon be relegated to the annals of history.
Increasing nationalism, xenophobia and
fear together constitute a dangerous melange, leaving the population
open to being controlled and exploited. As an ever-suspicious
rest of the world and Lady Liberty herself look on, it is up
to Americans to decide upon their own future. We can only hope
it is one of which America's Founding Fathers would approve.
Linda Heard is a specialist writer on
Middle East affairs. She can be reached at: freenewsreport@yahoo.com
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