State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Yesterday a friend sent me a link to this article in Democracy Now about the NSA's Utah spy center:
In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA’s massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford’s recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.
Binney served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state."
My friend asked--and on reflection, I think it's an excellent question--why conservatives and libertarians have permitted the hard left to claim the lead in the investigation and criticism of these programs. The restraint of state power should naturally and philosophically be our issue. Anyone with a sense of history can see how easily this kind of power can be and inevitably will be abused.
Why isn't the right raising hell about this?
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May '10
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Not to mention the obsession to put cameras everywhere, and the docility with which we have submitted to the ministrations of the TSA. "If it makes us safer it's worth it" seems to be the prevailing sentiment.
Jun '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
I don't believe it's fair to lump libertarians in with others on the "Right". Sadly there elements.in the Repulican coalition that are fine with state surveillance so long as they get to build and wield the power.
Apr '12
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Sometimes, I think the nature of the game is to quietly cause these problems when no one is looking, just so that you can later criticize them. This may be why surveillance powers are a Democrat issue. They'd handed the bag to the Republicans, and then ran away.
Remember the NSA wiretap "scandal," circa 2005?
"[Democrat Senator Patrick J. Leahy] and the Justice Department have recommended that law enforcement officials be given broader authority for wire taps that permit surveillance of suspects as they move from telephone to telephone, as opposed to surveillance of a specific telephone."
---New York Times (9/20/01)
http://tinyurl.com/yckmu5b
Apr '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Who fathered the surveillance state? In "The Watchers" several key individuals are identified as architects of modern American government surveillance :
1) Admiral John Poindexter, Reagan National Security Adviser and creator of "Total Information Awareness"
2) Mike Hayden, Bush II NSA and creator of the BAG (big ass grab)
3) Admiral Mike McConnell, Bush II NSA & DNI
4) John Brennan, Clinton, Bush and Obama, national security.
Then there is the interface between private enterprise and surveillance. Those cameras you see mounted on the back of police cars which are data mining license plates in real time are a creation of the private sector as are the ubiquitous cameras mounted in many locations some of which profit share violation fines with government. Private enterprise is in the forefront of data mining information. Bain Capital owns a surveillance camera manufacturer.
On the right libertarians seem opposed to some surveillance while progressive and statist republicans are involved in surveillance on many levels.
The left detests much of the constitution but still rallies around the first and fourth amendments.
http://shaneharris.com/thewatchers/
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/obamas-surveillance-power-grab
Edited on April 22, 2012 at 5:30pmFeb '12
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
I know this may be unpopular. But I trust my local Police, Sheriff and Troopers to keep me & my family safe and don't feel any ill when they set up Speed Traps , Cameras at Intersections or Road Blocks. These are acceptable to me for keeping the Knuts at a minimum. If if they lower my Taxes a bit because its a source of revenue. I'm Okay with it. When the Police, Sheriff & Trooper step out of line. Those can me handled in a civil legal manner. The beauty of a Free Society.
So with that said in that same light, I'm Okay with what the NSA is doing.
Feb '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Claire, there are many things worth "raising hell about" with regards to where out country has gone. This is one of them, and it is a very bipartisan issue - See, e.g., Ron Paul and all his supporters on the left and the right - it just doesn't get too much traction with President Obama in office.
I am not proposing a "conspiracy" by the MSM to ignore the issue, I just think it goes with our politics today. Politics today focus on the two political parties and their leaders, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, who are in sync on this issue. Obama would have used this issue four years ago, but today he is forced to run on his record, and his record involves expanding this security state. Romney is adumbrating W's security state. Thus neither of them see a need to focus on this issue. Ron Paul, the one candidate who is focusing on this issue, is seen as coming more from a third party (Libertarian) - the left dislikes his economic views, and the right dislikes his social/foreign policy views - so he does not merit a lot of attention.
Nov '10
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
CuriousJohn: . . .
So with that said in that same light, I'm Okay with what the NSA is doing.
I'm more paranoid than you are. I think I remember John Yoo talking about this on a Law Talk podcast; anyway, my feeling is what I remember him as saying. Specifically, it's all right with me if they gather and review the data to look for terrorist activity. But keeping irrelevant data is not all right with me, and the data should be screened by an automated mechanism, not by human beings. Otherwise, the risk of blackmail or of abuse by a current or future malevolent government is far too great.
I have a friendly acquaintance whose family escaped from the Soviet Union. He wouldn't consider for a minute joining something like Ricochet because he doesn't want to leave an electronic footprint of his political views. Things like this make me wonder whether he is right.
Feb '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
CuriousJohn: Those can me handled in a civil legal manner. The beauty of a Free Society.
So with that said in that same light, I'm Okay with what the NSA is doing. · 19 minutes ago
This is just one example among many, but what about when something like this happens? First read this short article, then see the video.
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Lucy Pevensie
I have a friendly acquaintance whose family escaped from the Soviet Union. He wouldn't consider for a minute joining something like Ricochet because he doesn't want to leave an electronic footprint of his political views. Things like this make me wonder whether he is right. · 8 minutes ag
o
Anyone ever wonder where our Turkish members went?
Jul '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
There is no ceding to this issue, both Parties want it so there is no argument. Conservatives and libertarians are against it but that is quite different than Republican.
Nov '10
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Lucy Pevensie
I have a friendly acquaintance whose family escaped from the Soviet Union. He wouldn't consider for a minute joining something like Ricochet because he doesn't want to leave an electronic footprint of his political views. Things like this make me wonder whether he is right. · 8 minutes ag
o
Anyone ever wonder where our Turkish members went? · 11 minutes ago
Oh dear. Can you tell us what happened? Or not without endangering them further?
Apr '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
a: I don't think that libertarians have remotely ceded this ground. Instapundit is probably the biggest anti-speed camera and pro-citizen photography campaigner around. Balko and others at Reason form one of the chief campaigns against it. Cato whine inaccurately and pathetically about it, but while they don't put the resources into producing anything other than armchair written reports and blog posts, their heart is in criticizing it.
b: While conservatives are strongly against using, eg, the IRS as a tool of harrasment, having generally been the target of that, efforts to use the anti-terrorist system against conservatives have entirely failed. The closest thing might be the failed Hutaree militia prosecutions.
Where the security state has been pretty successful is in maintaining security; people with training, equipment, motivation, and money (as shown in their successful attacks in, eg., Afghanistan, Iraq) have failed to launch serious attacks in America over the last decade. There are killers of handfuls of Americans, but no killers of hundreds.
The security state has generally been successful by acting against evil people. Whether Communist (Palmer raids (Wilson) to Library Awareness Program (Reagan)), or Islamist, those people have consistently been allies of leftists.
Apr '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Lucy Pevensie
I have a friendly acquaintance whose family escaped from the Soviet Union. He wouldn't consider for a minute joining something like Ricochet because he doesn't want to leave an electronic footprint of his political views. Things like this make me wonder whether he is right. · 8 minutes ag
o
Anyone ever wonder where our Turkish members went? · 38 minutes ago
This is probably, to my mind, the reason you have stronger feelings about this than most on the right. Where we see the primary targets of surveillance being evil men who, absent such surveillance, would kill on a massive scale, you see the primary targets as being your friends and neighbors, because you live in a state with values that do not coincide with yours.
For all the complaints about Obama's values, his security efforts have still focused overwhelmingly on Islamists; the criticisms from the right have generally been that he does not go far enough, not that his efforts are wrong to begin with. I think that this is an issue that the right owns, but it doesn't seem that way because you're on the wrong side.
Jul '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Lucy Pevensie, I actually feel the same way but I am too stupid or crazy to avoid it. I have said some very negative and inflammatory things about Harry Reid and Eric Holder. Both men destroy the lives of people in their way. I also gave a catalog of my assault rifles, all legal. Silly me for trusting our constitution.
Mar '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
I'm probably way behind the curve on this, but I just read about Collusion, an add-on for Firefox, which creates a graph of who's tracking your browsing activity using third-party cookies. Informative and rather scary.
Jul '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Claire, excellent points in your article. When the left is protecting our basic rights and the right is not seeming to it sends a very bad message.
Jan '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
This dovetails with another topic that wants consideration:the role of law in our lives.
We live in a statutory legal system. That means that (theoretically) we don’t rely on the personal judgment of government officials. We’re afraid that human biases will give unjust advantages, so instead of empowering officials, we write laws down on paper. We write statutes. The authority of the law is vested in the statute, not in the person enforcing the statute.
The downside is that a statute, by nature, can’t appreciate context.
People do lots of things that would be technically illegal, but which we’re happy to accept in context. Traffic speeds leap to mind. If your wife is pregnant and about to deliver, it’s 2am, and you’re on the Beltway driving to the hospital … hey … driving 80mph shouldn’t horrify anyone. (In Germany, there is no speed limit on the autobahn. It’s not as if driving fast is inherently immoral.)
Cops on the beat let stuff go. That’s a necessary safety valve for a real life society.
Continued …
Jan '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Like it or not, no society can function if every transgression of every statute is immediately punished. Until electronic surveillance came along, that wasn’t a problem because real-life, flesh-and-blood human beings enforced the law. By nature, they could only arrest and punish a limited number of transgressions, so by happy accident, it imposed a balance on “law and order.”
But electronic surveillance removes that natural limitation on enforcement, and in turn, removes the balance of law and order. Cameras and automatic surveillance work on the premise that any violation of the written law must be punished. It excludes context. It eliminates discretion.
So … think of where that would leave us.
I know I don’t want that. There must be human discretion.
Edited on April 22, 2012 at 5:31pmApr '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Basil Fawlty, thanks for the Collusion link. I just downloaded it.
Have you had any German guests lately at your hotel? Maybe they could comment on the surveillance state?
This is a wonderful movie about the surveillance state, in this case East Germany:
- The Lives of Others
Edited on April 22, 2012 at 5:46pmJul '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
KC Mulville, great points.