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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Mar '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Viator: Basil Fawlty, thanks for the Collusion link.
Have you had any German guests lately at your hotel? Maybe they could comment on the surveillance state? · 2 minutes ago
I'd ask, but I'm afraid I might mention the war.
PS. Thanks, Viator. I agree about The Lives of Others. I've had the DVD in my collection for quite a while.
Edited on April 22, 2012 at 6:41pmMay '10
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Benjamin Franklin, warned at one point that he was being spied on so as to find evidence for an attack on his character, replied, "I have long observ'd one Rule which prevents any Inconvenience from such Practices. It is simply this, to be concern'd in no Affairs that I should blush to have made publick, and to do nothing but what Spies may see & welcome."
Nov '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
Basil Fawlty
Viator: Basil Fawlty, thanks for the Collusion link.
Have you had any German guests lately at your hotel? Maybe they could comment on the surveillance state? · 2 minutes ago
I'd ask, but I'm afraid I might mention the war.
PS. Thanks, Viator. I agree about The Lives of Others. I've had the DVD in my collection for quite a while. · 12 hours ago
Edited 11 hours ago
Can I just third The Lives of Others? Great movie.
Apr '11
Re: State Surveillance: Why Have We Surrendered this Issue to the Left?
We have the surveillance state because many or most tolerate or support the surveillance state. They discount Benjamin Franklin's other warning:
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
Edited on April 23, 2012 at 11:58am