Control is the
principal reason to gather and store information on people. Power brokers, especially within the
bureaucracies of government have always done this. Robert Moses, who amassed tremendous
political power in his career as a petty bureaucrat working for the state of
New York, maintained files on anyone of
significance to him politically and regularly updated those files with new
information as it was available. Years later,
when he wanted something from that person or wanted to head off something that
person was doing, out came the file. If
there was any dirt, anything that might have been forgotten, that information
was used as a bludgeon against them. J
Edgar Hoover also maintained files for his political advantage as head of the
FBI and used the information he had to threaten even a sitting president. There is no one who does not have a skeleton
somewhere that can be unearthed, that does not have a secret, a past
indiscretion, a bankruptcy, a run in with the law, a mistress or a lover unknown
to their spouse, a habit the children do not know about and should never know
about. Added to this are the innumerable
laws and regulations passed by the government or its agencies which are
transgressed by all of us at one time or another. The government is fond of using IRS audits as
punishment for political transgressions, but in addition to this are the
increasingly convoluted web of regulations that govern everything we do. The mere threat of surveillance will color
the discourse which takes place in America.
Any terrorists who are actually capable of doing great harm probably do
not use social media or unencrypted email to communicate.
That the
government is already using sophisticated techniques to control the population
is evident in the carefully structured and regulated information flow to the
media over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our leaders do not want to see a repeat of the debacle of the popular
protests against the Vietnam war.
Information in these wars has been more tightly controlled than in any
other war. Our media served chiefly as a
cheering section as the bombs landed on Baghdad and the tanks rolled across the
desert from Kuwait. It is through
control of the narrative that our government chiefly controls us. Violent means available to control the population
are not necessary when a superior effect is achieved by public relations
professionals. But if you add to that
the threat of retribution by virtue of access to private knowledge of any
individual, the effect on any organized social protest is chilling. The rubber will hit the road for this system
when there comes a real danger of social uprising or mass civil
disobedience. If the economy ever fell
as far as some pundits predict to levels lower than those of the great
depression, there will be trouble. In the last depression, people who had money
were seriously worried that such an event or uprising could occur bringing the
siezure of power and assets by a completely different cadre of people than
those who possessed it at the time. The
world had just witnessed it take place in Russia and in Mexico. The
NSA is now in the business of making revolution impossible under any
circumstances for any reason. If someone
else, read the government, has a gun
over you, you are very likely to
be robbed or killed by that government.
The fact that it
was a private company that has access to the data, Snowden, a private citizen,
said he could find out about anyone he wanted through the information they had,
complicates both the prosecutorial and the constitutional issues. This is a highly profitable government -industry
complex which has access to limitless taxpayer funding in order to control
those same taxpayers. Much of the NSA
budget is in the so-called black budget, which is concealed even from the
majority of Congress under the guise of national security. Snowden’s crime was to betray the anti-american NSA. But the real crime is the failure of our
elected officials who swear an oath to defend the constitution to put a stop to
this clear violation of the right of the people to be secure in their homes and
papers. Obama should be impeached, the
bums in congress, if they are not prosecuted themselves, should be voted out of
office. This of course will not
happen. The activist portion of our
population is already basically powerless to affect any real change and the
majority will continue to struggle financially to pay for the giant leach
called government attached to their backs.
