Day J. Edgar Hoover died
I remember the day J. Edgar Hoover died. I was young at the time - I had no catagories or experience to fit it into. Only fragmented memories of the day not adding up to what it meant to the adult world. I recall arriving at the school to find many of the teachers outside waitng for the buses. The school's flag was already at half mast. One teacher was visibly crying, running around trying to reassure us kids that 'things were probably going to be ok.' It would be touch and go for America for a while. We had lost our hero, our bulwark against unnamable communism, but possibly America had reserve resilience and would come through these days alright. He didn't seem at all sure of this. We knew who Hoover was. We knew the story of the FBI as well as anyone, you couldn't help knowing it. It was written down to our grade level. But I come to bury Caesar not to praise him. If in latter years it seem to be revealed that the Bureau of Investigation dwelt unduly in the realm of things and people Hoover felt needed to be investigated - files on which and who needed to be kept. If it turns out that presidents, senators even his own subordinates mistrusted and were afraid of him. It was no surprise to any of us. There are limits to the threats we face as a nation in this world. The cold war of ten thousand hydrogen bombs, half of them ours, forms a suitable reference point. There are limits to what ought to be done about the threats we face. There are limits as to what kind of leaders a democracy can suffer, and still be a democracy. The instincts of those who speak always of security: of law and order tend always more to the latter and less to the former. Hoover is an example of someone who was entirely capable of pulling down American democracy. The nation was saved from this only by his lack of genuine charisma. His ability to be only a bureaucratic power figure and not a full national political figure. A personality that was not only opposite of the populist gangsters he made his reputation arresting and killing, but ant-ethical to diverse American figures like Huey Long and later Martin L. King limited his role.
As Molly Ivins AlterNet: Big Brother Bush and others Imperial Assumptions have pointed out in their approaches to the 11 September attacks Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their group, have unpacked their legacy of a priviledged executive power Behind Power, One Principle as Bush Pushes Prerogatives - New York Times; a belief stemming from their beginnings in the Nixon administration. From Nixon's travails and fate a belief that the president should be stronger than mere politics. With no notion or sense of irony that the presidents policies - as opposed to his responsibilities - are never more in the end than mere politics themselves. The president of a democracy is not a man alone. The health and welfare of the nation never exists so separately from the opinions and joint effort of the people, Citizens and officials both. They brought with them as well the desire to restructure the military. In light of the bitterness of Vietnam a desire for leadership regimes that would never depart from a set course. In light of the end of the Cold War and the New World order a military capable of inserting itself into any part of the world and breaking any country's military. Now they have an enemy even if they don't seem to know exactly what they have: they have many wars they perfer to view as fronts in one big war. On al Qaeda. On the Taliban (Afghanistan) On Saddam Hussain (Iraq). For all this do they have a war on terror, or a war on Islam? For onlookers outside US media's reach it was never seen as against something (a baseless stateless enemy of the west) so much as for something (Oil).
It's time to distinguish between real threats and Arabian stalking horses. The current administration seems to have settled on the NSA to bring about a new Cointelpro (wikipedia). A regime of telephone and email intercept that does involve U S citizens Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say - New York Times, and exists in a cloaked grey area beyond authorizing mechinisms Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying - New York Times -- Bush Says U.S. Spy Program Is Legal and Essential - New York Time. In ambition and scale comprehensive and global Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times. We are asked to accept an urgency of threat, often presented in stylized and melodramatic terms. 'There is a ticking time bomb, the man in front of you knows where it is (because we tapped his phone and heard him say Troublefunk was going to drop the bomb) if you attach the electrodes and flip the voltometer up and flip the switch, he will give a perfect and true answer. all things will become known and a billion lives will be saved.' This nonsense trivializes the idea of the potential threat. In significant ways what is pushing this mass surveillance initiative is new technology The new technology at the root of the NSA wiretap scandal for which new justifications are issued. What we are seeing also contains a measure of the overreaction of incompetence, the self-concious hollow awareness of which pushes other concerns aside and reaches for panacea NSA wiretap followup: Why computer-automated mass surveillance is a bad idea. You have to account for need to keep on top of small grained threats. A major attack against the United States no longer requires armies mobilized or navies sent to sea, neither does it appear out of nowhere. It requires a large group of people, a population, with a sustained ideology, materials of mass destruction, technology, funding, travel, communication and coordination across borders. And it requires a considerable degree of acquired and accumulated paramilitary expertise. If ever it seems less, it's only because a new sprig has erupted off a older branch. The point is that the right professional application of national intellegence can often disrupt and prevent the activities of groups like al qaeda and can force whatever movement politics it feeds off of into other forms and channels. It is worth doing and ought to be done. Then; however, it is neccesary to account for precisely what is being done. The particular technical collection methods and proceses. Forth Amendment considerations must be read against specific acts and occurences. There is the possibility that the debate may get sidelined into technocratic discussions of efficiency and capability - ways and means The NSA's Overt Problem, ignoring the privacy even the validity of the individual Revolt of the Professionals. What is called sigint or comint cannot be done to US citizens without a warrant. Without an agreed upon process like the FISA board, involving some presentation of need, a judge and review, it can't happen. No politician can say he or she has the authority or that someone else gave it to them. Not without re-writing the constitution. Fundamental law involving basic rights does not bow before adversity. Long distance international telephony apparently has gradually been organized to travel through US switches. This gives us technical and physical access to the data stream. Foreign originating to foreign receiving. Calls involving foreign nationals wherever originating. Calls involving US citizens on either end whether originating in the US or not. Rolling surveillence of portions the entire telephony circuit nominally under US control under a regime of comprehensive collection and data mining seems to be what is occurring. A louder echo of previous programs Tinker, Tailor, Miner, Spy - Why the NSA's snooping is unprecedented in scale and scope. By Shane Harris and Tim Naftali. This approach would probably require advanced pattern matching techniques voice recognition (voice print matching) even speech recognition allowing it to flag on keywords. Email surveillance would be more straightforward text string matching. Some sources talking about this name a distinction betwen content (what) and noncontent (who, when) regarding what is looked at and shared NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance. Still for the legal questions must be accounted for Report Questions Legal Basis for Bush's Spying Program - New York Times. Is the executive branch mining data collected on set of vetted standards in techinical compliance with law or even shadows emanating from the law. Or Data Mining, looking for out-of-boundary behavior by adhoc tasking, along less well defined lines of inquiry AlterNet: The Scoop from 'State of War'. It has been suggested that data mining initially used a high ranking captured terrorist's PC as a template for contacts and usage Bush Says Domestic Surveillance 'Limited' - Yahoo! News. How long before someone decides to normalize and refine that template, to come up with lists of items and names to be secretly added to it and watched F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show - New York Times for unsuitable behavior? Are we using the same standards and justifications, for trading security for liberty, we always have
Spy Controversy, Redux (Ruth Marcus points to the history here - particularly the Church Committee hearings that walked this tendency back the last time it got out of line. The Wikipedia link above on cointelpro has links to the Church committee final report). If we are trading on new standards, what reasons lie behind this. Even the Fisa Court judges have registerd concerns that requests coming to them in compliance of established law and procedure may be contaminated by non-legal collection. A way of proceeding which renders them entirely moot Judges and Justice Dept. Meet Over Eavesdropping Program - New York Times. The Justice department itself may have felt it was being rolled through due process too abrubtly as it prepared requests for the FISA court leading certain people to regard all legality as simply in the way Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program - New York Times.
There is a moral question attendant to this that has to be accounted for too. First a war posited on the terms this one is - the war on terror or the war on the "non-integrated gap" - being a thin cover for the war on resurgent islam that most of those who favor this war see themselves as fighting. Such a war runs the risk of becoming an all purpose endless war in distinctly Orwellian terms. It can't be hard to find those who look upon it approvingly in just such terms already. This 'forever war' also becomes a war on the open society. Yet for all the resources and manpower the administration has thrown at the war the struggle is not a central concern of most Americans . So much so that John Yoo would ask Samuel Alito if he thinks we are at war: Thirty Questions for Alito: Is America at War? John Yoo - New York Times. The U S has been fighting wars or police actions for virtually all its history, the U S has always had enemies. Now we are asked to accept a rhetoric of peril that begins the end of the American experiment - the nation conceived in liberty. We are told now it is a dangerous world and we must become the type of nation that views security in proper light and allows strong men to take decisive, quick, necessarily secret action for the best.' This is what Cheney is really saying in his defense of such programs Cheney Cites Justifications For Domestic Eavesdropping. The bullying tactic - He will state there will probabaly be another conus attack. "No one can guarantee that we won't be hit again, but neither should anyone say that the relative safety of the last four years came as an accident," Cheney said. "America has been protected not by luck but by sensible policy decisions." Implicitly he allows this may happen even if they are given everything they want for security, yet if the opposition tries to balance liberty with security, Cheney is letting it be known any future attack will be laid against whatever is not allowed. There are ademocratic impulses in our culture; on the right as well as left. They are threaded from the extremes well into the mainstream. These impulses run strongly in our vice president. Consider the energy bill situation. Closed meeting sessions with the Vice President - by the energy and extraction industry but not environmental or conservation concerns. I recall reading portions of the text in the final bill appearing to be included directly from energy industry documents. My sister tells me that this is not particularly uncommon, but when a Supreme court decision blankets the whole affair to keep it all non disclosed, something is radically wrong. Capping it all off there was congressional testimony from assorted energy ceo's obsuring their role in Cheney's task force, this is eventually shown to be misleading. Their retort: they weren't under oath (this attracted little attention at the time, but see this Huffington report piece). If you fight imperial wars what you gain is the Imperial return - a government that can only rule imperially because it becomes too dangerous to do otherwise. This is the rule of fear not the rule of law -- nations are either ruled by law or by men. No American politician should understand his or her job as a paternalistic trading off of the U S way of life: liberty and self-rule, for the US's way of life, a regime of wealth and material well-being jealously guarded Time to Ask: Who Are We?. What United States do we have and who benefits most? History would advise us to be cautious - but no one believes in history anymore.
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