Thom Hartmann: How Can You Plan a Revolution when Big Brother is Watching?

[thomhartmann]

It's increasingly looking like the United States is one generation away from completely forgetting what privacy means. And the consequences of this Great Forgetting will be tragic for our nation. Why? Because without privacy - without the ability to be anonymous - America can't even plan a peaceful revolution or non-violent progressive social change movements - because if big corporations or Big Brother are watching, watching, they can block efforts before they even become public.

In recent years - we've learned about the massive surveillance systems being built by the corporate state. For example, we now know about the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens post-9/11. We now know of Trapwire - a law enforcement tool that keeps track of our movements in major cities across the nation through closed circuit cameras, facial recognition software, and license plate readers. And We know of the enormous spy center being built by the NSA in Utah - that will house all the data collected by the NSA since 9/11 - including emails, phone calls, text messages, and more - all of it in one source so that it's easily analyzed. The NSA can how hold the digital version of 500 quintillion pages of text.

What's worse - Americans are increasingly willing to give the surveillance state - and snoopy corporations - everything they want. Today - we're sacrificing privacy for convenience and interconnection. We enthusiastically post our locations, our pictures, our personal information on sites like Facebook and Twitter - all of which are monitored by the corporate surveillance state and those corporations themselves. Your web experience is now carefully compiled and examined - so advertising can target you specifically.

How do advertisers know what you want? Because they've been collecting data on what websites you go to and what you search for on hundreds of websites and search engines - a blatant violation of individual privacy. Online data collection is now multi-billion dollar industry. This level of surveillance would have been unthinkable for previous generations - including our Founding Fathers who held privacy to the highest regard - even including a right to privacy they enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. But today - we all just accept these invasions of our privacy. But in Europe - they're not accepting it.

Citizens in other democracies aren't as naive or passive as Americans. Under pressure from the European Union - Facebook announced it's scrapping its facial recognition software - and deleting all the data derived from it. But here in the United States - Facebook continues to use facial recognition software, despite complaints from Electronic Privacy Information groups. We simply don't have the laws that are needed here in the United States to protect privacy online - and as long as advertisers can make money off knowing your habits and secrets, we never will, because Citizens United gave those advertisers the right to buy your members of Congress.

As the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service report warned: "There is no comprehensive federal privacy statute that protects personal information. Instead, a patchwork of federal laws and regulations govern the collection and disclosure of personal information, and has been addressed by Congress on a sector-by-sector basis. Some contend that this patchwork of laws and regulations is insufficient to meet the demands of today’s technology." In Europe - there's a bill of rights for online users known as the Data Protection Directive. And new laws are regularly coming down the pike in Europe to give even more protections to online users - and enforce heavy fines on corporations or governments that violate privacy.

Europe knows this is a serious problem - and we need to, as well. Social change hinges on privacy and in some cases anonymity. This goes all the way back to the Boston Tea Party - when an anonymous activist known even to this day merely as Rusticus posted flyers around Boston that led directly to the Boston Tea Party. In today's America - Rusticus would have been exposed - and the Boston Tea Party shut down before it even started. In today's America - people couldn't have "conspired" to overthrow unjust laws from slavery, to giving women rights, to Civil Rights, to ending the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

Yes - social media was a tremendous boost for both the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring to get people into the streets. It was also just as tremendous of a tool for law enforcement in both parts of the world to work to squash those movements. As journalist Chris Hedges pointed out - it's all about "criminalizing dissent." Tragically - the day may come - indeed, it may already be here - when if you plan to protest the corporate takeover of our government - drone warfare - or indefinite detention - you'll find yourself in jail before you even get into the streets. Seem impossible? Just ask the people planning protests at the RNC in Minneapolis in 2008 - the Bush Administration had them taken out before they could even publicly speak out.

It'll getting more and more difficult - and more and more dangerous - to launch successful socially transformational movements - because the powers-that-be, including the corporations or industries you may be protesting against - know ahead of time what all your moves will be. Yes - it's annoying to receive ads online - or have an embarrassing picture of you posted on Facebook. But that should be the least of our worries when it comes to online privacy. The fundamental ability for "we the people" to create social change and lead nonviolent revolutionary movements against unjust and oppressive forces is always in danger when a nation loses its privacy protections.

The fight for privacy will be one of the signature battles moving forward during uncertain times in America. And without privacy - and the ability to remain anonymous - genuine democracy will never again flourish in the Land of the Free. For more information and to join this fight for privacy - go Electronic Privacy Information Center's website at EPIC.ORG.

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings

[Sekhmets Daughter]

1. I can't convince my son

that this is a problem.

As to people not being able to "conspire": Hartmann is not normally this silly. How did the "conspirators" put together the Tea Party...by word of mouth....

[Plucketeer]

5. "word of mouth"

Unlike the late 18th century - how many of us have our windows and doors open all day? How many of us ride around on/in open conveyances, ie: horseback or carriages. We're all bottled up in our air conditioned enclosures.
Just try to have a rally on your block. See how long before the cops show up. And we don't even HAVE drones up in most areas - yet.

[tama]

2. I don't buy that

"Because without privacy - without the ability to be anonymous - America can't even plan a peaceful revolution or non-violent progressive social change movements - because if big corporations or Big Brother are watching, watching, they can block efforts before they even become public. "

- Cryptography is available if and when needed.
- Planning is over-estimated, in the end all revolutions happen unpredictably and chaotically - which can manifest as highly organized "organic" behavior.

Just let the surveillance wankers wank at their monitors. Revolution is everywhere.

[starroute]

3. I do think the current model of street protests is broken

That's where the ability of the police to track and preempt protesters is most in evidence. More than that -- the police have been using both videos of protests and "catch and release" arrests to build up a database of known protest leaders and then single them out for arrest as soon as they show up at a new protest.

I suspect a more effective model will involve various forms of direct action. Working with the poor and disenfranchised. Taking on projects in abandoned urban and rural areas and carrying them out.

The idea of peacefully assembling and petitioning the government for redress may be enshrined in the Constitution -- but it simply doesn't work any more. Instead, doing those things that neither the government nor private business can be bothered to do will both actively make a better world and get the message across of what needs to be done and how to do it.

[tama]

4. What do you mean by current model?

There are various models, current Spain and Greece street protests look anything but broken.

I watched also closely the latest OWS action, which was consciously and skillfully following black block tactic (or essence) of organic unpredictability, people making joint decisions on the fly instead of following some strict strategic plan. It was awesome. And of course you correct about the necessity for multitude of tactics.

[starroute]

6. The US has never been able to sustain protests like those in Spain and Greece

By current model, I mean the style of protest that characterized the anti-nuclear, civil rights, and anti-war movements in the 1960s. Organized in a top-down manner, lots of people showing up to march with signs and chants, generally culminating in a rally with speeches by representatives of the organizing groups and maybe some musical performances.

For a time, those marches made an impact. Television news was eager to cover them. And the cops didn't set out to bust heads or box them in. But they've become less and less effective -- in part because they all look the same from the vantage of the TV cameras, in part because it's very easy for the media to just ignore them. And in a country the size of the US, with many major cities, they're just not that visible, even when they're not being deliberately marginalized.

The more flashmob-like tactics of the S17 anniversary protests were interesting. They were non-hierarchical, fluid, and improvisational. But they were equally invisible unless you were following the livestreamers.

And as I've seen pointed out, any tactic that reduces a fight against Wall Street into a series of running battles with the NYPD risks losing the narrative. The civil rights sit-ins of the 60s were effective because people were deliberately violating an unjust law. Blocking traffic to protest financial greed doesn't have the same one-for-one correspondence.

There was a sign I saw in a photo last week saying something like, "All our solutions are one solution." That's provocative because it says something that seems intuitively true but then forces you to think about precisely what that one solution might be how you could get there. And in the same way, Occupy 2.0 needs to come up with a model of protest that's about the solution and not just about the grievances.

[tama]

7. Yes

tactics become outdated. And I don't see flashmob tactics as much more than probes of the machinery and geography of violence and empowering experiences. Geographically Zucotti park and flashmob probes of WS have been very revealing about how sensitive and touchy spot it really is, e.g. by measuring how ridiculous the police excuses for arrests have become. "Blocking pedestrian movement on sideways" was new top of hilarious.

The real struggle is of course... just too huge and too varied to fully comprehend. But the way I've seen this process, a new round or phase started in Athens in 2008, those days of rage. And as I said then I say now, various tactics of streets and challenging the system are good and necessary but not enough. Parallel to the forces of tearing down the old system there needs to be multitude of actions of building the alternative other world. Most concretely, a "succesfull" anarchist etc. rebel or "poetic destruction" in Athens is useless and unsustainable as long as there are no alternative and strong enough social network to feed the people. Spectacle is spectacle but the most vital activism and organizing are the little things of helping each other and taking care of basic needs. Big protests make media spectacles, not the zillion little things people do to reoccupy their lives and communities from the grips of failing state. As Chomsky said, all activism boils down to reconnecting with people - even ultra right wingers and those who DU loves to hate - on the level of our basic humanity and compassion.