What we have here ...

[JDPriestly]

162. Can you explain to me how we can have a democracy if our security

administration and Justice (?) department can subpoena our communications as they wish with no public oversight, just a secret court, and read them?

Early this morning, Michael Hastings, an unconventional journalist for Buzzfeed who wrote the article on General McChrystal that finished the General's military career died in a car crash.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/michael-hastings-dead_n_3462278.html

He was known for ferreting out the truth and interviewing eyewitnesses to do it. He discovered facts other journalists did not even try to find.

Here is an article on him:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/michael-hastings-dead_n_3462278.html

The recent disclosures on surveillance and the collection of metadata pretty much make his very secretive work impossible. Any of the people, the sources, he called could potentially have been identified through this mega-surveillance system.

For him, interviewing as he did people in places like Afghanistan and other dangerous zones, the knowledge that all of his phone calls could be tracked would end his career. Worse, it could possibly end his life or the life of those with whom he developed relationships in order to report the news that no one else dared report. How many drone attacks could be based on the phone call list of an intrepid reporter seeking information from bad guys?

We need the kind of information and news that Michael Hastings provided. And with this surveillance of metadata it is no longer safe for reporters to develop the contacts they need to find that news. Above all, it isno longer safe for individuals in countries like Afghanistan or Syria or other hotspots or even here in the US to provide such information via any electronic media.

Does that help you to understand why this metadata surveillance is so dangerous?

Every phone number that Michael Hastings ever called, every e-mail address to which he wrote, was recorded and could be reviewed by the FBI which, as an agency, could also subpoena and review the contents of all of his calls and e-mails if it wished.

That kind of government capacity is incompatible with democracy because it will discourage reporters like Michael Hastings from talking to anyone whose life he might endanger just by talking to them and quoting them.

It will also discourage you and me from searching on the internet or placing our names on e-mail lists. All of our interests from the most commonplace to the most esoteric, from the most acceptable and conformist to the least, can be deduced from the phone numbers we call and the e-mails we receive and answer.

We are not free. This surveillance has ended our freedom.

You many not feel it yet. You may actually believe that the surveillance only applies to the bad guys, the "evil-doers."

But think one step further. The apparatus that collects all these calls and sorts the information is huge and costly.

Many, many people have been hired to set it up and man the system. And all those people and the companies that sell and service the equipment are going to want JOB SECURITY, above all JOB SECURITY.

And based on what has happened in other totalitarian states throughout history, that is why problems arise. In order to get that JOB SECURITY, those who administer and run the system will have to find, even create, more and more bad guys, more and more evil-doers whose identification and punishment justifies their JOBS and their JOB SECURITY.

So, right now, you look at a seemingly simple, innocent project. But beyond the fact that it is at this moment discouraging the reporting of controversial news and the provision of information that is vital to a democracy, history teaches us that the list of bad guys and the definitions of bad behavior that warrants surveillance will grow. It will be necessary for that list to lengthen in order to provide JOB SECURITY for the elite group that runs the system and, by its very surveillance of our communications, excludes us and our concerns from deciding whether to continue the surveillance. Anyone who threatens the JOB SECURITY of the surveillance elite will become the prey of that very surveillance elite. That is what has happened in country after country that succumbs to the temptation of securing itself by limiting the freedom of its people.

Many people who lived in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union or NAZI Germany or China or any other totalitarian country including fascist countries during WWII know how this works, what this kind of surveillance inevitably brings.

If you are a person of color, GLBT, a member of a minority religion, Jewish, Muslim, any minority religion, or have unusual political ideas beware. You are part of a minority, so you may be fair game. Because the idea is JOB SECURITY for those who run the system.

This surveillance ends democracy. If it does not do it today, it will in ten years. Either the surveillance has to end or our democracy will.

Someone suggested that everyone should read the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. If you think this is a good system, I suggest you read it.

I think that some of the propagandists for this system of surveillance who are posting on DU and defending it probably work in IT and are trying to get JOB SECURITY by persuading Americans and DUers that the surveillance is OK.

They have only caused me to suspect their motivations -- and I suspect that the primary one is JOB SECURITY. I suspect that some of them who seem to know so much about how the surveillance works and what countries are doing it work in the system themselves.

I have a fair knowledge of history (not an expert but a fair knowledge) and I have traveled and studied and read a lot in a number of fields. I feel qualified to express these opinions.

A lot of people who are OK about this surveillance and don't understand what the fuss is about need to do a lot of reading.

Where do you find a flaw in my argument?

I would like to know your counterargument. Why are you complacent about the surveillance?