THE EMERGENCY IS OVER (June 23, 2013) –
THE UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES AFTER 911 THAT ALLOWED FOR A STATE OF MARSHALL LAW IN THE UNITED STATES AND THAT INCLUDED THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATIONS OF CITIZENS RIGHTS BY HOMELAND SECURITY AND THE NSA, HAVE LONG SINCE PASSED. THE CONTINUED ATTACK AND PERSECUTION BY THESE AGENCIES OF EDWARD SNOWDEN, A TRUE AMERICAN HERO WHO DID NOTHING MORE THAN BLOW THE WHISTLE ON THE ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE OF AVERAGE AMERICANS, IS A MAJOR WARNING. A LINE IS NOW BEING CROSSED BY THOSE AGENCIES THAT INDICATES THEY HAVE NO INTENTION OF RELINQUISHING THEIR ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES, WHICH ARE NOW CONTRAINDICATED, AND THAT THEY INTEND TO CONTINUE VIOLATING THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS, NOT UNLIKE OTHER FASCIST POLICE STATES WE HAVE SEEN IN OTHER TOTALITARIAN REGIMES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
It’s tough to believe. Edward Snowden blows the whistle on illegal activity by government agencies, and instead of being protected as he would have been under Bill Clinton’s administration, it has just been reported that Obama’s Justice Department intends to file criminal charges against him. They claim Snowden did damage to national security, but he didn’t dispense any specific information about any specific threat, or alert any specific terrorist that they are being scrutinized.
What he did, is expose a program of unconstitutional eavesdropping, on regular American’s by an agency that thinks it is above the law, for reasons that are not legitimate, or honest. Snowden is a hero who has sacrificed the rest of his life, leaving the nation without hope of ever returning, and worse yet with the prevalent risk that he will return to face criminal charges. He did it to protect your privacy, my privacy, and the values embodied in the United States Constitution. The only damage he caused at face value is the inconvenience for having exposed the NSA as criminals themselves.
Although is has been said already, the damage done to the average US citizen by the NSA, has been poorly articulated. They don’t have to read the content of your emails, or listen in on the conversation while you are talking on the phone. The data being collected gives the government carte blanche to analyze the associations you have based on your phone number, and to subsequently engage in point to point stalking – electronic stalking by definition which has already been specifically declared illegal. The NSA says they have “rules” that they follow. The United States Constitution says flatly that unreasonable search, i.e. suspicionless, is not legal. The guys who put this country together understood absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that is exactly what they had in mind when they made such assertions. The advancement of technology that makes illegal activity simple, quick, and easy does not negate the wisdom of the forefathers, it actually makes the point.
So how has the situation gotten so far out of hand to begin with? A major part of the equation is that some media companies, and their associations, aka Google, Facebook, etc., have a lot of collateral invested in conducting such illegal activities themselves. It’s tough to shake your finger at the other guy, who just so happens to be Uncle Sam, when all you want to do is the same thing he already is. But then really, it all boils back down to the real reason for the 911 conspiracy, which in more ways than one has been to install Big Brother, including an Internet that is unconstrained by legitimate law, and all the additional periphery items that go along with an enormously valuable growth sector including all manner of surveillance, cameras, dashcams, policecams, background checks, airport security, body scanners, behavioural analysis, stalking and the ability to narrow the margins and control the sail on all of it through the type of illegal activity now exposed – by the NSA.
Who could have ever imagined when they signed up for Gmail that Google would actually scan the content of your private notes just so they can tailor advertising to your apparent liking as you surf the Internet, visiting sites that as far as you know have absolutely no connection to Google what-so-ever? Who could have ever imagined that Facebook would start grabbing your personal profile picture so that it can be processed by facial recognition technology so that they can then scour all the other information coming from who knows where in order to associate all the information ever collected about you for their marketing schemes? They say it’s all in the fine print. To which I say Malarkey. No one reads that much fine print. Don’t I have the basic right and expectation that those kinds of exploitations are not taking place. Isn’t it the very job of Government to step in and declare those practices to simply be illegal, and unconstitutional, damn the ridiculous small print?
But that isn’t possible, because while they are “following the rules” and exploiting your information illegally for their own purposes, how could an obviously errant congress even begin to bring legitimate legislation against those companies and practices. They are in cahoots. Apparently, only when the media representatives referred to as journalists found themselves the target of illegal eavesdropping for phone records in a suspicionless search for leaks, did they find the courage to begin speaking up. Then again, maybe the extreme right republicans as represented by Rand Paul finally got their toes stomped on hard enough to also raise a raucous. It does seem peculiar that after all that, the sacrificial squirrel Edward Snowden suddenly appeared on the public stage, stating what has actually already been obvious.
You would think that both the public and the media would recognize Snowden’s valor. Unbelievably, I actually heard Bob Schieffer on CBS’s Face the Nation last week make a ridiculous attempt to compare Snowden to the hero’s of the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. It was worse than comparing apples and oranges. It’s more like comparing a moon rock to an angus steak. Snowden is a lone individual who had the opportunity, without the critical mass of a large public group, and decided to do the right thing. Even now the media is still giving him a lukewarm reception, and the public is still only about fifty fifty. At least that’s what they’re saying. If CBS has a gag order that prevents them from presenting the news, and not forgetting the fact that they and/or their partners and subsidiaries have a vested interest in allowing the inappropriate, illegal, and unconstitutional activities to continue, how can we possibly trust the numbers and reports that are coming from them and the rest of the media including Google and Facebook?
It all seems incomprehensible to me. All the basic principles of good government, good media, and good citizenship are being turned upside down by obvious and glaring conflicts of interest. I don’t know how the average US Citizen could be anything but outraged by all of this. I don’t know who in this country could possibly see Edward Snowden as anything less than a true American Hero – because that’s what he is.
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© 2013 – Jim Casey
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