One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, once said: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” (futureofthebook.com). And who can argue that there isn’t something liberating about a little privacy? We as Americans place a significant value on our privacy; we close the door when we change clothes or use the bathroom, we hang up the extra phone to make sure no one is listening, we close our curtains at night, and we lock our doors to keep out intruders. Having a government which breaks these barriers and disregards our privacy would seem contradictory to the founding principles of our nation: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It seems strange then, that our own elected leader would order a government agency to carry out surveillance on the very citizens it claims to protect. But that’s exactly what’s going on now through the federal government’s domestic surveillance program.
If you have a GPS-enabled cell phone, just go ahead and put your mouth up to the microphone and say, “Hello Big Brother!” because the FBI has the technology to eavesdrop on you through your cell phone microphone. Don’t turn it off, they can still hear you, you have to take the battery out (news.zdnet.com) Yes, I’m serious.
Now that there are no extra ears listening, I’ll continue: riding high on a wave of terrorism-hysteria and hyper-nationalism following the September 11th attacks, the Bush Administration successfully distracted American citizens with fear and hate-mongering while they went to work defecating on our constitutional rights. Wiretaps and computer-taps have been reported, but the true extent and details of the Federal Domestic Surveillance are nearly impossible to come by, as most information is classified and held tightly between the NSA, CIA, and FBI. Despite this, the fact still remains: the Federal Government now possesses the technology and has maneuvered the legal minefield to effectively be able to spy on U.S citizens; just because now they operate this surveillance program under the excuse that we need to protect ourselves against terrorists does not mean that one day they will be peeking in on our own conversations or internet browsing just to make sure that we’re strictly obeying the law. The liberty for which our forefathers fought for is now on the line because of this program, now it is up to us to ensure that domestic surveillance ends here, now, and forever.
The September 11th attacks changed they way we as Americans view global politics forever; once we felt isolated and protected by the Atlantic and Pacific from the troubles of Europe and Asia, but one morning in September of 2001, we learned the err of our logic. Rather than deeply analyzing why such a horrific attack would be perpetrated on American citizens (an imperialistic, repressive Middle-Eastern foreign policy anyone?), we got sucked in by the inherently racist terrorism hysteria; every Middle-Easterner running a convenience store was suspicious, and traditional Muslim robes and headdresses became tell-tale signs of a suicide bomber. Our own federal government used the 9/11 attacks to instill fear in all of us simply so we would sit back and let them “protect” us.
A national color-coded terrorism threat level was introduced, unveiling new levels of incompetence. The system has different colors which somehow regulate our guard level, even though the goal of an actual terrorist attack is to keep it a secret so the target doesn’t see it coming. Of course, every time we got near the higher levels, it only got people up in a panic and duct-taping every crevice of their raised ranch in the suburbs so they could protect themselves from “a biological terrorist attack”. Yeah, everyone knows if you just put duct-tape over your windows you’re pretty much immune to anthrax. Not. But thanks to www.ready.gov, a Department of Homeland Security website, you too can enjoy its ridiculous advice in its online brochure! The website is dedicated to being prepared in case of emergencies (flash floods, forest fires, etc.) especially catered for families. However, the Department of Homeland Security views tornados and hurricanes as posing relatively the same risk as Terrorism, as it dedicates a hefty portion of its brochure to scaring people so bad about terrorism that one would think Bin Laden just called a jihad on them personally, such as this unbelievable excerpt:
“Given the different types of attacks that could occur, there is not one solution for masking. For instance, simple cloth face masks can filter some of the airborne “junk” or germs you might breathe into your body, but will probably not protect you from chemical gases. Still, something over your nose and mouth in an emergency is better than nothing.
Have heavyweight garbage bags or plastic sheeting, duct tape and scissors in your kit. You can use these things to tape up windows, doors and air vents if you need to seal off a room from outside contamination. Consider precutting and labeling these materials. Anything you can do in advance will save time when it counts” (ready.gov).
Yes, our very own government is seriously suggesting pathetic attempts at defending yourself (and there’s even a special website for kids!), blissfully ignorant to the fact that if your neighborhood was attacked, especially chemically, you’d probably be evacuated. Of course, you could always stick it out and spend an unnecessary twenty dollars on duct-tape and garbage bags to force the chemical agent through the porous walls of your home so you could convulse and die an hour or two later than you would’ve had you not made such a smart twenty-dollar investment.
It is evident that American society in particular has a potent fear of death, especially when death means flying into a skyscraper. The fact of the matter is, you have a better chance of winning the lottery while simultaneously being hit by lightning then you do of dying in a terrorist attack. It’s funny that we fear such a dramatic death as a terrorist attack but think nothing of using highways everyday. The number of Americans killed in traffic accidents on U.S soil each year, 42,642 in 2006 (nhtsa.gov), is a nationwide epidemic compared to the number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks on U.S soil that same year: zero.
But perhaps the worst outcome of the post-9/11 United States is the development of a Domestic Surveillance program, which encompasses wiretaps, internet-monitoring, and the coordination of security cameras. In 2002, President Bush signed a secret order authorizing the NSA to conduct wiretapping on U.S citizens and foreign nationals, bypassing laws set forth by a 1978 federal law regulating surveillance tactics (washingtonpost.com).
Guy Lawson’s article, The Fear Factor, in Rolling Stone reported that since their creation after the September 11th attacks, JTTF’s (or Joint Terrorism Task Force) are in every major city in the United States, and they are only growing. These JTTF’s combine state of the art-technology, undercover agents, and a specialized police force to root out the horrible terrorists, whom, shall we remember, killed zero people in the U.S last year and nearly every year in U.S history except for 2001 (in which roughly 2,750 perished). Under the Bush Administration, these JTTF’s accused 619 people of alleged “terrorist activity” a term which has no technical legal definition. Of those 619 arrested, only ten percent were actually convicted of “terrorism-related” charges, none of which were ever publicly specified (Lawson 62-3).
Opponents say: “Freedom isn’t free!”, that we have to make the world safe for democracy. They say we have to be preemptive and stop terrorism before it starts. They say that the War on Terror protects our liberties (though strangely along the way some have been compromised). So naturally the best way to go about making the world peaceful for representative governments would be for the U.S to actually restrict the Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens and start an entire military campaign in the Middle-East. Most people call this a “contradiction”. The uneducated refer to it as “necessary”. Yes, this logic can be pretty hard to understand. Mind the huge gap.
These poor misguided individuals failed to realize that the true cost of freedom is enduring attacks such as the one on September 11th. We cannot let one attack (which was the result of our repressive Middle-Eastern policy in the first place) force us to give up our individual liberties to some thoughtless federal government which promises protection in the same vague and twisted sense that the Mafia does. They also fail to realize that every time a bomb gets dropped and kills Iraqi civilians, every time they imprison suspects for months without trial, and deprive them of their rights, they are only fostering a new generation of terrorists.
How would you feel if a foreign nation occupied your country, imposed martial law, and dropped a bomb on your family’s house trying to kill some terrorist who wasn’t even there? You’d probably be angry. Angry enough to kill someone. Doesn’t seem so “radical” now, does it?
Clearly, the Domestic Surveillance program is unnecessary, and provides our government with incredibly powerful technology which, if it fell into the wrong hands (some believe this has already happened) our rights as American citizens could be in serious jeopardy. Terrorism poses a comparatively minor threat to our personal safety as Americans and is only fueled by our Imperialistic attitudes toward Middle-Eastern nations. As it stands now, if our government felt it necessary, they could impose a totalitarian government upon us and enforce it through their network of surveillance and a directed campaign of police and military force. The federal government must regain respect for the Constitution, as well as the liberty and privacy of its own loyal citizens, though we as citizens also have an obligation to stand in the face of authority and assert ourselves as free individuals.
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