June 2008 Archives

And Probably Yours Too


None of us are taking this seriously enough. 

I was talking to a friend of mine online about a month ago.  She is very a very competent law student that does a good job keeping up with current affairs.  We were talking about the warrantless wiretapping.  I was explaining to her what is at issue here, that they didn't just hand over "suspected terrorists" (whatever those are) but the random correspondence of American citizens. 

Her response was, "it is a good thing we are having this conversation online."

Uh, not quite.  It is a terrible thing we are having this conversation online.  Because AT&T, the very company that is accused of handing this information over to the government, provides the internet where I work, where I was having this conversation.  In fact where I am typing this right now. 

But she still didn't seem to get what I was saying---that this is not a safe conversation.  And since she is one of the smartest, has-her-shit-together of my friends I think it is likely that many people aren't getting this.  So I am going to lay it out as simply as possible.

First:  The EFF is suing AT&T, this much everyone has heard.  What exactly do they mean by "warrantless wiretapping"?  It is very simple.  It means that AT&T couldn't be bothered to keep track of those people who the feds had warrants to search and those who they didn't. 

They took all the content that was traversing their fibre optic cables, every email and text message and phone call, THE WHOLE EFFING PIPE and they split it.  Thus all communication from AT&T is also going to a secret room accessible only to the NSA.

Please note the use of the present tense.  Because this is still happening.  There has been no freeze on what appears to be a very clear violation of the fourth amendment.  You don't have to have AT&T for this to apply.  Can you say for sure that no one you are emailing or calling has AT&T?  Of course not.  It is more likely that they do.  Ask around.  Know anyone with an Iphone?  Maybe it is time to ask them politely not to call you anymore.  Certainly don't email me, I have just confessed as an AT&T user.  But even this is ridiculous.  Just because AT&T got caught doesn't mean the other companies aren't doing the exact same thing. 
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Of course none of this has been proven in a court of law, it is only a court case at this point and everyone gets the benefit of being innocent until proven guilty.  But don't take my word for it.  The engineer that hooked up the data stream put it this way:

"My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room, and effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those internet cables into the secret room--and we're talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the internet."  [This short video is worth watching.]

In my mind, this is bigger than Clinton's lie under oath, possibly bigger than Water Gate.  You upset about an administration that is lying to the American public?  Try lying to the American public and spying on them too.  It is very important that this case be allowed to continue so that the people understand what is at stake and those responsible are brought to justice. 

And there is no reason it shouldn't continue.  It's not like the House and Senate will get together and pass a bill giving them a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. The Congress wouldn't do that, they don't get involved in legislative affairs!  That's unheard of!..Oh, wait, that's exactly what they're doing. The Senate is passing a bill today that will give retroactive immunity to AT&T.  It already passed in the House.  "Retroactive immunity" is a fancy phrase that took me a while to wrap my head around.  It means that even if they broke the law, it's okay, we forgive them.  And it will kill the lawsuit.  Nothing to sue for. 

Why on Earth would they do this?  Everyone is shaking hands, saying what a great compromise this is.  Really, I listened to all two hours of it on C-span.  Those opposed were of the tone "This bill scares me to death..."  Those in favor spent their debate time with congratulatory messages, "I'd like to thank Representatives Bob and Jane for making this possible..." I'm not joking, that was really the gist of it.  There was no real argument for why the bill is a great compromise. It is more capitulation than compromise, here's a great fact sheet from Senator Russ Feingold for the scary details.  But in my mind, as long as retroactive immunity is on the table, this bill is totally unacceptable, unthinkable. 

The argument in favor says that they were only following orders so AT&T shouldn't be held responsible.  Give me a break.  No one pointed a gun at their heads.  They broke the law and now the Democratic Congress that we elected is giving them a free ride, and probably the administration too. You can be sure this is going to impact Kucinich's Impeachment bill.  How convenient that the court case that will undoubtably bring attention to the Bush Administration's trampling of the Constitution will be swept under the rug, along with the Fourth Amendment.  Wait a second, if the Democrats are rushing to the aid of the Republicans than who is supposed to be representing the people that want the Republicans out of office? 

On that note, the latest turn in this sickening display of blantant cronyism is the about-face from Senator Obama.  When he was trying to get the support of lefties he said he would fillibuster the FISA bill.  Today he announced he is backing it.  I thought I would have a few months of bliss before the luster wore off the man who gleams like a trophy on the podium.  I take little consolation in seeing those who support Mr. Obama to the point of worship change their position over night, simply because he has.

What we are looking right now is the death nell of privacy in the United States.  You may think that what you are writing is not interesting to the NSA but please don't think for a second it is not being read by the NSA.  No digital love note, no treasonist utterance, no meeting agenda, no late-night web-surfing, is safe.  Sure, they still need a warrant to knock on your door and rifle through your file cabinet and your underwear drawer.  But these days most of us keep our tax forms and our lingerie digitally; when this bill passes it will be like passing the keys to every house in America over to the NSA.  Because Big Brother is not only watching, he is recording it all for later.  And thanks to Congress, there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

I sat there, really thinking about why we are wanting to fight yet another losing war.  The US hasn't really emerged "victorious" in a war in, oh, say, 60 years. 

So I think about oil and money and blah blah blah blah.  But I just don't understand. Why would anyone want that much money? On an individual level, what are you going to do as CEO of, say, Halliburton? Smoke Cuban cigars with the Bushes and drink really expensive brandy in the boardroom?

Sure.  Money = power. At what point does it become just not necessary?  When you already have a gabazillion dollars, why do you possibly need anymore?  Pull a Scrooge McDuck and swim in gold coins? Buy another Hummer?

My point is, at some juncture, when does money stop being a motivating factor to be corrupt?  Let's take the example of a bird bath. Let's say it fulfills it's purpose: it fills up with water.  Completely.  You are happy that the birds have that bird bath.  Why would you possibly need it to rain more?  It's full of water, is serving it's purpose, that's that.  The bird bath may become cleaner with each pouring of rain, but that's just a bonus. Men become dirtier with each exchange of money, but that's just a fact.

Does corruption and greed and all of that garbage become internalized somewhere? Or is that an institutionalized value that is not personally held?  Somewhere, the collective is corrupt and greedy, but in the end perhaps each individual just wants his/her own.  Don't cultures (even corrupt ones) build upon shared individual values and goals? What's going on here?

We're supposed to be democraticized and advanced and civil and we just go over into someone else's country and start shooting things.

How can I be proud to be an American?

I saved the first of the Party slogans of 1984 for last.  Not because it is particularly powerful, but because it is the most profusely contradictory.  Further, it is probably the closest to our own reality, as governments and politicians try to tell us that

WAR IS PEACE.

I am unabashedly anti-war.  In this day and age, there is no need to declare war on another nation.  Rather, there has been no reason for us declare war on a nation since perhaps the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II (and perhaps not even then).  In my lifetime, I remember Operation Desert Storm, the bombs dropped in Kosovo, the war in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  The two most recent wars were waged in the name of America's freedom from terrorists.  We are told that these military operations will make the world a more peaceful place.

Tactically, I don't think we can solve the problem of terrorism (if it even truly exists at the scale we are told) with traditional warfare.  America's defenses are entrenched in a Cold War mentality, and trying to place age-old warfare strategies on something that's quite new.  Stopping terrorism won't be accomplished by dropping bombs on civilians that aren't involved.  The exaggerated terrorist threat is, in this writer's opinion, virtually non-existent to Americans.  The analogy I often use for the inappropriateness of the war launched on Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and Al-Queda is this: if your neighbor comes into my house and shoots my mother, do I have the right to bomb your entire neighborhood in retaliation to "smoke him out" of his hole?  Doesn't seem quite logical. And seems pretty unfair to all of his neighbors. 

Being a cradle Catholic, I was very upset at George W. Bush's catering to Pope John Paul II's to gain approval of the war in Iraq.  According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Just War doctrine is as follows:

"The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition."

These seem like pretty good guidelines, if you are going to be for war.  None of these conditions were met for the wars that have been waged in the past half-century. 

Noam Chomsky points out in several of his works that the Vietnam protest efforts actually took an extremely long time to become mobilized.  They were due in large part to men and women who returned from Vietnam and wanted to speak against the injustice of the 'conflict' [not war] that was being waged in the jungles of southern Vietnam.  In contrast with today's military, many of those people were involuntary combatants, as they were drafted.  In today's all-volunteer armed forces, we are dependent upon those few courageous souls who risk their reputation and careers to speak against the various lies being told about major combat operations in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan.  

There are grave consequences, however, to ending this mismanaged war.  Politicians and policy makers can make fabulous promises about "bringing home our troops", while neglecting to mention that our government will undoubtedly continue to employ private contractors like Blackwater to maintain the region.  Your tax dollars fund these contractors just as well, if not moreso, than our boys and girls in green.  In fact, more money is given to these contractors, and they are unregulated entities that will never be arrested, face a court martial, or apologize for the civilian atrocities we know they are committing.

I could go on forever, but I think I'll stop here.  I'll leave you with the paraphrased words of a college friend of mine, Aidan Delgado (who gained Conscientious Objector status while stationed at Abu Ghraib).  He reminded an audience that the torture, abuse, and atrocities that are done by our compatriots (contracted or enlisted) are ultimately a reflection of all Americans.  The decision to support a war in which crimes against humanity are being incurred is your responsibility with dire consequences.  You cannot support a war in hopes of peace, most especially when the acts of that war are far more destructive than any hypothetical alternative.