by WashingtonsBlog
July 3, 2013
from
WashingtonsBlog Website
Listen to What Insiders Say About Mass
Surveillance
Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser - a
key American foreign policy architect (Zbigniew Brzezinski) -
wrote in
1970:
The [future] era involves the gradual
appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be
dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values.
Soon it will
be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen
and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal
information about the citizen. These files will be subject to
instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.
Between Two Ages - America's
Role in the Technetronic Era
In 1975, the head of the Senate committee
investigating illegal spying and harassment by the U.S. government - Senator
Frank Church -
said about the NSA:
I know the capacity that is there to make
tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all
agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under
proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss.
That is the
abyss from which there is no return.
The NSA has operated
outside the law and without supervision by either
Congress or
the courts. And see
this and
this.
Indeed, in 1991, a House intelligence committee
report
found “very limited internal oversight of the Agency [NSA] programs,” as
well as no supervision of the agency by either the Defense Department
Inspector General’s Office or the congressional watchdog agency, the General
Accountability Office (GAO).
The same year, a report prepared by the Defense
Department’s inspector general
confirmed:
NSA did not have sufficient oversight
mechanisms to ensure the Agency efficiently accomplished its mission.
Senator Church also
warned in 1975:
[NSA's] capability at any time could
be turned around on the American people, and
no American would
have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything:
telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter.
There would be no
place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.]
could enable it to impose total tyranny, and
there would be no way to fight back.
The NSA has, of course,
turned its capability around on the American people.
Top NSA whistleblower William Binney - the
former head of the National Security Agency’s global digital data gathering
program - held his thumb and forefinger close together over a year ago, and
said:
We are, like, that far from a turnkey
totalitarian state
Another high-level NSA whistleblower - Thomas
Drake - has also warned that
mass surveillance is leading to tyranny.
And another NSA whistleblower - Russ Tice -
agrees.
No wonder whistleblower Edward Snowden
says:
[If people don't oppose the surveillance
state now] it will be turnkey tyranny.
You might also want to listen to what a
government official who actually worked for a tyrannical government
thinks about the American spying program.
A lieutenant colonel in Stasi
East Germany told
McClatchy:
You know, for us, this would have been a
dream come true. So much information, on so many people. The dark side to gathering such a broad,
seemingly untargeted, amount of information is obvious.
It is the height of naïveté to think that
once collected this information won’t be used. This is the nature of
secret government organizations.
Postscript:
Mass surveillance
doesn’t even help keep us safe.