June 12, 2013 at 7:24 P.M. Spacing following a double quotation was altered and cannot be corrected at this time.
Scott Shane & Jonathan Weisman, "Debate on Secret Data Looks Unlikely, Partly Due to Secrecy," The New York Times, June 11, 2013, p. A1.
Jessica Silver-Greenberg, "Banks Faulted As Taking Part in Web Fraud," The New York Times, June 11, 2013, p. A1. (More Wall Street scams.)
Stephen Castle, "Accused of Scheming With U.S., Britain Says It Follows the Law [sic.] in Gathering Intelligence," The New York Times, June 11, 2013, p. A12. (Al Jazeera was right. Mr. Cameron has offered a correction: "Britain obeys or abides by the law.")
Michael S. Schmidt, et als., "U.S. Prepares Charges Against Leakers of Data," The New York Times, June 11, 2013, p. A12.
"A Real Debate On Surveillance: Congress should hold hearings on the laws that made rampant spying possible," (Editorial) The New York Times, June 11, 2013, p. A22.
The controversy surrounding the disclosures by Edward Snowden will not go away.
The U.S. government -- allegedly, under the questionable legitimacy afforded by the Patriot Act -- has been collecting massive amounts of data on virtually EVERY person with a cellphone, computer, bank account, or credit card in our world.
Lies about not focusing on the contents of conversations aside, we know that our "private" lives have become the property of the state. I do not regard my inner-life as subject to government regulation nor even invasion by unwelcome guests. I can not accept that any government has the right to control what or how I may think, speak, feel, or dream. These aspects of my life must remain private or autonomous from state control.
The madness of all of this "surveillance and control" is not only illustrative of Foucault's and Baudrillard's worst fears and warnings about government power, but symbolizes the sheer stupidity and self-neutralizing nature of indiscriminate and massive amounts of raw data that simply cannot be interpreted adequately for its meaning by any "program."
No mechanical filter will be adequate to decipher subtle shades of meaning, or the nuances of linguistic form necessary to "read" encoded or indirect significations. The hermeneutic challenge is particularly powerful in light of the massive amounts of information at issue. ("Metaphor is Mystery" and "Mind and Machine" then "Consciousness and Computers.")
Please notice that the legitimacy of this information-gathering, in secrecy, is based on a secret interpretation of a crucial section of the Patriot Act, within the Executive Branch, which has not been "shared" with the Senate, nor with the House of Representatives, nor (indeed) has this cryptic interpretation been tested before the United States Supreme Court. What is not secret today?
How can this "Obama reading" of the most controversial law in the nation be tested for constitutionality since it is "secret"? Is placing such interpretations beyond the scope of review the reason for making them "secret"?
Any number of presidential decisions have been determined to be unconstitutional in our history, notably Watergate: "If the president does it," Mr. Nixon said to David Frost, "that means it is legal."
Mr. Obama reminds me -- as one of his supporters who voted for him twice! -- of Mr. Nixon. It was then President Nixon who argued against Archibald Cox (Glen Greenwald?) that gross violations of Americans' civil rights are hunky-dory when the president (Mr. Obama rather than G.W. or Nixon this time) commits them.
Regardless of who is president, any violation of the Constitution is illegal and invalid action by the Executive, even if we happen to have voted for a particular occupant of the White House.
The injury done to the Constitution and to Americans' freedoms lies in the mere collection of the data outside the boundaries of our Constitution even if it is ostensibly "legal." This remains true even if the data is never "used" or "read" at all. Non-use of the data leads me to wonder why it was collected in the first place.
With the invasion of your conversations, expressions of your thoughts, reading and purchasing choices -- your freedoms are already diminished or destroyed. Saying "don't worry about it" will not help. Worry about it.
The purpose of reasoned decision-making and published decisions justifying invasive government actions is to allow for informed public examination, debate, criticisms, and (where logic and laws indicate) REVERSALS of flawed decisions based on faulty reasoning that must be made known to victims. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
Secrecy defeats all of those purposes conducive to due process of law and democracy. Secrecy remains popular because it often allows officials to escape responsibility for their blunders and the suffering they cause to innocent people. ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")
"While they're at it, some of the opinions of the foreign intelligence court that made these collection programs possible could be released. Ms. Feinstein was rebuffed when she asked the court for redacted summaries of its opinions; as chairwoman, she should use her power to demand that the administration find ways to make the court even slightly more transparent."
The Times is correct to point out:
"For years, members of Congress ignored evidence [emphasis added] that domestic intelligence-gathering had grown beyond their control, and, even now, few seem disturbed to learn that every detail about the public's calling and texting habits now reside in a N.S.A. database."
American legislators seem content to bring about their own irrelevance as well as a quasi-military take-over of the government's security responsibilities.
We are drifting towards an ever-more complete form of "fascism with a friendly smile," a Disney version of reality is offered to a child-like and docile population ("Superman," the movie experience, opens this week) even as the iron hand of "our" National Security State tightens about "our" throats. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld" then "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")
"I worry about comprehending the effective mechanisms of domination; and I do it so that those who are inserted in certain relations of POWER, who are implicated in them, might escape through their actions of resistance and rebellion, might transform them in order not to be subjugated any longer. And if I don't ever say what must be done, it isn't because I believe that there is nothing to be done; on the contrary, it is because I think that there are a thousand things to do, to invent, to forge, on the part of those who, recognizing the relations of power in which they are implicated, [emphasis added] have decided to resist or escape them. [Or to die trying to be free -- if necessary -- rather than remain a slave.] From this point of view all of my investigations rest on absolute optimism. [Revolutionary?] I do not conduct my analyses in order to say: this is how things are, look how trapped you are. I say certain things only to the extent to which I see them as capable of permitting the transformation of reality."
Michel Foucault, "Dicourse On Power," in Remarks On Marx: Conversations With Duccio Trombadore (Paris & New York: SEMIOTEXT(E), 1991), pp. 173-174.
