Category Archives: The Surveillance State

Adequately Explained

Democracy, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Election '08, Individual Rights, Politics, Separation Of Powers, The Bill Of Rights, The Surveillance State, War on Terror

Never ascribe to malice, that which can be adequately explained by incompetence –Napoleon Bonaparte

So, it’s been making the rounds on the far lefty loony blogs and forums (and amazingly not a few libertarian sites as well) for some time now that Bush and company are going to stage a terrorist attack and use it as justification to suspend the elections etc… etc…

This is generally followed by a litany of supposed “crimes and abuses” by the Bush administration, some of which are legitimate, some are blown out of proportion and context, and some of which are just plain lunacy.

Then of course comes the requisite rant about how the “right wing idiot sheeple will just swallow whatever lies they are told and give up all our essentials freedoms because they believe Bush is getting messages from god about the rapture” or some other such nonsense.

Bull. Utter and complete, unmitigated bull.

I won’t even attempt to refute the base assertion her;e that Bush and company would attempt some kind of coup, or false flag operation etc… To do so would be a pointless waste of time; one does not argue with the insane, one treats them medically.

But, I’d like to address that other assertion; that those of us not on the “enlightened progressive left” would blindly follow the orders of such a man as would attempt such a thing; for any reason, never mind a religious one.

Believe me on this one, real conservatives and libertarians dislike the abridgment of our fundamental rights FAR MORE than those on the left do. Leftists are almost always willing to accept a tyrant, or tyrannical abuses of power, if they believe it’s “all in a good cause”. Libertarians and real conservatives are substantially defined by the fact that they are most definitely not.

Even if you LIKE what the president is doing with the power he has arrogated to himself (and in some cases I think real good is being done; though mostly it’s just a stunning example of incompetents given too much power and authority), you don’t want them to HAVE that power, because the next guy could be a deranged madwoman.

Oh and for those of you who harp constantly on the “unprecedented disrespect for the American people and our civil rights, displayed by the Bush administration”, you obviously weren’t paying attention from January 20th 1993 through January 20th 2001.

As an Air Force officer, I saw a lot of “interesting” data during the Clinton administration. Believe me, it was every bit as bad as you imagine Bush to be; they were just a lot better at sugarcoating it and/or hiding it. If you don’t believe me talk to anyone who did any intel analysis during those years; they’ll have a similar story to tell. The Clinton administration lived by the dictum: “Power Corrupts, Absolute Power is really kinda cool”.

What is striking isn’t how much this administration abuses the power of the executive office; Clinton, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Wilson, and both Roosevelts did FAR worse. What’s striking is how utterly incompetent they have been at doing so.

Chris Byrne
I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

http://anarchangel.blogspot.com

Big Brother Coming To New York City

The Surveillance State, War on Terror

Today’s New York Times reports on the fairly ambitious surveillance plans that authorities have for  downtown Manhattan:

By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.

The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London’s so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb plots last month.

If the program is fully financed, it will include not only license plate readers but also 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, as well as a center staffed by the police and private security officers, and movable roadblocks.

(…)

The license plate readers would check the plates’ numbers and send out alerts if suspect vehicles were detected. The city is already seeking state approval to charge drivers a fee to enter Manhattan below 86th Street, which would require the use of license plate readers. If the plan is approved, the police will most likely collect information from those readers too, Mr. Kelly said.

But the downtown security plan involves much more than keeping track of license plates. Three thousand surveillance cameras would be installed below Canal Street by the end of 2008, about two-thirds of them owned by downtown companies. Some of those are already in place. Pivoting gates would be installed at critical intersections; they would swing out to block traffic or a suspect car at the push of a button.

Unlike the 250 or so cameras the police have already placed in high-crime areas throughout the city, which capture moving images that have to be downloaded, the security initiative cameras would transmit live information instantly.

With all that surveillance, surely we will be making one of America’s most important cities safer. Right ?

Well, not exactly:

There is little evidence to suggest that security cameras deter crime or terrorists, said James J. Carafano, a senior fellow for homeland security at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington.

For all its comprehensiveness, London’s Ring of Steel, which was built in the early 1990s to deter Irish Republican Army attacks, did not prevent the July 7, 2005, subway bombings or the attempted car bombings in London last month. But the British authorities said the cameras did prove useful in retracing the paths of the suspects’ cars last month, leading to several arrests.

Whether that is worth giving the state the right to watch our every move is, of course, anything question.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

New Passport Rules Aren’t Making You Safer

Government Regulation, The Surveillance State, War on Terror

Another lesson in unintended consequences…

A new rule aimed at protecting US borders is behind the backlog of passport applications that has frustrated countless Americans this summer.

But some experts and federal employees who check applications warn that these shortcomings mean more work needs to be done to improve this aspect of national security.

Increasing the number of Americans who hold passports will enhance border security, they agree. But limitations in the approval process, they add, make it difficult to be sure that those who shouldn’t get a passport don’t. Some argue that adjudicators aren’t given enough time to thoroughly check applications; others say the databases used to verify an applicant’s identity and eligibility are incomplete.

Changing the rules had two major effects. First, it discouraged many Americans from traveling to Canada/Mexico/Caribbean, because they don’t want to jump through all the hoops of getting a passport. But because so many others got their applications in all at once, the overload has made it impossible for them to do due diligence to make sure they’re actually not falsifying those documents. Of course, they believe they’re secure.

Passports are among the most secure government-issued documents. To receive passports, US citizens must prove citizenship and identity by presenting a birth certificate or baptismal record and a government-issued ID.

And even if the passports are correctly issued, there’s still another problem. The weakest link is a border checkpoint, where border workers have incentive to get people through. The process to get a passport might be incredibly strict, but if the process to show your passport to walk across the border is not, it doesn’t do much good. And that doesn’t even take illegal crossings into consideration.

As with most things the government does to make you safer, it adds to the hassle and the appearance of security, but doesn’t really provide it.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

Joe Lieberman Is Watching You

Individual Rights, Privacy, The Surveillance State, War on Terror

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman apparently thinks it would be a really good idea if the government could watch your every move:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said Sunday he wants to “more widely” use surveillance cameras across the country.

“The Brits have got something smart going in England, and it was part of why I believe they were able to so quickly apprehend suspects in the terrorist acts over the weekend, and that is they have cameras all over London and other of their major cities,” Lieberman said.

“I think it’s just common sense to do that here much more widely,” he added. “And of course, we can do it without compromising anybody’s real privacy.”

Lieberman lamented the “petty, partisan fighting” in Congress and called on his colleagues to join together to upgrade the nation’s electronic surveillance capabilities.

“Right now, we’re at a partisan gridlock over the question of whether the American government can listen into conversations or follow e-mail trails of non-American citizen,” he said on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. “That’s wrong. We’ve got to solve that problem, pass a law to give the people working for us the ability to protect us.”

That’s right, we’re from the government and we’re here to “protect” you.

Steve Verdon gets it right when he responds to Senator Lieberman with this Ben Franklin quote:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

And that, I’m afraid, is exactly what we’d get if we listened to Senator Lieberman

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

In Our Name

History, Individual Rights, Police Watch, Privacy, The Bill Of Rights, The Surveillance State, War on Terror

The Central Intelligence Agency has opened up the so-called “family jewels”, the until-now secret record of CIA actions in the 1970s that have been the subject of discussion for decades.

To say the least, the picture isn’t pretty:

WASHINGTON — The CIA released hundreds of pages of internal reports Tuesday on assassination plots, secret drug testing and spying on Americans that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s.

The documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro, the testing of mind-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening of mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China and break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others.

The 693 pages, mostly drawn from the memories of active CIA officers in 1973, were turned over at that time to three different investigative panels _ President Ford’s Rockefeller Commission, the Senate’s Church committee and the House’s Pike committee.

The panels spent years investigating and amplifying on these documents. And their public reports in the mid-1970s filled tens of thousands of pages. The scandal sullied the reputation of the intelligence community and led to new rules for the CIA, FBI and other spy agencies and new permanent committees in Congress to oversee them.

Not to mention the reputation of the United States of America and the freedoms of it’s citizens.

Don’t get me wrong, I see the value in a centralized agency for gathering and evaluating intelligence on possible foreign threats, but it seems clear that, from the beginning, the CIA crossed the line from intelligence gathering to covert spying, not only on foreigners, but also on American citizens (which was supposed to have been against the law).

It’s good that these activities are being revealed to the public, even 30 years later, but it makes one wonder what is still going on in the halls of CIA Headquarters in Langely, Virginia.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com
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