Enemies foreign and domestic: Reining in the spies
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
The Declaration that went out from Philadelphia to
the world in 1776 proclaimed a government of the people, and that the purpose
of American government is to secure the rights of the people.
But increasingly the United States seems more a
people of the government, and the only thing the present American government
seems interested to secure is more power.
The first Americans understood the great danger to
the rights of the people: the very government they were creating. They
understood that all governments use whatever power they have. So they balanced
the necessity of government by subordinating it to the will of the people and
building into the government limits to its power.
And it worked pretty well, up until the Bush and
Obama administrations.
Under the cover of a never ending war on a concept
— terror — the control freaks (sometimes referred to as fascists) among those
elected to office have done what control freaks always do — seek more control.
One by one the rights of the people and protections
from government that are essential to freedom and liberty have been subverted:
the due process of the law, habeas corpus, th right to peacefully assemble and
protest (“petition”), the right to be confronted by accusers and see the
evidence in open court — all have all been subverted.
The executive branch now uses its power to arrest
without warrant and imprison indefinitely whoever it chooses. The executive
asserts the right to order the execution of American citizens in secret,
without judge, jury or trial.
And now we know that everything Americans
communicate to another living person is recorded, stored and analyzed by the
government’s National Surveillance Agency.
First we learned that all our phone calls and email
are monitored. On the 4th of July it was reported that a photo is taken of
every piece of mail handled by the postal system: meaning names, addresses and
return addresses are noted.
The government knows more about you than your
mother, father, spouse, partner or priest.
“But wait,” say the incredibly gullible, “the
government will never go beyond taking note of all our private communication,
will never look at my life, they’re just looking for the bad guys.”
Oh please.
A president will never want to know exactly what a
political foe or potential major donor is saying to his or her friends, family,
business partners or allies?
Some high ranking bureaucrat in the vast National
Surveillance Agency will never be curious about what kind of valuable
investment information can be had from taking a look at what the Federal
Reserve Chairman is thinking, before it is announced?
Or that it will never occur to employees of the
private company that collects all this data, that the company is in fact the
greatest and most powerful private detection agency of all time, and go into
business selling the data collected?
It is only a matter of time before all of these
abuses and more occur, if they have not already.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, only a handful of
members of an increasingly irrelevant Congress have raised the alarm, even
after they learned that the head of this domestic spy ring lied to them about
it.
The spymaster later admitted his testimony had been
“erroneous.” Seems he confused the two laws that set up all the spying.
Which is like the CEO of General Motors saying he
forgot the difference between the gas pedal and the brake.
So he lied to Congress or he is incompetent. Take
your pick.
What can be done?
First, this national spymaster must go. Second, the
entire Patriot Act needs to go, to be repealed and replaced with a law that
provides the necessary tools to protect the nation, but with the limits on that
power and the protection of the rights and liberties of citizens without which
this nation ceases to be a democracy. Third, Congress must put an end to secret
decisions made in secret courts by secret people accountable only to other
secret people.
Finally, the Secret Keeper in Chief needs to
remember his oath of office, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution
of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and reign in a
domestic spy agency more vast and frightening than anything ever imagined by
the Nazi Gestapo, the Soviet KGB or East German Stasi.
But will he?
