PRIVACY FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE
The 1998 movie “Enemy Of The State” shows the power of intelligence agencies to kill anyone no matter how important and to ruin the life and reputation of anyone they please. Plus, it’s great action movie.
Gene Hackman plays someone who formerly worked for the National Security Agency. His character says, “The government’s been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the 40s. They’ve infected everything. They can get into your bank statements, your computer files, your email, listen to your phone calls.” “Every wire, every airwave. The more technology you use, the easier it is for them to keep tabs on you.” “Ft.Meade has 18 acres of mainframe computers, underground. You’re talking to your wife on the phone, you use the word “bomb”, “president”, “Allah”, any of a hundred keywords, the computer recognizes it, automatically records it, red flags it for analysis. That was 20 years ago [1978].” “They’ve got over a hundred spy satellites looking down at us.” “The old days, they actually had to tap a wire to your phone line. Now with calls bouncing off satellites, they snatch them right out of the air.”
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in full, says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”.
The Ed Snowden revelations have made the subject of universal surveillance a hot subject, as it should be.
But nothing will be done about it. There will be a lot of empty talk. There will be a few very weak gestures. But the government has become a Police State. And part of a Police State is that the government wants to know what everybody is thinking. Then they can target people who are thinking thoughts they don’t like.
The NDAA – National Defense Authorization Act – declared United States domestic territory a battlefield in the war on terror. Sections 1021 and 1022 authorized the indefinite detention, without charge or trial, of any person, including American citizens, accused by the President of undefined “support” of terrorist activity or commission of a “belligerent act” and the application of the laws of war to U.S. soil.
STAGGERING AMERICAN ARROGANCE
One of the features of the Ed Snowden revelations is that the NSA is spying on everyone, worldwide, including foreign heads of state.
America admits it and thumbs their nose at the world. “We’re spying on everybody, including foreign heads of state. And we’re going to keep doing it. And there’s nothing you can do about it. And we’re doing this to protect the world from terrorism! And we don’t really care whether you believe us or not! Ha ha ha!!!”.
This certainly contributes to worldwide hatred of America.
PRIVACY FOR THE GOVERNMENT
Privacy for ordinary people is a fine thing. And this should be an issue. But this should be turned around. “Privacy” for the government should be an equally big issue. In fact, bigger. If an individual has secret crimes, then if they remain hidden, then there will be some small crime somewhere. But if the government has secret crimes, then the whole civilization is on the road to destruction – as we are right now.
It has become an unquestioned assumption, that the government can do anything it likes, without answering to anybody, and without even telling anybody. There may be a few members of Congress who have the right to know something, but they themselves are forbidden by law to tell anybody what they know, even if they want to.
This universal government secrecy about everything is exactly the opposite of how it should be. In a free society, the invariable rule should be that everything the government does is public knowledge, freely and easily available to anyone who wants to study and research it. Only with the most compelling reason, should anything be allowed to be secret – like an ongoing military surprise attack which is happening right now, not last week.
Government officials, likewise, should essentially have no right of privacy. They can be bribed outside government channels. So the public has the right to know where they are getting their money in complete detail.
The U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9, says "a regular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.".
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this provision were actually applied! This alone would eliminate an enormous amount of government secrecy. Accounts should be available in complete detail, and verifiable by any public person who wants to find out whether the accounts are really the truth. Down to the penny, not ignoring everything less than ten billion dollars. In this internet age, this information should all be available online, to anyone and everyone, worldwide.
No more Black Budget for secret CIA projects doing God-knows-what – like assassinating foreign leaders, overthrowing foreign governments, and killing whistleblowers who talk too much.
This would tell us what the Federal Reserve is doing with its trillions of dollars that it just makes out of thin air with a few computer entries. Wouldn’t it be nice to know where those trillions of dollars are going?
PRIVACY FOR THE SUPER RICH
Similarly, privacy should not exist for the Super Rich. This does not mean those who are merely rich. This means those Super Rich people who hide their wealth and power behind corporations, foundations, trusts, and all manner of legal complexity. It is abundantly clear that the Super Rich are conspiring to destroy Liberty in America. This should be treated as the national crisis which it is. The Super Rich and all their financial and political connections should be investigated ruthlessly by people who are experts in the field of political conspiracy.
These experts must not themselves be agents of the Super Rich or of the government.
They should have the power to subpoena anyone, including the President. They should have the power to prosecute, including the power to prosecute for perjury. The penalty for perjury should be equal to the penalty for the crime being investigated.
There must be no so-called “executive privilege”, according to which no government official has to answer any questions.
There must be no blanket of “national security”, according to which no government official has to answer any questions.
Exonerating the innocent is just as important as convicting the guilty. Otherwise, the bad guys will convict all the good guys, with a great show of righteousness, and we’ll be in bigger trouble than ever.
The target must be the really important men who call the shots and give the orders. The usual “scapegoats”, “patsies”, and “fall guys” have very little importance, except as clues to climbing up the hierarchy of evil power.
This investigation should continue until the horrible truth in all its gory details is revealed and the Great Conspiracy of the Super Rich is uprooted and destroyed completely and utterly.
This is more important than defending ourselves from Russia and China in World War III.
The Super Rich are the real enemy.
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