FBI Accused of Abusing USA Patriot Act
The Associated Press reports that members of Congress are (finally) becoming concerned by the FBI's abuse of the USA Patriot Act, in light of revelations that each year the FBI authorizes more than 30,000 investigations of ordinary U.S. citizens' personal records, including financial and telephone records, emails, and even web-surfing habits--under the pretense of investigating terrorism. One can only imagine that while the FBI is busy looking at... perhaps YOUR personal information, the real terrorist elements in the United States are hard at work planning another major attack on American soil, unhindered by FBI agents who are too busy probing into your life and mine.
Keep in mind, one does not become a U.S. citizen by merely flying into JFK Airport in New York, or by jumping over a fence in Tijuana, Mexico. The vast majority of U.S. citizens were born here, and love the country they were born and raised in, while the rest have lived here for years, and demonstrated their affinity for our way of life before being granted citizenship. So why would the FBI suspect 30,000 of these citizens each year of being hell-bent on "destroying democracy"--so much so that they would even embark on suicide missions that will ultimately ruin their entire extended families' lives? The simple answer is, the FBI doesn't suspect anything of the kind. Even the FBI is not that irrational. There are other reasons why they are looking at YOUR personal records....
The USA Patriot Act is a Bush administration initiative that immediately responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by doing exactly what any foreign "enemy of freedom" could only dream of accomplishing in the United States: annihilating the very concept of personal privacy in the United States. Why is this deadly to freedom? Because a democratically-elected representative government MUST first and foremost answer to The People by allowing public monitoring of its activities, and by publicly responding to citizens' grievances that result from that oversight. By allowing the U.S. government to turn the tables on democracy, and instead allow a supposedly representative government to secretly monitor details of citizens private lives, the U.S. Patriot Act officially transformed the United States government from a democracy to a tyranny. The last time the government legally spied on its own citizens in the United States with such impunity, was when the British Empire spied on a group of citizens named George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, among many others. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence lists a number of crimes against humanity, perpetrated by King George, which are not at all irrelevant in post-911 America:
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."
"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury."
"For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments."
"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."
"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power."
Yes, I will admit that rhetoric may be used to convice people to give up their privacy and freedom in the interests of "national security". But rhetoric can also be used to convince people to commit mass suicide in the interests of joining with the UFO mothership that is waiting for them in a nearby comet. Rhetoric can even be used to convince citizens that the American Debtors Prison does not exist.... Rhetoric can be used to convince people of anything--and that is why rhetoric simply is not enough to justify U.S. government actions that subvert the U.S. Constitution, and defy the wisdom of U.S. Founders like Benjamin Franklin, who wrote that "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." In slightly over two centuries we have come full circle to the very form of tyranny that Thomas Paine decried in one of the most significant documents of our nation's founding, appropriately entitled Common Sense.
Americans fearful of terrorism have become so willing to give up essential liberties, that they forget the hell of tyranny that inspired their own ancestors to go to such extraordinary lengths to guarantee that we would possess the essential liberties we need to thwart tyranny in our time. They forget that tyranny IS terrorism.
In fact, I would go even further and suggest that the magnitude of courage exhibited by our founding generation in guaranteeing our essential freedoms is matched only by the magnitude of cowardice our own generation has exhibited in its eagerness to give up those same essential freedoms.
So just what is the FBI doing with all that personal information about U.S. citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism? Nobody knows. But that is precisely the point. If the United States were still a democracy--if we were still free--we would know exactly what they are doing with that information, because it is the right and responsibility of citizens in a democracy to maintain oversight over the activities of government "of The People, by The People, and for The People."
The only thing we know for certain is that the FBI spies on citizens using the same information infrastructure that makes the American Debtors Prison possible. And if debtors prisoners can have their productive lives ended without ever being charged or tried for any crime, we should fear to imagine what the FBI could do to any U.S. citizen "at a time and place of our choosing" (as Mr. Bush would say), using that very same information.
All the best,
Paul
Keep in mind, one does not become a U.S. citizen by merely flying into JFK Airport in New York, or by jumping over a fence in Tijuana, Mexico. The vast majority of U.S. citizens were born here, and love the country they were born and raised in, while the rest have lived here for years, and demonstrated their affinity for our way of life before being granted citizenship. So why would the FBI suspect 30,000 of these citizens each year of being hell-bent on "destroying democracy"--so much so that they would even embark on suicide missions that will ultimately ruin their entire extended families' lives? The simple answer is, the FBI doesn't suspect anything of the kind. Even the FBI is not that irrational. There are other reasons why they are looking at YOUR personal records....
The USA Patriot Act is a Bush administration initiative that immediately responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by doing exactly what any foreign "enemy of freedom" could only dream of accomplishing in the United States: annihilating the very concept of personal privacy in the United States. Why is this deadly to freedom? Because a democratically-elected representative government MUST first and foremost answer to The People by allowing public monitoring of its activities, and by publicly responding to citizens' grievances that result from that oversight. By allowing the U.S. government to turn the tables on democracy, and instead allow a supposedly representative government to secretly monitor details of citizens private lives, the U.S. Patriot Act officially transformed the United States government from a democracy to a tyranny. The last time the government legally spied on its own citizens in the United States with such impunity, was when the British Empire spied on a group of citizens named George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, among many others. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence lists a number of crimes against humanity, perpetrated by King George, which are not at all irrelevant in post-911 America:
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."
"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury."
"For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments."
"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."
"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power."
Yes, I will admit that rhetoric may be used to convice people to give up their privacy and freedom in the interests of "national security". But rhetoric can also be used to convince people to commit mass suicide in the interests of joining with the UFO mothership that is waiting for them in a nearby comet. Rhetoric can even be used to convince citizens that the American Debtors Prison does not exist.... Rhetoric can be used to convince people of anything--and that is why rhetoric simply is not enough to justify U.S. government actions that subvert the U.S. Constitution, and defy the wisdom of U.S. Founders like Benjamin Franklin, who wrote that "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." In slightly over two centuries we have come full circle to the very form of tyranny that Thomas Paine decried in one of the most significant documents of our nation's founding, appropriately entitled Common Sense.
Americans fearful of terrorism have become so willing to give up essential liberties, that they forget the hell of tyranny that inspired their own ancestors to go to such extraordinary lengths to guarantee that we would possess the essential liberties we need to thwart tyranny in our time. They forget that tyranny IS terrorism.
In fact, I would go even further and suggest that the magnitude of courage exhibited by our founding generation in guaranteeing our essential freedoms is matched only by the magnitude of cowardice our own generation has exhibited in its eagerness to give up those same essential freedoms.
So just what is the FBI doing with all that personal information about U.S. citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism? Nobody knows. But that is precisely the point. If the United States were still a democracy--if we were still free--we would know exactly what they are doing with that information, because it is the right and responsibility of citizens in a democracy to maintain oversight over the activities of government "of The People, by The People, and for The People."
The only thing we know for certain is that the FBI spies on citizens using the same information infrastructure that makes the American Debtors Prison possible. And if debtors prisoners can have their productive lives ended without ever being charged or tried for any crime, we should fear to imagine what the FBI could do to any U.S. citizen "at a time and place of our choosing" (as Mr. Bush would say), using that very same information.
All the best,
Paul
posted by Paul at 12:27 AM
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