You Are, In Fact, Being Watched

(Image: James Montgomery Flagg; Edited: JR / TO)

You Are, In Fact, Being Watched
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Wednesday 07 August 2013

(snip)

The cat has fled the bag, folks. The American government is spying on you comprehensively, is using the information they gather on you to jail you if they choose to, and is doing so by laundering secretly-gathered information from one alphabet-soup agency through another and another, to make that information nice and clean for the courts.

Harken to the vacillators: "But it's just terrorists and drug dealers, and it's been going on for 20 years. Why do you care about terrorists and drug dealers, and why are you surprised?"

Sure, yeah, terrorists suck and drug dealers suck, and I'm sure this massive thing that has been unleashed upon the American system of law, and the American people, is totally benign and awesome and only doing good things and stuff.

Let's pretend for a second that we even believe that.

What about tomorrow?

And next year?

And four years from now?

And ten years from now?

How much do you trust the future?

The poet Yeats told us that the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. I pray his judgment of the best is wrong, but I know for a stone fact that his understanding of the worst is ruthlessly correct...which means, sure as sunrise, another Dick Cheney will someday hold a seat of power that allows him to direct the incredible weapon of our massive national surveillance state against anyone not properly bathed in the blood of the Lamb.

If they can jail someone based on surveillance-gathered data forwarded surreptitiously to the DEA, why not you? Who knows what "crime" will come to mean in the world our American Taliban Christians would like to create? They already control a third of the federal government, and are gunning - pardon the pun - for the rest, from the counties to the states and on up the line. Imagine if they got another one of their candidates into the White House, or took over the Senate, or managed both in one fell swoop.

If you think it can't happen, you're a damned fool.

So forgive me for being leery of this latest ZOMG ANY MINUTE NOW terror alert. I've been badly used by the people tasked to "keep us safe," as have you. The Reuters report submarined any argument that claims we aren't being comprehensively watched and recorded for the express purpose of punishing us. They are building a future I want no part of, and I would not put it past them to puff up a threat to distract us.

...and, P.S., if by dark chance a bomb does go off somewhere, it begs the question: would the American surveillance state be better able to thwart bombers if it didn't spend its resources surveilling the American people?

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18022-you-are-in-fact-being-watched