My morning paper carries a headline on the front page, “Feds tracking citizens’ U.S. border crossings.” The article goes on to describe how the federal government is creating a data base on all border crossings by U.S. citizens and plans to keep details of these crossings for at least 15 years, making the records available for “criminal and intelligence investigations.” This program created by our Department of Homeland Security (Doesn’t that agency just make you feel more and more “secure?”) to keep tabs on all of us to find out just what we are about. I can hear some of my more conservative friends saying, “Well, if you have nothing to hide it won’t be a problem.”
All of this gradual tightening of the web of government surveillance is part of the reason that I’m considering moving outside the U.S. for the long term. No, I have “nothing to hide,” but I have an uneasy sense of the creeping fascism that is decreasing our freedom of movement bit by bit. Remember how we always thought of our country as “the land of the free and the home of the brave?” Well, I don’t doubt our bravery, but I believe that our freedom is nearly lost at this point. The changes have been so gradual and the reasons given so persuasive that the population has taken little note of the changes.
I know you have heard the story of how you can cook a frog by simply increasing the temperature of the water so gradually that the frog never notices until it is too far gone to jump. That is where I believe we are at this point. The water temperature is increasing little by little and we will sleep through the cooking of our liberties. Then this country will just be a dictatorship along the lines of many countries we look down upon and condemn. I notice that our government only condemns foreign dictatorships if they would like to invade them. Others get a pass and we hardly notice their human rights abuses.
So, who has access to these records? Federal, state, local, tribal, or foreign government agencies along with courts, attorneys, news media, and the public “when there exists a legitimate public interest in the disclosure of the information.” Homeland Security is trying to exempt the database from some provisions of the 1974 Privacy Act, including the right of citizens to know whether a law enforcement or intelligence agency has requested his or her records and the right to sue for access and correction of his/her personal records.
A legitimate question you might want to ask of all candidates for public office, from the president on down, is what, if anything they would do about this creeping loss of personal freedom.
The water temperature is rising. Do you feel it yet? Don’t wait until you can’t jump.
An excellent analogy, Paul. I doubt that the average citizen is even aware of the loss of liberty that has crept up on us beyond having to go through a check point at the airport.
ReplyDelete"You have a Republic if you can keep it" as Benjamin so famously said. I'm no longer sure we can keep it.
Thanks for the comment, Darlene. I don't know who Paul is, but he did good!
ReplyDeleteI doubt that we can regain democracy in this country. I think it is already lost. It would take major changes in how the citizens of the country inform themselves and what they choose to do about what they know, for us to get the republic back. That seems unlikely to me since we use corporate media to "inform" ourselves, rely on proven liars for political advice, and mostly try to ignore our responsibilities as citizens. We certainly are "entertained" by the "bread and circus" media.