NSA Spying I
"Those who
would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin
Franklin
It was government
overreach under Bush and it still is under Obama. The only thing new
about the recent revelations of government telephone spying is that the
practice is still continuing. The National Security Agency is
sweeping up the telephone records of Americans suspected of no
wrongdoing. David Corn in a June 6 Mother Jones post writes :
"This is a sweeping surveillance program—the sort of activity
that two Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Udall
of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, have been complaining about for
years. The pair have warned that the government was engaged in a
surveillance program under the Patriot Act that went beyond what most
people would assume permissible given a reasonable interpretation of
that law." In the statement issued by the Administration,
there's this rejoinder: "As we have publicly stated before, all
three branches of government are involved in reviewing and
authorizing intelligence collection under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act. Congress passed that act and is regularly and fully
briefed on how it is used, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizes such collection." The response from the ACLU was swift. In a Guardian article on June 6, Jameel Jaffer, deputy
legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union is quoted as
saying: "From a civil liberties perspective, the program could
hardly be any more alarming. It's a program in which some untold
number of innocent people have been put under the constant
surveillance of government agents. It is beyond Orwellian, and it
provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic
rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of
unaccountable intelligence agencies."
NSA Spying II
"The right
of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated..." - Fourth
Amendment, US Constitution
Then there is the
more recent revelation that besides the telephone records' program,
there is another program, called PRISM, that is targeting search
histories, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats. If anything, this may be even more troubling. The story broke on June 6 in a Guardian article by Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill. "The
National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of
Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a
top secret document obtained by the Guardian....The NSA access is
part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows
officials to collect material including search history, the content
of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says....The
Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide
PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no
distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train
intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The
document claims "collection directly from the servers" of
major US service providers." The NSA access was enabled by
changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and
renewed under Obama in December 2012. The named internet companies
deny any knowledge of the program.
Honestly, America,
isn't it time to undo the excesses unleashed by the "Patriot
Act" and get back our constitutional liberties?
Palestinian Teenagers Under the
Watchful Eye of the IDF
On June 6, the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported
on the intimidation tactics of the Israeli Defense Forces against
four teenage Palestinian demonstrators: "Israeli soldiers
entered the West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum several days ago for an
unconventional mission - to post leaflets that, from a distance,
looked innocent enough, but upon closer inspection proved to be
photographs of four youths from the village bearing the caption, in
faulty Arabic: 'We are the army. Be careful. If we see you, we’re
going to catch you or come to your house.' Demonstrations have been
ongoing for years at the site because of the closure 10 years ago of
the main road leading from this West Bank town to Nablus, another
West Bank town. The article quotes a village resident: "...the
army hasn’t been able to stop the demonstrations and has sought new
ways to thwart them...Now they’ve put up the leaflets, they
probably thought that people would be frightened to go to to the
demonstration and that this would stop it, but we say it doesn’t
matter what they do – they won’t stop the demonstration.”
Still the intimidation has had a chilling effect. The father of one
of the teenagers asks: "How can an army that claims to be the
strongest in the region threaten children?”
Istanbul Park
Protests
In Istanbul, an Occupy-style protest against the proposed demolition
of Taksim Gezi Park as part of a redevelopment plan sparked a crackdown by the Turkish police. Protesters started gathering in
the park on May 27. Police responded with pepper spray and tear gas
and burned tents the protesters had set up on the site. The Guardian reported on June 6 that the protests have apparently
fallen on deaf ears: "Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan, has vowed to press ahead with the controversial
redevelopment of a square in Istanbul, in a move that puts him on a
collision course with tens of thousands of anti-government protesters and could
provoke further unrest across the country." Nevertheless, tens of thousands of Turks demonstrated on Saturday, defying the government's demand that protests stop immediately. [Reuters, June 8]
Erdoğan is the leader of the AKP, a political party whose base is "the conservative Muslim bourgeoisie that first emerged as a result of Turgut Özal's economic policies in the 1980s. But, while denying it is a religious party, it has used the politics of piety to gain a popular base and to strengthen the urban rightwing." [The Guardian, May 31] Hmm..."politics
of piety to gain a popular base...strengthen the rightwing"...where did we hear something
like this before?
[Photo: Reuters/The Telegraph (UK)]
Malaysia
Blackout 505 Arrests
Meanwhile on the opposite side of the Eurasian land mass, Malaysian authorities are
prosecuting activists and opposition figures involved in rallies
protesting the recent elections. The well-ordered “Blackout 505”
rallies in several Malaysian cities "attracted large numbers
protesting the results of, and alleged malfeasance during, the
country’s May general elections" according to the Human Rights Watch website. Human Rights Watch sent a letter on June 4 to the
Malaysian Prime Minister Najim Razak protesting the arrests. “Prosecuting
activists for organizing peaceful protests makes a mockery of the
prime minister’s promises to establish a rights-respecting
government in Malaysia,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director
of HRW. “The government should drop the charges against the six
activists and publicly pledge to cease bringing cases against
organizers of peaceful protests.”
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