Spying is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, not Catch Terrorists
Spying is Meant to Crush Citizens Dissent, not Catch Terrorists
The Big Secret Behind the Spying Program
By Washington's Blog
Global Research, May 15, 2014
While many Americans understand why the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, some are still confused about whats really going on.
In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald writes:
The perception that invasive surveillance is confined only to a marginalised and deserving group of those doing wrong the bad people ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power or even cheers it on. But that view radically misunderstands what goals drive all institutions of authority. Doing something wrong in the eyes of such institutions encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behaviour and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.
The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoovers FBI, they were all doing something wrong: political activity that threatened the prevailing order.
The FBIs domestic counterintelligence programme, Cointelpro, was first exposed by a group of anti-war activists who had become convinced that the anti-war movement had been infiltrated, placed under surveillance and targeted with all sorts of dirty tricks. Lacking documentary evidence to prove it and unsuccessful in convincing journalists to write about their suspicions, they broke into an FBI branch office in Pennsylvania in 1971 and carted off thousands of documents.
Files related to Cointelpro showed how the FBI had targeted political groups and individuals it deemed subversive and dangerous, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, black nationalist movements, socialist and communist organizations, anti-war protesters and various rightwing groups. The bureau had infiltrated them with agents who, among other things, attempted to manipulate members into agreeing to commit criminal acts so that the FBI could arrest and prosecute them.
More:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/spying-is-meant-to-crush-citizens-dissent-not-catch-terrorists/5382374
Warpy
(111,278 posts)whenever totalitarians have set up internal spy groups. Secret police always follow.
I have one word for why I don't want to see this continue: McCarthyism.
You see, I was a little kid during his 15 minutes of fame but I remember the fear. Everybody thought that they were one asshole with a grudge away from being turned in and their lives would be ruined. My mother had a brief flirtation with the Party during the 30s when they were the only ones standing against Hitler and Mussolini. She had left by the start of the war the way most of their people did, finding out what Stalin was all about. He was little better. She watched the hearings on the first TV set on the block, white knuckled and furious.
It didn't matter to McCarthy and his buddy Nixon, anticommunism sold well in the heartland and it didn't matter that the Party was a fraction of what it had been twenty years earlier.
A lot of us are feeling a cold chill pervading everything as the revelations from Snowden pile up. It's a chill that is sadly familiar.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)One I share.
OffWithTheirHeads
(10,337 posts)Not the change I was hoping for.
villager
(26,001 posts)n/t
MisterP
(23,730 posts)can't get more anti-dissent than that: they've in fact reached philosophical or ontological levels of repression
JoeyT
(6,785 posts)They're Obama apologists that happen to be defending spying because he's doing it. If this had come out during a Republican presidency, they'd be screaming louder than anyone else about how awful it was.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)We have to understand that government as we know it today, is not in place for the well being of the public, but rather for the perpetuation of their establishment and their power. Just like every other institution within a monetary system. Government is a monetary invention for the sake of economic and social control and its methods are based upon self-preservation, first and foremost. All a government can really do is to create laws to compensate for an inherent lack of integrity within the social order. In society today the public is essentially kept distracted and uninformed. This is the way that governments maintain control. If you review history, power is maintained through ignorance.'' ~Peter Joseph
''All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.'' ~George Orwell
"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it." ~Edward Bernays
"The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind." ~Emily Dickinson
"Most people, including ourselves, live in a world of relative ignorance. We are even comfortable with that ignorance, because it is all we know. When we first start facing truth, the process may be frightening, and many people run back to their old lives. But if you continue to seek truth, you will eventually be able to handle it better. In fact, you want more! It's true that many people around you now may think you are weird or even a danger to society, but you don't care. Once you've tasted the truth, you won't ever want to go back to being ignorant!" ~Plato (The Republic)
''People think that the universe is outside of us, but actually the universe is inside of us and no where else.'' ~Robert Anton Wilson
Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)it been gone for 30 years,,,,,,,, also read study the 9th amend
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Who could deny this? And who would deny this has been ramped up to a new found intensity today? The only deniers are the paid liar sock puppets or cultist personality worshipers.
ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)Q. E. D.
elzenmahn
(904 posts)...same shit. Different era.
Electric Monk
(13,869 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)They don't catch shit, and that's been demonstrated multiple times. People have commented that it's security theater (slashdot), but the label implies that it's just to make people feel safer when they aren't. In reality, the TSA makes people afraid to stand out, specifically to protest or disagree with the government, which is much darker than "security theater" implies.
Uncle Joe
(58,370 posts)Thanks for the thread, Judi Lynn.
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)The Intercept
http://firstlook.org/theintercept