Privacy for Me But Not for Thee

I'm almost done reading Glenn Greenwald's new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (Metropolitan Books, 2014), and it's well worth my time.  It doesn't tell me much that I didn't already know, but it's a good roundup of what has been learned and what it means.

In particular, Chapter 4, "The Harm of Surveillance," is an excellent discussion of the meaning of privacy and its violation by the State, along with a history of illegal spying on citizens by the American government and its agencies.  If you don't feel like reading the entire book (though it's not very long, and quite readable), read this chapter.

And guess what?  I finally found the video clip I've been trying to find for a couple of years now, in which President Obama not only declared, improperly, that Private Manning "broke the law," thereby prejudicing Manning's chances of a fair trial, but that "people can have philosophical views [about Bradley Manning] but I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]… That’s not how the world works."  As another writer argued, "Nobody thus far has suggested that all diplomacy be conducted out in the open," but the key point about Obama's remark is that NSA spying has extended to the governments of friendly countries.

In 2009, for example, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon wrote a letter to [then-Director of the NSA] Keith Alexander, offering his "gratitude and congratulations for the outstanding signals intelligence support" that the State Department received regarding the Fifth Summit of the Americas, a conference devoted to negotiating economic accords.  In the letter, Shannon specifically noted that the NSA's surveillance provided the United States with negotiating advantages over the other parties ...

The NSA is equally devoted to diplomatic espionage, as the documents referring to "political affairs" demonstrate.  One particularly egregious example, from 2011 [that is, around the time Obama was protesting that he couldn't do open-source diplomacy], shows the agency targeted two Latin American leaders -- Dilma Roussef, the president of Brazil, along with "her key advisers"; and Enrique Peña Nieto, then Mexico's leading presidential candidate (and now its president), along with "nine of his close associates" -- for a "surge" of especially invasive surveillance [138-9].

In other words, the Obama regime expects other countries to do open-source diplomacy, but doesn't want to be held to the same requirement.  This sort of double standard is virtually universal among governments, of course -- it's justifiable for us to spy on you, but your spying on us is criminal! (My skepticism about this attitude makes it difficult for me to read most spy fiction.)  And closer to home, our government expects its citizens to live open-source lives while increasing its own secrecy exponentially.

I'm going to quote myself from an older post: Was the information Snowden released "private" in the first place? No, except in the narrow and circular sense of "secret." It was public in the truest sense of the word: it concerned events that were paid for by the public dime, and then concealed from the public by public agencies. Governments do not have a right to privacy, especially when they are engaged in criminal enterprises; nor do government officials in their role as government officials. Whether Barack Obama wears boxers or briefs, for example, is a matter I'm happy to leave private, though it's just the kind of fact that many Americans, and the corporate media, would claim that the public has a right to know. (I suspect that Obama would address the boxers vs. briefs question more readily than questions about dead Afghan or Pakistani children, however.) But what our government is doing with its weapons and its troops and its vast amounts of money is what the public has not only a right but an obligation to know. I would include the world, not just Americans, since so much of our crimes are committed on foreign soil, but also because our government is spying on the entire world now.

Infantile Fantasies of Omnipotence

I know, I know -- I'm saying that like it's a bad thing.  Anyway, some brief items as I sit at home today, confined by the cold weather.

"Love it," wrote a friend as she linked to this online comic about a young kid's introduction to role-playing games.  She's bi, educated, happily coupled with a woman, culturally sensitive, a Unitarian.  The kid in the comic learns that he can, within the game's world, decapitate an enemy with a broadsword and toss the head derisively aside.  "I can do that?"  Yes he can.  "A childish action, steeming [sic] from a morbid, juvenile fury," the narrator says (though such fantasies remain a staple of gaming, including computer gaming, for adults -- it's one thing if you outgrow it, but many people never do).  The boy discovers that he can play "without board, without figurines ... then even without a character sheet or dice."  "They can call you childish, huge nerds, say that you're trying to escape reality, but your brains are a tangible component of this reality ... and within their fathomless synapses ... everything is possible" (ellipses in the original).  But "this reality" isn't reality, and even in gaming, everything isn't possible -- each world has its constraints and limits; that's intrinsic to gaming and world creation.

I suspect that these panels were intended as the beginning of a longer story.  But standing alone as they do here, they're tremendously creepy.  (Especially when they're recommended by a person who's scornful of the detachment from reality of fundamentalist Christians and conservative Republicans.  Let her who is without sin ...)  Partly my alienation is probably generational, though I grew up on superhero comics and I know the appeal of infantile fantasies of omnipotence.  Dorothy Dinnerstein's The Mermaid and the Minotaur gave me useful insights into what they mean and why they must be outgrown.  If you want to indulge in them -- and it's valid to do so as recreation -- you must have a critical distance from them at the same time.  I don't see that critical distance here.

Democracy Now reported today that Senator Bernie Sanders is inquiring whether the National Security Agency is spying on members of Congress.  The NSA replied reassuringly that "members of Congress have "the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons.'"  Which means none at all, so that's all right then.  Just asking!

Emptywheel has a useful post today on corporate media / corporate government attacks on Edward Snowden, particularly the allegation that he violated his sacred vow to be obedient and keep government secrets.  (Similar attacks were made on Chelsea Bradley Manning, you may recall.)  First, as emptywheel points out, the documents Snowden signed as a government contractor do not contain any such provisions.  Snowden recently argued (via), quite reasonably, that by revealing those secrets he was defending the Constitution.  There has been talk about an offer of "some kind of amnesty" to Snowden, but emptywheel sensibly dismisses it "as I think he could never accept the terms being offered, it arises in part out of NSA’s PR effort, and distracts from the ongoing revelations." Real amnesty or clemency would be acceptable, but who in his right mind would trust the Obama administration and the national security to offer the real thing?

But it popped into my mind as I read the post that there's an echo in the attacks on Snowden of the attacks on Phil Robertson, who was suspended by A&E because his offensive remarks about homosexuality and African-Americans and teen brides violated his sacred contract with his employer.  Those arguments came from liberals, at least some of whom approve of Edward Snowden's actions, but many of whom don't.  As I've argued, the control that corporate entities and other private-sector employers want to (and largely do) exercise over their employees is just as disturbing a threat to liberty as repressive actions by the government.  Vague and open-ended promises of compliance in order to get a job are about as morally (as opposed to legally) binding, it seems to me, as the open-ended giving of consent in the marriage contract, which was used for many years to justify forced sex in marriage.  (A wife had already given her consent to her husband as part of her sacred wedding vows, so she couldn't shirk her marital duty until death did them part.  It seems that many institutions like to extract open-ended commitments from weaker parties in contracts.)

Which reminds me, last night another liberal friend posted a link to a post -- from the corporate business rag Forbes, yet! -- about the blowback to some corporate CEOs after they announced they were going to cut back on workers' hours so they wouldn't be eligible for medical insurance.  The post mainly discusses "brand identity" but also mentions that some chains have seen declining business and therefore profits as a result of their contempt for their employees.  Papa John CEO John Schnatter, says the writer, "was forced to publish an op-ed piece where he sought to convince us that he never really intended to cut back worker hours but had simply been speculating on what he might do in response to the legislation."  This isn't exactly news, but I'm pleased to hear that the public's memory is ill-disciplined enough that these businesses are still feeling the pain a year later.

But it occurred to me: if Phil Robertson could be suspended, however temporarily, for bigoted remarks that only potentially affected A&E's ratings and bottom line, shouldn't Schnatter and other CEOs whose political agenda has demonstrably embarrassed their companies and hurt stock prices and profits be disciplined too?  Surely their employments contracts have clauses about such things. It would never happen, of course: CEOs get their salaries and stock options and bonuses even when they run their companies into the ground.

Finally, speaking of bigoted remarks, at the end of Alternative Radio today our community radio station played a song by Santee Sioux singer/songwriter John Trudell, "Bombs Over Baghdad."  I don't know if it was part of the program or a space-filler before Democracy Now, but a few lines caught my attention.  I've bolded the ear-perking bits:

Bombs over Baghdad, Bombs over Baghdad
Bombs over Baghdad, Dancers of Death
Murder in the air, with the next breath
Macho Queens selling war-makers toys
Raining Destruction, Good Old Boys
Death bringer In Queen George's Eyes
Read his lips, war-maker lies

Ah, once again a progressive shows his righteousness by calling his enemies queer.  How very Sixties.  It's good that Trudell is so harshly critical of the invasion of Iraq -- not all Native American singers have been -- but what is this fag-baiting about?  Understand, I'm not calling in the drones, nor am I saying that Trudell is a monster beyond redemption; I'm not calling for a boycott of his music; I'm saying that he's a homophobe and should called to account for it.  This isn't a white vs. Indian issue: some two-spirit folks should have a talk with him.

(That's the St. Joseph Lighthouse on Lake Michigan, encrusted in ice and snow.  Someone posted the picture to Facebook; I don't know if he was the original source. [P.S. Turns out the photographer is named Thomas Zakowski.)

Reality Kicks Sand in the Face of Satire Once Again

When I started up my browser just now, I found this message underneath the Google search box on the home page:

Security and privacy are not optional. Stand with a broad coalition to demand that the NSA stop watching us.

Watching "us"?  What do you mean, "us"?  Google, Facebook and other big computer-related companies have, it's true, had user data seized by the Feds.  But that's partly because they were watching us, collecting data to sell to advertisers, or for their own use.  What I find most depressing, though, is that it's probably going to help to have these big, rich, powerful companies on the side of ordinary citizens in the coming struggle to make the government back down.  Obama will listen to big corporations; he won't listen to us.  But if and when that battle is won, the next one will be to get some control over corporations, which as Noam Chomsky has always warned, are totalitarian organizations without even as much accountability as government has.  They're at least as big a threat to American freedom as Big Government, because they aren't limited by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.  When you step onto private property (and much of not most of what used to be public space is now privately owned), or get a job with a private business, you leave your civil liberties behind you.

But They Started It!

Another liberal friend passed along the above material on Facebook, from here.  I expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing from Obama devotees as the present uproar proceeds.  It's true, of course, that Obama's current practice is just a continuation of Bush's: I mentioned before that Senator Feinstein let the cat out of the bag right after the leaked orders were published, saying that it was just a routine renewal of an order that dated back several years. But the friend who linked to it made it clear that he had other things on his mind with this comment:

I'm against this program, but still, as [one of his Facebook friends] says, "Some shocking revelations aren't really new, they're just being recycled. What is new is that a black guy from the wrong party is in office."

That goes some way to explain the Republican attacks on Obama, of course, but it still shows a convenient historical amnesia.  When I challenged him on it, my liberal friend added in comments, "Funny how the outrage increases when the 'wrong' guy gets in."  It's also funny how the outrage decreases when the 'right' guy gets in.  My friend was indulging in tunnel vision here, referring only to Republican outrage.  Most liberal and 'progressive' Democrats who'd criticized the Bush-Cheney regime simply, suddenly, lost interest in civil liberties, privacy, wars of aggression, indefinite detention, obsessive government secrecy, torture, and such like when George Bush moved out of the White House and Barack Obama moved in.  For someone who basically got into the Oval Office by being not-Bush, Obama has been something of a disappointment.

But even that's not quite fair: liberal Democrats didn't lose interest in these matters, they became very interested in them, defending their Barack against his critics, exulting as he seized more and more power for the Executive Branch, insisting on the vital importance of secrecy and surveillance, and the like.  While racism does play a significant role in Republican hostility to Obama, it also plays a significant role in white liberals' defense of Obama.  Bill Clinton took some criticism from white liberals and progressives when he escalated government surveillance of the populace years before 9/11, perhaps more so because he wasn't black.  It took impeachment for the trope of Clinton as America's first black president to be used; while it was invented by an African-American writer, it was white Clinton supporters who ran with it.  It's likely that racism played a role in opposition to the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court too, but it also allowed elderly white Republican males to cast themselves as opponents of racism, giving lifetime tenure on the Court to one of the least qualified nominees in living memory.  Notice that it was my friend's friend, quoted above, who first invoked race on this issue.

My friend says he's "against this program," just as Obama devotees daringly declared that their President was in some ways a "disappointment" during the 2012 election campaign.  He doesn't seem terribly outraged about it, however.  After all, the Republicans are using it to attack the President, and they can't be allowed to get away with that.  The reason why NSA surveillance is getting this attention now is not that Republicans suddenly decided they could score political points with it.  It's because a whistleblower and Glenn Greenwald, whose outrage against these abuses has been consistent regardless of the party or the race of the incumbent, published previously secret documents that revealed the scope of the program.  The information is new, as far as the public is concerned.

It's not that the outrage over Obama's continuation of Bush's abusive policies is "recycled."  The outrage was there when Bush was in office, because he was the "wrong" guy for Democrats.  Democrats largely dropped their outrage when the same policies were taken over by the "right" guy for them. Race surely plays a role, but party is more important.  There were people who criticized Bush-Obama's policies on principle, but they didn't count: the Obama administration jeered at them, and Obama's sycophants chimed in happily.  And while it's not unfair to score Republicans for hypocrisy in their sudden concern about government surveillance, Democrats are not the people to do it.  They're just as guilty of selective outrage, and shouldn't be allowed to forget it.

Everyone That Doeth Evil Hateth the Light

My Right Wing Acquaintance Number One linked to a Washington Post article on the PRISM program FISA seizure of telephone and Internet data.  His one remark, "'scholar' president."  I'm grateful to him for supplying such a clear example of his partisanship.  As the article makes clear, the current electronic surveillance programs are survivors from the Bush-Cheney era, though the Clinton administration also jacked up surveillance after the Oklahoma City bombing.  When a Republican administration did such things, Democrats howled about civil liberties, and Republicans accused them of softness on terrorism if not treason.  When Obama took over, Democrats suddenly became fans of wiretapping and data-mining, and declared themselves the real tough guys on terrorism and national security.  (Actually, the stage was set even before Obama was elected, when he supported and then voted for the original FISA bill.  Then-Senator Hillary Clinton voted against it.  But while many Democrats attacked Obama then, most gradually went along with the program.)  I don't remember RWA1 having anything to say about it at the time, though he wasn't on Facebook then.  But I've known him for forty years, and at most I would expect him to criticize it quietly and equivocally in private while publicly maintaining Party discipline.  He would say that he's no fan of Bush, which may be true; but I don't recall him ever making any public criticism of the man or his policies either.

At alicublog, Roy Edroso helpfully collected some examples of right-wing support for this kind of surveillance under Bush.  I think that one of the rightbloggers he quotes is right: liberals do owe Bush and the Republicans an apology, for standing by quietly or even defending policies from Obama that they attacked when Bush implemented them.  But the same applies in reverse: Republicans can hardly attack Obama for policies that originated as Bush policies.  If they didn't mind when Bush's security apparatus was tapping their phones, why should they object to Obama's security apparatus doing it?

Someone, I think on Democracy Now! a day or two ago, pointed out that one reason Obama's getting some serious criticism and opposition from the corporate press is that their toes are being stepped on.  As long as Bush and Obama were just picking on a few swarthy "terrorists", they didn't much mind.  Noam Chomsky has always said the same thing about Nixon and Watergate: as long as the government just trashed the offices of some antiwar hippies, the media didn't care.  It was only when Nixon made the mistake of targeting rich, respectable and powerful people as his enemies that he got into trouble.

This morning, Democracy Now! reported that "Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein told reporters in the Senate gallery that the government’s top-secret court order to obtain phone records on millions of Americans is, quote, 'lawful.'"   

Speaking on MSNBC, she said the leak should be investigated and that the U.S. has a, quote, "culture of leaks."

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: There is nothing new in this program. The fact of the matter is that this was a routine three-month approval, under seal, that was leaked.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Should it be—should the leak be investigated?

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: I think so. I mean, I think we have become a culture of leaks now.

She said that like it's a bad thing!  Leaving aside the fact that the administration itself uses leaks when it suits its purposes, why shouldn't their malfeasance be exposed?  Of course it's hardly surprising that people like Obama and Feinstein don't want their secrets revealed; again, I wish I'd saved a link to the video clip where Obama told an activist that while transparency was important, he just couldn't do his job with the American citizenry breathing down his neck, watching everything he does.  That may well be true, but his abuse of secrecy (not unique to him: again, he's just following in his predecessors' footsteps) has made it imperative to shed light on his activities.  (See also this piece at the Atlantic, pointing out that although Obama talks about the importance of "debate," he works hard to thwart it.  The information about the NSA data grab didn't emerge because Obama wanted a debate on privacy and surveillance -- it was leaked without his consent.)

One point that isn't not important, but it amuses me.  Apparently our government wants the National Security Agency to be referred to simply as "NSA," not "the NSA."  I noticed that, deliberately or not, Glenn Greenwald still uses the article.