The real threat to us from the NSA's compiling a phone calling list is exactly one of the great dangers to liberty and to the exercise of democracy that the founding fathers wanted to prevent; an inhibition on the ability of citizens to freely associate with each other; anything that would have a chilling effect on free association.
The freedoms spelled out in the First Amendment are immediately familiar to most of us, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press.
But the founding fathers had concerns with the other abridgements of the fundamental mechanisms of a free society that could be brought to bear by strong central government. They were just as concerned with the right of free association.
Before the days of telecommunications and wiretapping, surveillance was limited to visual observation of a person's activities and meetings.
Today the government merely has to investigate your telephone records, your credit card purchases, your web visits and they have a pretty good idea of who you are and where you go and with whom you speak.
This last part is what is most frightening about today's headlines, although the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit has been in the courts, and the discussion of this very issue has been in play for some time now
The danger is obliquely discussed in the First Amendment by extrapolating the rights of assembly and press, but it is directly addressed by the Third Amendment. "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
If you think that there was a housing shortage in Boston during the Revolution, and there was no place to quarter the British troops and that this was the sole reason for this amendment, think again. Yes citizens' homes were being used to garrison British Regulars, but there was plenty of room for the construction of barracks if the Crown had wanted that option. And, the reason to include this admonition up front in the Bill of Rights is more a far greater reason than demanding compensation for housing soldier.
Putting a soldier in a house was a very effective way to inhibit free association among potential rebels. The same holds true for unlimited wiretapping, and especially keeping records of numbers called. It is a very effective way of inhibiting the free association of people. Surveillance has a very chilling effect on free communication and association by any means.
But the utilization of the information used in surveillance goes beyond merely being a chilling effect, even though at the moment the real danger is not that great, nor that obvious to most, and so it is little if at all mentioned, but it is there. The potential ultimate use of the collected information is the most frightening and the most lethal.
In the future, with the continuing degeneration of our economy and a concomitant decline in our civil rights proceeding as quickly as they are, one must pay attention as to why the one degeneration is tracking the degeneration of the other so quickly. Is the degeneration of our liberty really only a reaction to the threat of terrorism - imported terrorism? Well, possibly not. Possibly it is occurring to prevent exactly what the Founding Fathers had hoped to allow, an active unbridled population, able to organize themselves so as to be able maintain control over their government. As I write these words, I know that posting them will make them immediately available to someone in the Federal government whose job is to intercept messages such as this one. It holds true for all the communications on this and other sites like this one. Jobs like that, for the most par, should not exist in the Federal Government.
I am not saying that George Bush's people have plans to take over this country. I can't answer that one way or the other with any semblance of authority. But his ability to do that is most certainly growing, were those whom he represents of such mind.
During the Nazi regime, the Nazis first task in occupying a region was to go through lists of: Jews, teachers, union members, socialists, communists, religious leaders, and many others, any member of a targeted group. The Nazis also depended on interviews to discover the habits of the occupied peoples- and then those considered to be potential threats to the Nazis' control were rounded up; and if they weren't released immediately, they were interrogated, or tortured, or left to languish some place, or be sent away to be worked to death or to be killed. The Nazis were fastidious, Oh how they would have marveled at the computers we have today, I can hardly imagine how much more efficient they would have been with our technology.
But we just may find out how efficient a government can be in rounding up its citizens with the use of computer generated information detailing internet records and telephone call records.
Therein lies the rub. Given a continuation of the weakness of the Congress to protect our economy and our rights, the potential for large scale protests against the federal government is very real. So far the American public has sat on its ass about the invasion of Iraq and its loss of liberty and of its disappearing treasury. But let their comfort zone really be effected by empty cupboards and mass home-loan forfeitures and evictions, and you will see a nasty public. And since Homeland Security has obviously not been focusing on disaster preparedness, what exactly is it doing with its time and funding? Could the sarcastically labeled Halliburton detention centers really be just that?
I'm not a conspiricist type. But I am saying even the most radical congressmen seem to be blinkered as to what possible use could be made of surveillance gathered information - or maybe they really do know? In any event, I suggest you look beyond the current debate as to the potential use of the collections of lowly phone records that only contain information about who called whom.
Each call you make is a link to someone who might share your point of view. And your point of view may not be acceptable to a dictatorial regime, regardless of the number of flags its leader displays behind him.
I have previously been accosted by some for being too "dark." That I should lighten up, referring to the comments I made about the collection of Left Wing comedians and web posters who make fun of the current Republican administration at every opportunity, which I believe is counter-productive at this time.
Actually I love a good laugh. It's just that I don't think there's anything funny about this Congress, this administration or George Bush.
A friend e-mailed me after he read some of the comments made the other day regarding what I said about discussing the Democratic base's ' need to treat political issues with more decorum and respect for the seriousness of their nature. "I wonder how funny they think Kristallnacht was. Did the Jon Stewart of 1938 go on the radio the night after and make jokes? Somebody might argue we haven't had a Kristallnacht here; a valid argument. Guys like us know that Kristallnachts happen. And we know that storms can be predicted by certain cloud formations. Some people pay more attention to the weather than others."
I have put my thoughts out here because I believe a more focused point of view as to the potential danger we face is important if we are to survive as a constitutional democratic republic.
Respectfully,
Joel