The American Surveillance State surrounds and imprisons us all. As I type those names into my computer, an algorithm has picked them up and identified me for a higher classification of surveillance.
Years ago, when whistleblowers alleged that American computer companies were capturing and recording every email, every keystroke, they sounded like nutjobs. But now it’s revealed that it’s all true.
And what’s so disturbing about the turn of this nation to totalitarianism is that the figures above were ultimately protesting death, murder, torture and abuse…..it wasn’t so much the bits and the bytes, the data and the metadata, it’s the violent ultimate objectives behind it all.
It is indeed most compelling that Manning, Snowden, Swartz and Assange all felt gripped and morally obligated to take bold and decisive action, knowing full well that by doing so they would face great personal abuse….and our government did not disappoint.
The United States government engaged in a vicious campaign of torture against Bradley Manning….they went far and above beyond merely holding him for prosecution…they tortured him. And they United States government killed Aaron Swartz. We will now see what lengths they go to in order to make Snowden pay for fulfilling his duty to the American people and the people of the world.
What will happen as the United States government continues to tighten the noose of surveillance and oppression? What is the outcome that the military corporate state seeks to accomplish? Will Americans become more compliant, more obedient? Will the American government finally achieve some per-determined goal and ratchet back the surveillance state? Or will they simply turn the heat up?
God Help Us All.
WASHINGTON “” A 29-year-old former C.I.A. computer technician went public on Sunday as the source behind the daily drumbeat of disclosures about the nation’s surveillance programs, saying he took the extraordinary step because ” the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.”
