If the NSA infiltrates the Internet to weaken it, what other organizations has it infiltrated? Pondering this question is seeming less and less like the crazed ramblings of a lunatic conspiracy theorist and much more like the obvious thing to wonder. Given the total lack of professional responsibility displayed by journalists in recent memory, I really can't help but wonder if the NSA is telling them what to do.
For over a month now, the media frenzy surrounding Edward Snowden has focused primarily on how best to prosecute him. Journalist after journalist has taken the words of politicians as the gospel truth. Amazingly, politicians have largely been able to get away with insisting that we should just blindly trust them that surveillance is not being abused. When someone insists that they are worthy of trust, though, they need to earn that trust. But the claims of politicians have, time and again, proven completely false. In some cases, it's been the revelations of Snowden himself that have proven the lie – a nice form of vengeance for Mr. Snowden, I imagine. As part of an ongoing desperation to get people to understand why they really, really should be concerned about NSA surveillance, and why "Trust us" is simply inadequate, let's revisit just a few lies politicians have been caught in over the past few weeks.
Barack Obama's Refusal to Keep Promises
Democracy is pretty simple. The people vote for representatives who support legislation, principles and philosophies that the citizens support. But democracy can only function when politicians do what they say they are going to do. Obama has displayed a complete disregard for democracy by abandoning his campaign promises to stop the government from spying on citizens. Even worse, he never even notified us that he was abandoning those promises, and now that the truth has come out, has refused to explain why he's felt the need to make such a dramatic 180-degree turn on surveillance.
I guess our President hopes that we either have very short memories or that we simply don't care about the platform upon which we elected him. Despite his lies to the American people, he still wants us to trust him. Without providing any evidence to back up his claims, and without addressing the very legitimate concerns people have about government spying, Obama recently stated that he's confident spying programs aren't being abused. This statement shows an appalling degree of contempt for the American people, because our President made it at the same time that the NSA's own audit revealed that the program is indeed being abused.
There are only two things that can be true here. Either the President is completely unaware of what the government he leads is doing, or he's willing to lie to the American public even when there's compelling evidence that he's being deceitful. Neither of these possible explanations inspire any trust at all.
As recently as August, the President was still asserting that there is no domestic spying program What? Seriously?
The Laughable Idea of Intelligence Committee Oversight
But wait! We can trust the President because there is oversight of the program, as the media and talking heads have ceaselessly reminded us. Oversight is primarily provided by the Senate Intelligence Committee, but the people sitting on that committee have displayed an impressive ability to lie even as previous lies are uncovered.
Dianne Feinstein has asserted that "there is no content involved" in the NSA's data collection programs, a claim that has repeatedly been proven false CIA Agent Ira Hunt has even gone so far as to publicly state that, "We fundamentally try to collect everything."
Feinstein has insisted that only a limited number of people have access to NSA data about American citizens, but at least 3,000 people were read into the program.Weirdly, she also asserted that only very select people have access to the program while mocking Edward Snowden's educational credentials. If Snowden's educational credentials are worthy of contempt, then shouldn't that mean he's not the sort of person we want involved in such a program? Doesn't mocking Snowden's education undermine the claim that only a "select" group of people have access to highly private information about American citizens?
It gets worse, though. Like Barack Obama, Feinstein has shown no compunction whatsoever about repeatedly asserting things that are obviously false. Even though NSA audits revealed rampant abuses, Feinstein has continued to assert that the Intelligence Committee never found a single instance of abuse of the program. Either she's lying again or she's telling the truth. If it's the latter, then we really can't trust the Intelligence Committee to provide oversight given that other government entities are able to uncover abuses that the Intelligence Committee is too incompetent to sniff out.
Dianne Feinstein: Incompetent Lunatic?
It turns out, though, that Feinstein really has no business asserting anything whatsoever about NSA spying programs. She recently stated that, " I am not a high-tech junkie, but I have been told that [collecting private data and content] is not possible." This sort of statement makes it clear that she really has no business overseeing the program. How can we trust someone who has no basic knowledge of technology to oversee a highly technical program.
In Feinstein's world, it seems, the definition of "oversight" actually means "believing what you are told by the people you are overseeing." She even once told an interviewer that she had no idea what data was being collected or from whom it was collected. She's also clueless as to what metadata is or how it is used.
Her admitted lack of technical expertise and complete inability to explain how the program works have not stopped her from baldly asserting that Edward Snowden is lying.
Why is the American public willing to accept a politician who unapologetically lies to them? Perhaps more importantly, why isn't the media calling her out on her lies and incompetence?
Perjury: Fun for the Whole Family
Dianne Feinstein's strategy of blindly trusting what government agencies tell her -- shockingly! -- produces a government in which lies are the norm. NSA Director James Clapper famously perjured himself by stating that the NSA does not collect data on "millions or hundreds of millions" of Americans. Don't worry, though, because you can trust Feinstein more than your lying eyes. When asked about Clapper's perjury, Dianne Feinstein hilariously stated that, "There is no more honest person than James Clapper."
Clapper's not the only one who's taken up perjury as a hobby, though. In a 2012 exchange with Georgia representative Hank Johnson, Keith Alexander asserted that the NSA does not collect cell phone, Internet search and similar data from Americans.
Republicans Are Useless, Too
You might think I'm picking on Feinstein. Maybe she's just an old fogey too stuck in her ways and drunk on her own power to do her job. Surely the opposing party must be speaking out on these issues? Nope. In a truly impressive display of hubris and dishonesty, Saxby Chambliss stated that no citizen has ever registered a complaint regarding spying programs. Petitions to stop government spying, to repeal the Patriot Act, to pardon Edward Snowden and even to defund the NSA are circulating all over the White House petition website. Numerous organizations have filed lawsuits to either stop or gain additional information about NSA spying. In With Liberty and Justice for Some, Glenn Greenwald outlined numerous instances in which individuals filed lawsuits to stop spying campaigns. In each and every case, the lawsuits were dismissed on the grounds that the information necessary to litigate them was classified. Oh, and then there's the fact that Barack Obama himself ran on an anti-spying platform.
Chambliss doesn't stop with this lie, though. He asserted that the program only targets "bad guys." Snowden's leaks make it clear that this is a lie -- unless, of course, Chambliss believes that all American citizens are "bad guys." This seems possible. Even Senator Mark Udall -- who has access to the same classified information as Chambliss and his ilk -- has argued that the program illegally targets Americans and that congress and the NSA have lied about the scope of the program.
FISA Court LOL
But wait! According to President Obama, we can rest easy knowing that the FISA court oversees these matters. The President laughably asserted that the FISA court – which is entirely secret -- is transparent.
But hey, maybe in a world where politicians at every level of government shamelessly lie and an entire agency is dedicated to spying on citizens, a secret court can be trusted? I know it might come as a shock that a court that has no adversarial process, no appeals process and no oversight doesn't behave fairly. But it turns out that the NSA repeatedly lied to the court about its searches. So the court smacked down the NSA, right? Nope, the court approved them anyway.
The FISA court has approved almost all searches requested by the NSA, and there is no one present in FISA court to advocate against searches. In our usual legal process, two opposing sides advocate for a position and there's always a right to an appeal. Court records are public, which provides further oversight. None of this is the case with FISA. Unless you believe judges are never wrong, and unless you'd be willing to be prosecuted criminally without an attorney and without the opportunity to present evidence against your prosecution, you cannot argue that such a setup is transparent or will lead to the uncovering of truth.
Protect Freedom By Taking it Away: The Terrorism Excuse for Everything
When politicians are backed into a corner about their lies, they tend to counter with another one: the NSA spying programs have stopped terrorism. This is a claim that has been used to support every government misadventure over the past 10 years, and is therefore one that deserves special scrutiny. It, too, turns out to be false. Senator Mark Udall recently emphasized that he has seen no evidence that spying programs stop terrorism and that the government is lying when it claims the program has stopped 54 terrorist attacks.
A brief Google search will yield you dozens of stories in which specific claims are further debunked. For example, Keith Alexander claimed that NSA spying stopped a terrorist attack on Wall Street -- a claim that turns out to be totally false.
Further, given the stunning number of lies our government has told us over the past few months, we have absolutely zero reason to believe claims unsupported by evidence. We've gotten no information about how these programs have stopped terrorism. And the idea that opposing spying means allowing terrorist attacks is a false dichotomy that even a freshman philosophy major could recognize. No one is arguing that we should stop trying to uncover terrorist plots. No one has argued that it's never necessary to spy on terrorists. We've had a legal infrastructure in this country for centuries that can give the government access to whatever it wants. Standard legal procedure was good enough for sniffing out Nazis, but not for terrorists? Seriously?
Perhaps most importantly, we already know that government agencies aren't just spying on suspected terrorists. The DEA has spied to enforce drug laws. The IRS has spied on Americans' financial records. Spying is not decreasing; it is increasing, and there is little reason to believe that these spy dragnets won't be further expanded. You might tell yourself that you're not a criminal. But most people have broken the law at least once. Ever claimed more deductions than you had on your taxes? Smoked pot? Consumed alcohol prior to the age of 21? Engaged in sodomy (that's oral sex, guys)? Failed to register your car? Gotten a speeding ticket? A UK-based study found that people break the law, on average, 260 times a year, and there's no reason to think Americans are any different.
Odds are good that you're not special. You might think you have nothing to hide, but you probably do. And even if you don't, do you really want to get a call from the FBI because an ill-advised inside joke to your mother was misinterpreted by the spy reading your email?
Obama's Laughable Oversight
President Obama recently promised to convene a civil liberties oversight board. This in itself is an admission that the FISA court, Senate Intelligence Committee and the law-abiding nature of NSA employees aren't sufficient to protect us. The board has existed since 2004, but has repeatedly been undermined by the government itself. Obama, lying as usual, referred to the board as outside experts, but each and every one of them has close ties to government spy agencies, and many have participated in spying programs.
Even worse, though, the Obama administration actually removed protections designed to prevent overreach within government spying programs. And in 2011, it sought -- and received -- permission from the FISA court to deliberately comb through citizens' private records.
Our government will tell you whatever it can to protect these programs and prevent mass outcry. They'll admit that there have been violations, but that they weren't deliberate, as John DeLong recently did. They'll ignore the increasingly bizarre behavior of NSA analysts, who have used spying programs to gain access to private information about their love interests and family members. They'll keep telling you to trust them, even as they spew more lies. Don't accept claims unsupported by evidence.
Our country deserves better. When the government declares war on its citizens, when the government refuses to reveal the text of secret laws, when elected officials ignore the will of the people, we lose democracy. The only way to get it back is to speak out and to vote.
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