Total Information Awareness and Frog Stew
by Deborah
Lagutaris
Dissident Voice
December 8, 2002
It has been the dream of every petty despot in history: the ability to track citizens in real time and to reconstruct their associations and interests.
-- Jonathan Turley,
Professor of Constitutional Law, George Washington University School of Law. [1]
Americans’
understandable fright and horror in the wake of the terrorist attack on the
World Trade Center has led them to allow an unprecedented wholesale takeover of
civil society. Who exactly is in the
process of abridging our freedom and our civil liberties? Why, the federal government. You know, the one that is supposed to reflect
the will of the people, not sap it, and turn it into support for the oil
industry.
We might think
that we as relatively law-abiding individuals have nothing to worry about. We don’t do anything wrong, so what is so
bad about allowing the government to invade our privacy without warrants, and
to track our financial transactions and medical prescriptions? This process, the brainchild of convicted
felon John A. Poindexter, is called
“Total Information Awareness.”
The issue is not
whether we have done something wrong.
The issue is whether we want a total monitoring of American’s movements
and transactions that may easily slide into total control. If the trajectory of the Bush
administration’s policies are any indication, this outcome is highly likely. Since we have been persuaded of the need for
the “total information state,” based on inflammatory rhetoric that is backed by
little evidence, we may not even notice when it happens.
In the 1960s,
high schools began to teach George Orwell’s famous book 1984.
Schools used this book because it was interpreted as a condemnation of
communism. More fully understood, it is
a condemnation of totalitarianism. Most
of us were not taught that Orwell was an anarchist who fought in the 1936
Spanish Civil War against Franco’s Fascist regime. It seems that most of us have forgotten the lessons we were
taught from that book.
The recently
passed Homeland Security Act lays the foundation for Total Information
Awareness. The $200 million down
payment is embedded in the Act, as well the legislative authorization for TIA’s
infrastructure. Jonathan Turley, a
professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, explained
that:
With no public
notice or debate, the administration has been working on the creation of the
world's largest computer system and database, one with the ability to track
every credit card purchase, travel reservation, medical treatment and common
transaction by every citizen in the United States.
Turley
continues, “In some ways, Poindexter is the perfect Orwellian figure for the
perfect Orwellian project.” He was convicted of five counts of lying to
Congress during the Iran-contra arms scandal. He masterminded the sale of arms
to Iran, a terrorist state, in order to fund a death-squad operation in
Nicaragua. “As a man convicted of
falsifying and destroying information, he will now be put in charge of
gathering information on every citizen. To add insult to injury, the citizens
will fund the very system that will reduce their lives to a transparent
fishbowl.”
We have been
primed for this coup de grace since the mid 1990s. First, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)
abrogated rights that have been protected for quite some time. AEDPA contains clauses that weaken the
primary constitutional right of habeas corpus, and deny defenses based on
inadequate assistance of counsel. Then in the wake of 911, our legislators
passed the deeply flawed PATRIOT Act under serious pressure from the White
House. In fact, if government had
effectively used the law enforcement tools in place, they may have been able to
stop the horror that was 911.
Constituents, who likely did not know what they were giving away, were
generally too mute with fright to kick up much of a fuss.
Now, its Act
III. The behemoth Homeland Security
Bill, nearly 500 pages in length, had its way greased through both Houses by
the same impulses and pressures that allowed the passage of the PATRIOT Act
with little time for review and debate.
“Homeland Security” abrogates our right to privacy. Further, in a stunning tribute to political
pork, it shelters pharmaceutical companies from liability for their production
of potentially harmful vaccines. The
newly formed agency will deny its employees the right to collective
bargaining. Americans suffered and died
to provide workers the right to collective bargaining.
Apparently, no
Congressional oversight of the agency is contemplated. Senator Robert C. Byrd (D, W.Va) called the
bill a “monstrosity.” [2]
He decried the massive shift of power to the executive branch of the
government. So, what can we do? Take out that tattered, food-stained copy of
Orwell, reread it, then mail it to your legislators as a refresher course on
what “Homeland Security” really means.
Talk to your friends and family.
Remind them of the story of the “frog in a pot.” If you place a frog in a pot of cold water,
and put the pot on the stove, and slowly turn up the heat, the frog will remain
in the pot, clueless, until he is frog stew.
Deborah Lagutaris is an alternative media activist and second-year student at
UC Hastings College of the Law. Email: deb@debocracy.org
NOTES
[1]
Jonathan Turley, “Ashcroft’s Law—West—and
East of the Pecos,” Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2002. http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-turley13nov13,0,2629067.story
[2] John Tierney, “Byrd, at 85, Fills the Forum With Romans and Wrath,” New York Times, November 18, 2002. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/20/politics/20BYRD.html