James Bovard on the federal surveillance state

The federal surveillance net has vastly increased since the 1970s.  Nowadays, the feds are flagging people who purchase Bibles and “other media containing extremist views,” according to a report by the House Judiciary Committee. 

Technology is propelling new threats to freedom.  A March 2024 report by the House Judiciary Committee noted that “the decline of cash and the rise of digital payments and e-commerce platforms….  As a result, these financial institutions often act as arms of federal law enforcement as they work in coordination with federal law enforcement to identify what transactions and other information is ‘suspicious’ enough to be reported.”  Greater computer resources make it vastly cheaper to store dirt on practically any private citizen.

~ James Bovard, "Buy a Bible, Become a Terror Suspect," The Future of Freedom Foundation, August 16, 2024

David D'Amato on the war on terror and growth of the surveillance state

In the United States, particularly in the hysterical environment of the post-9/11 War on Terror, terrorism has been the convenient, go-to pretext for violating the civil and human rights of political dissidents and activists.  In the years following 9/11, the national security state carefully cultivated an environment of fear and paranoia, a social atmosphere in which Americans would be billing to abandon high-minded ideals of civil liberties and due process in favor of safety.  If we were to be safe, those suspected of terrorism couldn’t have rights, not the same rights anyway.  A new, exceptional kind of war required new, exceptional powers—and, besides, those pesky constitutional safeguards were for real Americans, not suspected terrorists.  It is at this juncture that the racial and religious dimensions of terrorism as a concept played their critical role, buttressed by “a pervasive media and political discourse that insisted the disciplinary techniques available to the state were insufficient for dealing with the threat that terrorism posed.”  The terrorist or suspected terrorist becomes an “exceptional figure,” dehumanized and subject to different rules, to “excess levels of state power” and disciplinary actions that would not be permissible absent this context of race.  The War on Terror became the primary means through which an imperial ruling class could consolidate its real and psychological power by punishing the other.  Policing at home could become ever more militarized and oppressive, surveillance more pervasive—justified by an omnipresent threat that has already infiltrated the homeland.

~ David S. D'Amato, "Power and Punishment in the Construct of Terrorism," CounterPunch, November 24, 2023

Vitaliy Katsenelson on 5G technology

The transition from 4th-generation (4G) wireless to 5th-generation (5G) is about a lot more than just the ability to download Netflix movies in seconds rather than minutes.  5G is a transformational technology that in coming years may turn our global society into either a utopian or a dystopian sci-fi movie.  5G uses much wider wireless spectrum, drains a fraction of the battery power, and has lower latency.  The combination of these factors will result in a hundred- if not thousand-fold increase in internet-connected devices.  Streetlights, trash cans, cars, cameras… cows; all will be connected through the wireless grid. 

Here is one example from 2020 that popped up as I was writing this. Amazon has announced that you’ll be able to pay for goods at its Amazon Go stores by scanning your hand. In other words, you’ll no longer need your smartphone.  Your personal data will change its main residence from the personal comfort zone of your smartphone to the cloud. 

We are a few years away from it, but the amount of data created by the 5G network will increase exponentially.  It will transform the internet of smartphones to the internet of things, where smartphones are just a small fraction of those things.  And the potential for abuse of this power to monitor and control people will grow exponentially, too.

~ Vitaliy Katsenelson, "U.S. and China: In the Foothills of Cold War," ContrarianEdge, October 29, 2020

Doug Casey on George W. Bush's war on terror

It’s a pity that Bush, when he was in office, made such a big deal of evil.  He discredited the concept.  He made Boobus americanus think it only existed in a distant axis, in places like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, which were and still are irrelevant backwaters and arbitrarily chosen enemies.  Bush trivialized the concept of evil and made it seem banal because he was such a fool.  All the while, real evil, very immediate and powerful, was growing right around him, and he lacked the awareness to see he was fertilizing it by turning the U.S. into a national security state after 9/11.

~ Doug Casey, "The Ascendance of Sociopaths in U.S. Governance," International Man, April 28, 2021

Ron Paul on how Big Tech helped the U.S. government fight the War on Terror

Those who continue to argue that the social media companies are purely private ventures acting independent of US government interests are ignoring reality.  The corporatist merger of “private” US social media companies with US government foreign policy goals has a long history and is deeply steeped in the hyper-interventionism of the Obama/Biden era. 

“Big Tech” long ago partnered with the Obama/Biden/Clinton State Department to lend their tools to US “soft power” goals overseas.  Whether it was ongoing regime change attempts against Iran, the 2009 coup in Honduras, the disastrous US-led coup in Ukraine, “Arab Spring,” the destruction of Syria and Libya, and so many more, the big US tech firms were happy to partner up with the State Department and US intelligence to provide the tools to empower those the US wanted to seize power and to silence those out of favor. 

In short, US government elites have been partnering with “Big Tech” overseas for years to decide who has the right to speak and who must be silenced. What has changed now is that this deployment of “soft power” in the service of Washington’s hard power has come home to roost.

~ Ron Paul, "The 'War on Terror' Comes Home," LewRockwell.com, January 12, 2021

Peter Klein on a future world of "pandemic theater"

Actions by the Fed, by the Treasury, by Congress, by the President, that are really striking and distressing to people in extraordinary times can quickly become the new normal.  And I worry that, in a future age which might be constituted by all kinds of crises - real or imagined - the notion that bold, decisive action by the state is necessary to protect us and keep us safe is just going to become more and more part of peoples' expectations.

You know how we use the term "security theater" to describe all of these policies since 911, you know no liquids, more than 3 ounces, taking our shoes off and going through the corn house scanners and so forth.  Young people today have grown up in that environment and don't know what it was like to travel before 911.

I wonder what kind of pandemic theater we'll have to live through after this is all over.  Will you have to have your temperature taken by some TSA-equivalent worker every time you enter a public building?  Will there be random health checks?  I just worry that socially, culturally people are becoming more acclimated to a world in which the state controls the movements of persons and goods and the division of labor is retarded and so forth because it's just too dangerous to allow for a global division of labor.  And maybe I'm overly pessimistic on that score, but I think we need to be especially vigilant, those of us who care about liberty, and try to push back on those things in the months and years to come.

~ Peter Klein, "The Economics of the Shutdown," The Tom Woods Show, March 26, 2020