When we make "tradeoffs" for "national security," shouldn't we know what we're trading off?

"Since President Obama is asking us to trade some of our privacy with respect to our phone calls and our use of the Internet for greater protection against terrorism, at the very least we need to know exactly how our privacy is being violated."

-- Aryeh Neier, in a New York Review of Books blogpost,
"Spying on Americans: A Very Old Story"

by Ken

In this voluminous NYRB blogpost (I'm thinking it must be parked on the NYRBlog while awaiting inclusion in a future issue of NYRB), Aryeh Neier -- longtime national director of the ACLU, executive director of Human Rights Watch, and most recently president of George Soros's Open Society Institute -- opens with a little dark comedy, after reminding us, "There is nothing new about political surveillance."

One of the early practitioners, Joseph Fouché, the chief of police in Napoleonic France, supposedly had thousands of informers who sometimes acted as agents provocateurs. It is said that, on one occasion, two of his agents, unknown to each other, attended the same meeting where each proposed various revolutionary acts. Leaving at about the same time, they are reported to have arrested each other at the foot of the stairs.

Though the activities of the National Security Agency now in dispute are different than such earlier precursors, it is important to recognize that the older forms of surveillance persist. . . .

And he proceeds to give us a thumbnail history of both kinds of surveillance as practiced in modern times by the U.S. government, with a useful reminder that the precedents aren't encouraging: "Much of the political surveillance of the 1960s and the 1970s and of the period going back to the World War I consisted in efforts to identify organizations that were critical of government policies, or that were proponents of various causes the government didn’t like, and to gather information on their adherents."

"The NSA’s surveillance practices that have been revealed in recent weeks are fundamentally different," Neier writes.

They do not involve efforts to monitor the activities of individuals on the basis of their affiliations with certain organizations or causes. Rather, they attempt to identify the targets for surveillance through patterns of electronic behavior that arouse the government’s suspicion. Yet these new forms of surveillance, over time, may lead in the same direction. Those identified in this way may be excluded from certain benefits or opportunities on the basis of having been identified for engaging in activities that are legitimate. If that were to happen, they are unlikely ever to find out that they have been blocked on such grounds.

Perhaps more dangerously, Neier cites the experience of the FBI's 1956-71 Counter Intelligence Program, COINTELPO, whose "purpose was to interfere with the activities of the organizations and individuals who were its targets or, in the words of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to 'expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize' them." The plug was only pulled because of the release to the press of seriously incriminating documents stolen by activists from a small Pennsylvania FBI office. (Hmm, stolen documents released by activists to the press, producing scandalous revelations. That could never happen again, could it?) Neier draws an interesting lesson from COINTELPRO:

any government agency that is able to gather information through political surveillance will be tempted to use that information. After a time, the passive accumulation of data may seem insufficient and it may be used aggressively. This may take place long after the information is initially collected and may involve officials who had nothing to do with the original decision to engage in surveillance.

Which leads him to a point that seems worth underscoring in the present noise about the NSA disclosures, offering an example that I think makes a good case for when we might be said to have legitimately accepted a tradeoff of rights for security.

President Obama has argued that we cannot have absolute protection against terrorism or absolute protection for privacy, and that some trade-off is necessary. That sounds reasonable. The difficulty with the president's formulation, however, is that we cannot know what trade-off is acceptable if the programs that invade our privacy are kept secret.

One area in which Americans have generally made peace with such a trade-off is air travel. Some people resent the screening of passengers at airport security as an intrusion on bodily privacy. Yet most Americans have accepted giving up a small amount of privacy in the interest of safety. We are able to do so because we know what is taking place and we can gauge the extent to which our privacy is compromised.

Since President Obama is asking us to trade some of our privacy with respect to our phone calls and our use of the Internet for greater protection against terrorism, at the very least we need to know exactly how our privacy is being violated. We also need to debate fully whether such measures uphold our Constitutional rights, such as the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of expression and the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. Yet if the program is kept secret, and if even the court opinions stating the rationale for authorizing surveillance are kept secret, we cannot decide whether a trade-off is warranted; if it is warranted, exactly what should be traded; if constitutional rights are implicated, whether these are appropriate matters for a trade; or how we can impose limits on any trade so as to minimize the violation of our rights. A trade made in ignorance is not much of a trade.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, THE WASHINGTON POST
SENT OUT THIS "NEWS ALERT" THIS AFTERNOON

Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment

Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it’s forced to give the government.

The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic.

VISIT THE STAND-ALONE SUNDAY CLASSICS WITH KEN

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So what would YOU have said at the opening of Chimpy the Ex-Prez's (giggle) library?

Perhaps the elder former President Bush was learning this afternoon that his boy George now has a library bearing his name?

by Ken

For starters, this whole business of the launch of the Chimpy the Ex-Prez Immemorial Presidential Library has the unmistakable ring of waiting a decade to deliver the punch line of a joke. After all, it wasn't that deep into the criminal nincompoop's constitution-shredding that wags -- like those of NPR's Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! -- were already riffing on this eventual spectacle. It might have been, but probably wasn't, Mo Rocca who answered the question of what you might put in such a facility with the suggestion of pop-up books.

This was, after all, a man who had spent his life farting at the values for which we turn to libraries, notably the gathering and sharing of knowledge. This at least was relatively benign -- "live and let live" might have characterized Chimpy's relationship to knowledge through most of his adult existence. But his catastrophic tenure in the White House was anything but benign with regard to the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. Over those eight years the federal government did everything in its power to undermine, even destroy knowledge-based values. There were many dimensions to the Bush regime's monstrousness, and I would certainly never underrate its war-crimes-fueled assault on workable and just international relations, but the unbridled savagery of its war on knowledge always seemed, and still seems to me, the apex of its monstrousness.

Somehow, even though I was home all day, I seem to have missed coverage of the actual festivities, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that such was not the tone of the encomia delivered by the speakers, including the current president and all the other living exes.

I'm sure it would be easy to shred what each of them actually said, and I trust that's being done. It's important, because otherwise the inevitable result is to forget the degree of monstrousness of the Bush regime. Which I'm afraid is what appears to be happening -- and in the absence of any impulse to truth-telling seems all but inevitable. There's no question that disappearing was one of the shrewdest -- or luckiest -- things the Chimpster ever did. Remember that by the time the stiff slunk out of the White House he was virtually a forgotten person

I heard on the radio this morning that President Obama's strategy was going to be praising Chimpy for his relatively enlightened position on immigration. Chimpy was, after all, a representative of the 1% who have always understood the importance of this pool of rock-bottom-price, rights-free labor. And as far as it goes, that's a smartish strategy, and never mind that Chimpy the Prez was singularly unable to do anything about his relatively enlightened immigration position. And so, in the desperate quest to find something positive you can say about Chimpy from a policy standpoint, you wind up paying tribute to one of his failures.

However, the real problem with such a strategy is that, in the interest of politeness, it winds up whitewashing all of the Bush regime's monstrous doings. Still, what are you going to do? If you're stuck appearing at such an event, even if you want to honor truth and decency, what the heck can you say?

"He never endorsed criminalizing possession of a library card."

"He never participated in any actual book-burnings that we know of."

"He did marry a librarian, after all."

No, it seems to me that the only hope is not appearing at the event. But how do you manage that?

Dear George,

I'm sorry to have to tell you at this late date that Barack won't be able to attend your library opening because I'm making him clean out the garage. You wouldn't believe how bad it's gotten! He says that if I won't let him come to your shindig, I should be the one to break the news, so here it is.

Have a great opening! Best to Laura.

Yours,

Michelle O

The problem with a last-minute blow-off, though, is that by then it will have been necessary to prepare and circulate a text for the president's remarks. The only far-enough-ahead thing I could think of would be along these lines:

Dear President Bush:

My dad asked me to write to let you know that he will be unable to attend the opening of your presidential library because it conflicts with our dog Bo's obedience class. He says he hopes you'll think of him again the next time you open a new place. Just between us, have you thought of a BBQ restaurant?

Sincerely,

Malia Obama

Once you're committed to speaking, I don't see how our rules of sociopolitical decorum allow you to do anything but lie.

THE FOLKS IN THE THINKPROGRESS WAR ROOM AREN'T
BOUND BY THE RULES OF SOCIOPOLITICAL DECORUM

Miss Him Yet? 13 Reasons to Be Glad George W. Bush Is No Longer President

• Authorized the use of torture
• Politicized climate science
• Ignored Afghanistan to launch a war in Iraq
• Botched the response to Hurricane Katrina
• Defunded stem cell research
• Required Muslim men to register with the government
• Reinstated the global gag rule
• Supported anti-gay discrimination
• Further deregulated Wall Street
• Widened income inequality
• Undermined worker protections
• Ideological court appointments
• Presided over a dysfunctional executive branch

You can read the detailed explanations for yourself onsite. And I would say that even these "reasons" are more respectfully drawn up than I would have managed. At least they've got the basic idea right.

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