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THE ELECTRONIC POLICE STATE |
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Written by Paul Rosenberg
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Friday, 19 February 2010 |
Perhaps you saw the story headlined
on Drudge (2/11) about the Obama Administration asserting that Americans have
"no reasonable expectation of privacy" regarding their cell phone
conversations.
It's yet another sign of the emerging Electronic Police
State.
When we think of a "police state," most of us summon images
of Nazi storm troopers or Stalin's henchmen dragging people out of their houses
in the middle of the night. These images are accurate enough, but they reflect the
conditions of the world over a half-century ago, and they really do not very
well reflect what is happening in the world today.
In other words, these images are mostly out of date. The
modern police state is generally silent and transparent. It is electronic.
An electronic police
state is characterized by this:
State use of
electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic
evidence against its citizens.
The two crucial facts about the information gathered under
an electronic police state are: it is
are gathered in the form of criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial; and that it is gathered universally and
silently, and only later organized for use in prosecutions.
In a full Electronic Police State (EPS), every surveillance
camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every
post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone
ping... are all criminal evidence, and
they are held in searchable databases, for a long, long time.
Congress has now increased the penalties for mail and wire
fraud to 20 years in prison. What constitutes wire fraud? Anything the
prosecutor wants. All he needs is a "victim" and the use of the "mail" - which
need not have anything to do with the federal Post Office, and includes
electronic transmissions ("wires") over privately-owned Internet services.
I want you to think very hard and long on this: any email you have ever sent
can be grounds for felony federal wire fraud prosecution threatening you with
20 years in prison. The email, or "electronic transmission," does not
itself have to be fraudulent. It can still be "wire fraud" if it is only
somehow "involved" in what the government deems to be a "fraudulent scheme."
Nervous now? It is a complete illusion that anything legally stands in
the way between federal prosecutors and American citizens. The EPS gives Washington
politicians and federal prosecutors the capacity to ruin anyone's life they
capriciously choose. You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it, since the
evidence is already in their database.
Many questionable surveillance technologies came into use in
the United States
during the Bush presidency. At the time, quite a large number of people said "I
trust George Bush. I don't think he wants to do this for the purpose of
increasing his personal power, I think he wants to protect us."
It may be that these people were fully correct, but that
doesn't matter, because Mr. Bush is gone, and these technologies remain in use
by his successor. And they may remain for many more successors to use.
Long-term, the EPS destroys free speech, the right to
petition the government for redress of grievances, and other sections of the
Bill of Rights. Worse, it does so in a way that is difficult for people to
point out and condemn.
During normal times, when a government behaves badly, there
are people who are willing to protest. But, what happens to those protestors when
the government has every email they've sent for the past five years? Will a
protestor still act, knowing that the government can (with the push of a
button) call-up all the emails she sent to her friends when she was depressed?
Or every web site she ever surfed? Or every phone call she ever made?
Not likely.
Because of this, the EPS negates free speech over time. The 1st
Amendment remains on the books, but using it exposes the citizen to any number
of prosecutions, not to mention the embarrassment and damage caused by criminal
charges being made public.
The Federal Register in the United
States now contains over 76,000 pages. In
addition to this, there are state laws and who-knows-how-many pages of
departmental demands. We are all criminals now. We remain unbound only because
of prosecutorial discretion, and because evidence is hard to gather and
organize. But with an EPS, gathering and organizing evidence is automatic.
From the standpoint of a tyrant, an electronic police state
is a perfect weapon: It chokes off all dissent before it can form, but leaves
the state looking pristine. The enforcement mechanisms are fear and shame, and,
being internal to all involved, they remain unseen, no matter how powerful their
effects.
Liberty is
slipping away, silently.
Over 50 years ago, before most Americans had ever heard the
word "computer," Ayn Rand's predicted where government was headed. From Atlas
Shrugged, Chapter Three, aptly entitled "White Blackmail":
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any
government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't
enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a
crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who
wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But
just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor
objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then
you cash in on the guilt.
Every time any of us sends an email, we get to ponder how
much easier it is for the Electronic Police State to cash in on the guilt.
However... there is a way the Internet can ruin the EPS
operative mechanism. I'll tell you about
it next week.
TTPer Paul Rosenberg -
"prosberg" on the Forum, is the developer of the Cryptohippie.com virtual private
network, which was the subject of
Marco The Wizard's column, Cryptohippie.
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