{"id":130284,"date":"2014-07-15T14:21:18","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T14:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=130284"},"modified":"2014-07-15T14:22:02","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T14:22:02","slug":"uncle-sam-god-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/uncle-sam-god-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Uncle Sam Have a God Complex?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Norman Solomon<\/span><\/p>\n

As a matter of faith, some people believe that God can see and hear everything. But as a matter of fact, the U.S. government now has the kind of surveillance powers formerly attributed only to a supreme being.<\/p>\n

Top \u201cnational security\u201d officials in Washington now have the determination and tech prowess to keep tabs on billions of people. No one elected Uncle Sam to play God. But a dire shortage of democratic constraints has enabled the U.S. surveillance state to keep expanding with steely resolve.<\/p>\n

By the time Edward Snowden used NSA documents to expose\u2013beyond any doubt\u2013a global surveillance dragnet, the situation had deteriorated so badly because the Bush and Obama administrations were able to dismiss earlier warnings to the public as little more than heresy.<\/p>\n

\"'NSA
‘NSA surveillance proliferates in a context that goes well beyond spying.’ (Image: Public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eight years ago, in the book \u201cState of War,\u201d\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reporter James Risen devoted a chapter to the huge expansion of surveillance. A secret decision by President Bush \u201chas opened up America\u2019s domestic telecommunications network to the NSA in unprecedented and deeply troubling new ways, and represents a radical shift in the accepted policies and practices of the modern U.S. intelligence community,\u201d Risen wrote.<\/p>\n

Risen added: \u201cThe NSA is now tapping into the heart of the nation\u2019s telephone network through direct access to key telecommunications switches that carry many of America\u2019s daily phone calls and e-mail messages.\u201d<\/p>\n

More details on the surveillance state came in 2008 with James Bamford\u2019s book \u201cThe Shadow Factory,\u201d which illuminated the National Security Agency’s program for \u201ceavesdropping on America.\u201d And in August of 2012\u2013nearly 10 months before Snowden\u2019s revelations began \u2013filmmaker Laura Poitras released a\u00a0mini-documentary<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0website about the NSA\u2019s mass surveillance program.<\/p>\n

All three journalists relied on whistleblowers who balked at the NSA\u2019s virtual mission to see and hear everything. Both books (especially \u201cState of War\u201d) depended on information from unnamed sources. The short documentary focused on a public whistleblower — former NSA executive William Binney, who continues to speak out.<\/p>\n

Testifying to a committee of the German parliament in Berlin two weeks ago, Binney\u2013whose 30 years at the NSA included work as a high-level intelligence official\u2013said<\/a>\u00a0that the NSA has a \u201ctotalitarian mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Days later, speaking at a conference in London, Binney\u00a0explained<\/a>: \u201cAt least 80 percent of fiber-optic cables globally go via the U.S. This is no accident and allows the U.S. to view all communication coming in. At least 80 percent of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the U.S. The NSA lies about what it stores.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since last summer, a backup source of strength for the voices of Binney, Thomas Drake, Kirk Wiebe and other NSA whistleblowers\u2013the fact that Snowden has provided the public with NSA documents\u2013is exactly what has enraged U.S. officials who want to maintain and escalate their surveillance power. Because of those unveiled documents, clarity about what the NSA is really doing has fueled opposition.<\/p>\n

NSA surveillance proliferates in a context that goes well beyond spying. The same mentality that claims the right to cross all borders for surveillance\u2013using the latest technologies to snoop on the most intimate communications and private actions of people across the globe — is also insisting on the prerogative to cross borders with the latest technologies to kill.<\/p>\n

When a drone or cruise missile implements an assumed right to snuff out a life, without a semblance of due process, the presidential emulation of divine intervention is implicit.<\/p>\n

But, in military terms, dominating the world is a prohibitively expensive goal. In the digital age, surveillance has emerged as a cost-effective way to extend the U.S. government’s global reach and put its intelligence capacities on steroids\u2013while tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in annual revenues go to corporate contractors servicing the NSA, CIA and other agencies of the military-industrial-surveillance complex.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So the trend line continues to move in the wrong direction. Speaking last month at a\u00a0news conference<\/a>\u00a0that launched\u00a0ExposeFacts.org<\/a>\u00a0(part of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I work), Binney said that in recent years the NSA\u2019s surveillance activity has \u201conly gotten worse.\u201d He added: \u201cI mean it\u2019s almost in everything that you do. If you do anything electronically, they\u2019re in it and they\u2019re watching you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The information being collected is so vast that NSA operatives face a huge challenge of figuring out how to sift through it on such a large scale \u2013 \u201cbecause they have to manually look at this data,\u201d Binney said. \u201cBut the point is, they\u2019re setting the stage for this to continue to the point where everybody could be monitored almost constantly throughout the day. That is an oppressive, suppressive state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since last summer, revelations about NSA programs have been so profuse and complex that it\u2019s difficult to gain an overview, to see the surveillance state\u2019s toxic forest for the digital trees. But the macro picture has to do with a mind-blowing agenda for monitoring the people of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the most significant revelation is the ambition of the United States government and its four English-speaking allies to literally eliminate privacy worldwide, which is not hyperbole,\u201d journalist Glenn Greenwald said at a\u00a0news conference<\/a>\u00a0three months ago. \u201cThe goal of the United States government is to collect and store every single form of electronic communication that human beings have with one another and give themselves the capacity to monitor and analyze those communications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a goal, formerly reserved for the more fundamentalist versions of God, is now firmly entrenched at the top of the U.S. government \u2013 and at the top of corporate America. As Greenwald pointed out, \u201cThere almost is no division between the private sector and the\u00a0NSA, or the private sector and the Pentagon, when it comes to the American \u2018national security\u2019 state. They really are essentially one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that\u2019s the kind of monotheism the world can do without.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Norman Solomon is\u00a0co-founder of\u00a0RootsAction.org<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0founding director of the\u00a0Institute for Public Accuracy<\/a>. His books include\u00a0\u201cWar Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death\u201d and “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State”.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Norman Solomon As a matter of faith, some people believe that God can see and hear everything. But as a matter of fact, the U.S. government now has the kind of surveillance powers formerly attributed only to a supreme being. Top \u201cnational security\u201d officials in Washington now have the determination and tech prowess to keep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-130284","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}