{"id":131619,"date":"2014-07-18T14:53:25","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T14:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=131619"},"modified":"2014-07-18T14:53:25","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T14:53:25","slug":"zero-sum-privacy-secrets-government-fewer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/zero-sum-privacy-secrets-government-fewer\/","title":{"rendered":"Zero-Sum Privacy: The More Secrets Government Has, The Fewer We Do"},"content":{"rendered":"

Becky Akers<\/em><\/p>\n

The consequences of the NSA\u2019s omnivorous eavesdropping aren\u2019t all bad: to foil American espionage,\u00a0Germany\u2019s politicians may join Russia\u2019s in reverting to typewriters<\/a>. That move will doubtless diminish the productivity, such as it is, of both sets of sponges, just as forgoing shipments by planes and trucks in favor of horse-drawn wagons would empty supermarkets pretty dang quick. And while I\u2019m not expecting a hearty \u201cThank you!\u201d from the serfs of either nation, they owe us one nonetheless: our taxes keep the NSA snooping on their rulers, whose abilities to tyrannize will shrink if they do indeed shun the internet.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s a gargantuan \u201cif.\u201d\u00a0The only perverts spying on Germany as eagerly as the NSA are German bureaucrats<\/a>. Recall that the guy touting typewriters is \u201cthe head of the Bundestag\u2019s parliamentary inquiry into NSA activity in Germany\u201d\u2013the face-saving committee formed to whitewash\u2014sorry, to investigate the German government\u2019s cooperation with Washington.<\/p>\n

I rarely agree with any politician; each time I do, it frightens me so badly I check and re-check my premises. Still, I can\u2019t find the flaw in my reasoning or in that of \u201cMartina Renner, an opposition member<\/a>\u00a0of the parliamentary committee investigating the activities of US and other intelligence agencies in Germany.\u201d She wisely proclaimed, \u201cBefore I start using typewriters and burning notes after reading, I\u2019d rather abolish the secret services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whoa<\/i>! That\u2019s advice you seldom if ever hear, even from the NSA\u2019s most intransigent foes. \u201cYeah, it\u2019s violated the Fourth Amendment, but\u00a0we need the NSA<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0critics hedge<\/a>\u00a0before citing one of the agency\u2019s crimes they consider less heinous than the rest, such as its monitoring of \u201cunfriendly\u201d governments or alleged terrorists.<\/p>\n

Yet aside from corporatists hoping the Feds will destroy their competitors, Demopublicans lusting for inside info on political opponents, or bureaucrats who peep at family and friends, we most certainly don\u2019t need the NSA. At all, for any reason. The government of a free people\u2013if a free people can exist under government, another \u201cif\u201d and an insurmountable one at that\u2013ought never spy on anyone, anywhere. It should keep no secrets of any kind from the taxpayers who foot its bills.<\/p>\n

Why not? First, because secrecy characterizes every repressive regime, throughout time and around the world. Secrecy lurks at the top of the staircase that steeply declines towards totalitarianism. It grows stronger with descent (and dissent) until it finally suffocates everyone who reaches the dungeon below.<\/p>\n

Second, pick any governmental secret you like and trace it to its beginnings: always, the State invoked secrecy to protect or further empower itself and its cronies, not its victims. All Leviathan\u2019s protestations to the contrary,\u00a0all its hyperventilating over \u201cnational security \u201c and \u201cCLASSIFIED,\u201d can\u2019t change that essential fact.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the \u201cstate secrets privilege\u201d so beloved of the last few administrations rose in the late 1940s when\u00a0a B-29 Superfortress crashed<\/a>\u00a0after taking off from Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. Three of the civilian engineers aboard died. Investigators blamed the Air Force and its negligence. The Feds hid this embarrassing report even as the grieving families sought an explanation for their tragedy. When the widows sued, the government claimed that divulging details about the crash could reveal military mysteries. The court hearing the case sided with the Truman Administration in\u00a0United States v. Reynolds<\/i>. This craven heartlessness spawned the \u201cstate secrets privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only one legitimate exception to prohibiting Our Rulers from keeping secrets: military officers might occasionally conceal their plans for battle. But that exemption presupposes a \u201cjust war,\u201d in which Americans defend themselves from invasion\u2013or from the sociopaths in DC\u2013rather than the imperial aggression the USSA usually wages.<\/p>\n

The American Revolution featured several such scenarios, in which secrecy regarding particular stratagems enabled the rebels to triumph against odds longer than Barack \u201cPinocchio\u201d Obama\u2019s nose. For example, General Benedict Arnold took the Revolution naval at Valcour Island in Lake Champlain during the fall of 1776. His homemade armada of 16 little boats confronted twice their number of British ships, some of which mounted almost as many cannon as Arnold\u2019s entire fleet did. Arnold knew the Redcoats would prevail, but to save as many lives as possible, he breathed not a word of his dispositions for the upcoming fight; as my novel,\u00a0Abducting Arnold<\/a><\/i>, puts\u00a0it, \u201cDespite his preparation and the surprises he would unleash this day\u2013surprises planned in such secrecy, he had confided to no one, not even his officers, lest a spy carry word to [the enemy]\u2013despite that, obliteration awaited.\u201d But it didn\u2019t. Thanks to Arnold\u2019s genius and discretion, the Patriots did indeed lose the battle while winning the overall campaign\u2013and that campaign insured their ultimate victory in the Revolution.<\/p>\n

But Benedict Arnolds and true martial emergencies are exceedingly rare; secrecy in the hands of lesser mortals becomes a killer. Witness the atrocity at Paoli, Pennsylvania, in 1777, when a British general planned a surprise attack, this time on American regiments as they slept. Secrecy was again essential, so General Charles Grey ordered his men to rely solely on their bayonets and to remove the flints from their muskets lest any \u201caccidentally\u201d discharge, for the troops themselves muttered at murdering sleeping men. Nonetheless, they inflicted more than 200 casualties while counting less than a dozen themselves.\u00a0Abducting Arnold<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>heroine mourns this \u201cmassacre. \u2026 Our troops fought and suffered and died at [Paoli and two other battles], and Redcoats did too. Pity, then, that none of the three decided anything, that all they did was separate husbands from wives and sons from parents and steal the breath from boys who might have lived to be men.\u201d<\/p>\n

The State\u2019s secrets are lethal to liberty. The more it keeps, the stronger our chains.<\/p>\n

Becky Akers\u2019 novel,\u00a0Abducting Arnold, turns little-known history into an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Buy it before it\u2019s banned!<\/em><\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Independent News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Becky Akers The consequences of the NSA\u2019s omnivorous eavesdropping aren\u2019t all bad: to foil American espionage,\u00a0Germany\u2019s politicians may join Russia\u2019s in reverting to typewriters. That move will doubtless diminish the productivity, such as it is, of both sets of sponges, just as forgoing shipments by planes and trucks in favor of horse-drawn wagons would empty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":111393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-131619","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\/131619","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=131619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}