Mass Surveillance in America

by Stephen Lendman

It shouldn't surprise. It's longstanding policy. Post-9/11, it escalated. Previous articles said Big Brother is real. It's no longer fiction.

Mass surveillance is official US policy. It's not for national security. It's not about discovering terror or other threats. None whatever exist. Claiming otherwise doesn't wash. Big Lies substitute for vital truths.

What's ongoing reflects unchecked power. It's for unchallenged global dominance. It's secret with no oversight for good reason. It's unconstitutional. Societies governed this way are lawless. People living in them aren't free.

America never was a democracy. It wasn't created to be one. It's not one now. Freedom is verboten. It's vanishing in plain sight. Wealth, power and privilege alone matter. Police state terror targets non-believers.

Money power runs America. Powerful interests alone matter. What they say goes. What they want they get. Obama's their nominal front man. Complicit congressional and judicial officials are involved. So are media scoundrels.

They serve wealth, power and privilege. They spurn populist interests. They pretend otherwise. Policies belie official rhetoric. A previous article said impeaching Obama is vital. It's a national imperative. What's ongoing now may be prelude for much worse to come.

Police states operate this way. They tolerate no opposition. People wanting to live free and saying so are considered enemies. Challenging government of, by and for privileged elites is criminalized. Expect much worse ahead.

Mass surveillance is all-embracing. There's no place to hide. Everyone is watched. Non-believers are targeted. Privacy no longer exists.

Orwell envisioned the future. "Big Brother is watching," he said. "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment."

"How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to."

The worst of what Orwell foresaw is real. It's worse than he imagined. State-of-the-art technology is frightening. It's used repressively. It's a dagger at the heart of freedom. It's being destroyed in plain sight.

NSA is nicknamed No Such Agency. It's the crown jewel of mass surveillance. It's Big Brother writ large. It's too great a menace to ignore.

What's now public knowledge may be the tip of the iceberg. Much more needs to be known. Free societies require sunshine. It's the best disinfectant. It's the only one.

Hopefully more insiders will tell all. Preserving what too vital to lose depends on them. Freedom's too precious to lose. It's practically gone now. Reclaiming what's lost depends on mass opposition against ruthless state terror.

Governments subverting popular interests lack legitimacy. America's Declaration of Independence said so. Governments "deriv(e) their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Whenever government ill-serves, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…."

When longstanding "abuses and usurpations" become despotic, "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government (and replace it) for their future security."

Colonial America rejected British tyranny. Challenging what replaced it is vital. It's same old under new management. It's old wine in new bottles. It's draconian. It's technologically threatening. It's too intolerable to permit.

Collective activism has power. What better time to use it than now. America