Did The Department Of Homeland Security Lie To Congress? Is Big Sister Spying On Reasoned Dissent And Innocent Americans Rather Than Looking For Terrorists?

Big Sister, Janet Napolitano, and her cohorts of Big Brothers and Sisters at the opulent DHS compound are apparently living large.  Why wouldn’t they?  Their massive new headquarters are fitting of any all-reaching, all-knowing, all-capable, centralized intelligence center of control that would make George Orwell proud.   Phase 1?  It already looks like Hitler’s vision of Welthauptstadt Germania.  How many more phases are there?   (Yes, I know the facility is still under construction.)

Apparently, Janet and friends may be monitoring social media sites, better known as spying, rather than actually doing what they are supposed to be doing;  using legal methods to find really, really bad people who are planning on using violence to perpetuate control and fear.  The London Sunday Times recently alleged that Facebook was spying on its customers and reading their private messages.   Was Janet and Mark having a pajama party?  What else is going on in secret?  Obviously she isn’t spending her spare time going to a hairstylist.   Not that the state of her hair concerns me.  What does concern me is the citizens of this nation really have no idea what Janet is doing.

At the time of the Constitution, property rights were arguably the most important issue of the day.  Most people today don’t appreciate the breadth of property as defined by our founders.  Property is defined broadly in the United States.  Your person, your mind and your thoughts are considered your property.  The issue of government secrecy and spying is a flagrant violation of property.   Your private conversations, your private emails and your private correspondences of any kind are, in fact, your  property.  Your intellectual property.  They should be protected under both property rights and privacy laws. 

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky wrote of a fear-based society in his autobiography.  A fear-based society is born out of state secrecy and unaccountability.  Secret and unaccountable bureaucracies in government are not compatible with democracy.  They are compatible with fear-based societies like the Soviet Union.  Societies who are able to knock on your door at night and whisk you away without due process or the rule of law, who authorized murder, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, illegal rendition,  torture, bombing of civilian populations, use of retired military officers as paid propagandists to support endless war, bailing out financial criminals rather than prosecuting wrongdoing, using depleted uranium weapons that cause birth defects and cancer amongst innocent people and other methods of perpetuating control and abuses of human rights. 

Big Brother could be watching you and because of secrecy used to subvert self-rule, reason and law, you would have no idea how your privacy or your person has been violated.   Does that thought impact your perfectly legitimate and legal behavior?  Even in some small way?  Are you even remotely afraid to speak words of truth, law and reason against secrecy in government?  Do you understand what it is like to be violated?   Loss of security and safety within oneself due to an external force or another human being is an indescribable sensation and its effects on the human mind last well beyond the experience.   They last forever.  Secrecy is always foundational to that violation.  Some hiding behind secrecy may arbitrarily serve society with virtue while others may not.  It should not be up to the whims of man or personal choice.  Our nation must be protected by laws.   Laws meant to stop insidious secrecy.   Laws that are now being subverted.  The state that hides behind secrecy cannot be trusted.   Most especially when that secrecy is turned inward on the very people it is supposed to be serving.