Glenn Greenwald, one of the few good progressives out there, has released an explosive report on The Guardian (UK) website that details the NSA's collecting of phone records from Verizon and AT&T. I recommend that you read this. It will explore how bad this spying is. Here is a great quote from the article: "For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on "secret legal interpretations" to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be "stunned" to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted." Also, "the document [the order] shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing."
My thoughts on this is that these are the consequences of domestic spying powers. I am disappointed that Verizon and AT&T would approve of this. The worst part is that this is happening daily. We are forced to reveal these phone records to the government, even when we don't want to.
As Mike Snyder at the Economic Collapse Blog warns: "Unfortunately, our leaders have totally abandoned the Constitution. They seem to believe that they have the right to look through our electronic communications any time they want and that we should not complain about it. As you will see below, workers at the NSA have even eavesdropped on very intimate conversations between soldiers serving in Iraq and their female loved ones back home. What kind of sick person would do such a thing?"
The Washington Post also has a report about U.S. and British intelligence forming PRISM to target nine Internet companies. Here they are: "The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Dropbox , the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as 'coming soon.'"
According to Fox News, the center could have 5 billion zettabytes ("Just one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62 billion stacked iPhones 5's-- that stretches past the moon."), which would probably contain target addresses, phone numbers, emails, keywords, phrases in emails, blogposts, and almost anything. Why do they need this?
Now, having given all this information, what would be the libertarian's response to this? Mike Rozeff at LewRockwell.com has three arguments against this spying in his great article today: "First, under libertarian law reasoning, making you reveal your records when you have committed no crime is an aggression and illegitimate. Second, if such aggression is permitted, it results in two serious costs, which are associated with revealing speech that people want kept private and suppressing speech that people want made widely known. Third, such aggression is part and parcel of a totalitarian mindset that, by extension, attempts to control speech as a preventive measure and find people guilty of thought crimes that have aggressed against nobody." Rozeff argues that "our thoughts are not aggressions" and that "if force is allowable to be used on people's thoughts, two kinds of results will rise in frequency." Those results would be that people would be forced to reveal thoughts that they don't want to and should not reveal because that could be potentially damaging to themselves and to other people, as well as keeping people from revealing thoughts that should be revealed for the welfare of society because the State may take it as ill will.
Murray Rothbard, in his great article "Free or Compulsory Speech" argued that "the right to speak implies the right not to speak, the right to remain silent." That means that Verizon and AT&T should not be compelled to release phone records, even in the name of "security."
Where does the Fourth Amendment come into this? The president is trying to argue that the spying is valid because there will not be an actual listening of the conservations and the reading of emails. However, as Mike Rozeff argues in another blog post of his, "his honeyed assurances did not say that the U.S. government, Supreme Court included, has gutted the Fourth Amendment. He didn't say that this spying is the latest in a pattern that goes back years, and that this pattern shows a one-sided increase in government's capacity to monitor every American's communications, financial transactions and movements, and that all of this is about as strong a totalitarian marker as one could ask for. He didn't say that he has tightened the screws on leaks and whistleblowers so as to heighten government secrecy, another totalitarian marker."
Now, having brought the libertarian solution to the problem, what is the Christian solution to the problem?
First, we should watch our tongue, as it could be as a spark setting off a fire (James 3:5). We should be careful in some of the things we say, as the State could take it as offensive. Telling the truth about something is not wrong, but we should do it in a biblical way so that, even if the State does try to punish us for it, we will not have been reckless.
Second, we should pray and watch for the signs of the times. The end is near. Christ is coming for His church to take her up before the "hour of testing" (Revelation 3:10). We should read our Scripture, get in touch with Christ, have continual fellowship with one another regardless of political philosophy, learn about Bible prophecy and the end times, and other things that are related to Scripture.
Third, get informed. Some ways that you can get informed is through alternative news sites such as WND.com, InfoWars.com, PrisonPlanet.com, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com and others. While not everyone will agree with everything in these websites, they serve valuable insight into today's world. Learn about the economics and philosophy of liberty at such organizations as the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Future of Freedom Foundation, the Foundation for Economic Education, and others, as well as websites such as LibertarianChristians.com, the Reformed Libertarian, Food for the Thinkers, The Fountain of Truth, and many others that I can recommend (for more information, see my previous post, Libertarian and Christian Resources).
And finally, preach the Gospel to others. Pray for your country that it may come back to the Lord and return to its Judeo-Christian and libertarian/classical-liberal roots. Pray for our leaders, that they may see the error of their ways and come back to the Lord.
Note: I forgot to mention another great article out there on this subject. It is entitled "Police-State 'Progressivism'" by Justin Raimondo. It is at AntiWar.com and I recommend that you read it and be enlightened by it. It contains much valuable information about the police state, growing fascism, the hypocrisy of "progressives" as they still worship Obama despite his continuation of the Bush doctrine that has its roots in FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
6/10/13: There are those who work against this scandal, such as the ex-CIA agent Edward Snowden. Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian has an excellent report on the American hero, Lew Rockwell has commended him, and Justin Raimondo wrote a great article at AntiWar.com on him. We must keep him in our prayers and hope he is successful in exposing this scandal. The Daily Mail reports that intelligence officials are joking about "disappearing" Snowden (read: murdering or kidnapping him).
6/13/13: It turns out that indeed all phone calls are being recorded. These revelations are only the tip of the iceberg.
My thoughts on this is that these are the consequences of domestic spying powers. I am disappointed that Verizon and AT&T would approve of this. The worst part is that this is happening daily. We are forced to reveal these phone records to the government, even when we don't want to.
As Mike Snyder at the Economic Collapse Blog warns: "Unfortunately, our leaders have totally abandoned the Constitution. They seem to believe that they have the right to look through our electronic communications any time they want and that we should not complain about it. As you will see below, workers at the NSA have even eavesdropped on very intimate conversations between soldiers serving in Iraq and their female loved ones back home. What kind of sick person would do such a thing?"
The Washington Post also has a report about U.S. and British intelligence forming PRISM to target nine Internet companies. Here they are: "The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Dropbox , the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as 'coming soon.'"
According to Fox News, the center could have 5 billion zettabytes ("Just one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62 billion stacked iPhones 5's-- that stretches past the moon."), which would probably contain target addresses, phone numbers, emails, keywords, phrases in emails, blogposts, and almost anything. Why do they need this?
Now, having given all this information, what would be the libertarian's response to this? Mike Rozeff at LewRockwell.com has three arguments against this spying in his great article today: "First, under libertarian law reasoning, making you reveal your records when you have committed no crime is an aggression and illegitimate. Second, if such aggression is permitted, it results in two serious costs, which are associated with revealing speech that people want kept private and suppressing speech that people want made widely known. Third, such aggression is part and parcel of a totalitarian mindset that, by extension, attempts to control speech as a preventive measure and find people guilty of thought crimes that have aggressed against nobody." Rozeff argues that "our thoughts are not aggressions" and that "if force is allowable to be used on people's thoughts, two kinds of results will rise in frequency." Those results would be that people would be forced to reveal thoughts that they don't want to and should not reveal because that could be potentially damaging to themselves and to other people, as well as keeping people from revealing thoughts that should be revealed for the welfare of society because the State may take it as ill will.
Murray Rothbard, in his great article "Free or Compulsory Speech" argued that "the right to speak implies the right not to speak, the right to remain silent." That means that Verizon and AT&T should not be compelled to release phone records, even in the name of "security."
Where does the Fourth Amendment come into this? The president is trying to argue that the spying is valid because there will not be an actual listening of the conservations and the reading of emails. However, as Mike Rozeff argues in another blog post of his, "his honeyed assurances did not say that the U.S. government, Supreme Court included, has gutted the Fourth Amendment. He didn't say that this spying is the latest in a pattern that goes back years, and that this pattern shows a one-sided increase in government's capacity to monitor every American's communications, financial transactions and movements, and that all of this is about as strong a totalitarian marker as one could ask for. He didn't say that he has tightened the screws on leaks and whistleblowers so as to heighten government secrecy, another totalitarian marker."
Now, having brought the libertarian solution to the problem, what is the Christian solution to the problem?
First, we should watch our tongue, as it could be as a spark setting off a fire (James 3:5). We should be careful in some of the things we say, as the State could take it as offensive. Telling the truth about something is not wrong, but we should do it in a biblical way so that, even if the State does try to punish us for it, we will not have been reckless.
Second, we should pray and watch for the signs of the times. The end is near. Christ is coming for His church to take her up before the "hour of testing" (Revelation 3:10). We should read our Scripture, get in touch with Christ, have continual fellowship with one another regardless of political philosophy, learn about Bible prophecy and the end times, and other things that are related to Scripture.
Third, get informed. Some ways that you can get informed is through alternative news sites such as WND.com, InfoWars.com, PrisonPlanet.com, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com and others. While not everyone will agree with everything in these websites, they serve valuable insight into today's world. Learn about the economics and philosophy of liberty at such organizations as the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Future of Freedom Foundation, the Foundation for Economic Education, and others, as well as websites such as LibertarianChristians.com, the Reformed Libertarian, Food for the Thinkers, The Fountain of Truth, and many others that I can recommend (for more information, see my previous post, Libertarian and Christian Resources).
And finally, preach the Gospel to others. Pray for your country that it may come back to the Lord and return to its Judeo-Christian and libertarian/classical-liberal roots. Pray for our leaders, that they may see the error of their ways and come back to the Lord.
Note: I forgot to mention another great article out there on this subject. It is entitled "Police-State 'Progressivism'" by Justin Raimondo. It is at AntiWar.com and I recommend that you read it and be enlightened by it. It contains much valuable information about the police state, growing fascism, the hypocrisy of "progressives" as they still worship Obama despite his continuation of the Bush doctrine that has its roots in FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
6/10/13: There are those who work against this scandal, such as the ex-CIA agent Edward Snowden. Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian has an excellent report on the American hero, Lew Rockwell has commended him, and Justin Raimondo wrote a great article at AntiWar.com on him. We must keep him in our prayers and hope he is successful in exposing this scandal. The Daily Mail reports that intelligence officials are joking about "disappearing" Snowden (read: murdering or kidnapping him).
6/13/13: It turns out that indeed all phone calls are being recorded. These revelations are only the tip of the iceberg.
