Homeland
Security
HOMELAND (IN)SECURITY?
By
Chaparral Fireland
"But
after all, the leaders of the country determine the policy and it is always a
simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist
dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice,
the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and then denounce the
peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
-World
War II Nazi leader Hermann Goering.
It's USA PATRIOT all over again. The
Homeland Security Act of 2002, H.R. 1005, passed in the Senate on November 19.
The same folks who brought you that cliff-hanging, nail-biting gut-gripping
anti-terrorism rhetoric last year are back with 484 pages of legislation which
all-but demolishes your rights to probable cause, due process and privacy, or
to any opinions that aren't cloned by the Bush regime. And with practically no
resistance from the Democrat-dominated lame duck Congress, KGB (that's King
George Bush) got everything he wanted, a lot of which is pure pork having
little if anything to do with "intercepting [or] obstructing
terrorism."
According to William Safire
("You Are a Suspect," New York Times November 14) "Every
purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and
medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and email you send or
receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every
trip you book and every event you attend . . . will go into what the Defense
Department describes as a 'virtual, centralized grand database'."
Add to that your " . . .
passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce
records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the FBI, your lifetime paper trail
plus the latest hidden camera surveillance," says Safire, "and you
have the supersnoop's dream: a 'Total Information Awareness (TIA) about every
U.S. citizen.
Edward Aldridge, undersecretary of
Acquisitions and Technology says the database under development would seek
"patterns indicative of terrorist activity." Red flags would include
sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way air or rail travel, rental car transactions,
chemicals or agents that could be used to produce biological or chemical
weapons. It's just as likely that a book or a video you check out could arouse
the artificial curiosity of this virtual intelligence. (Or set you up for
blackmail if your taste happens to run to porn? Whom of us knows the limits of
this broad endeavor?)
Convicted Iran-Contra felon, John
Poindexter, has returned from his ignominy to head up these activities. But
wait, first tuck in your bib because you're bound to spill some alphabet soup
while swimming through any summary of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency), the technology-generating branch of the IAO (Information Awareness
Office).
"
Writing in Capital Hill Blue on
November 20, Doug Thompson quotes retired FBI agent Franklin Postel. "We
are entering a new era of domestic surveillance. One where the constitution is
secondary to the cause. The new department has the power to document the
day-to-day actions of any American it chooses."
(That
dripping sound you hear is U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft drooling.)
Thompson notes that urban Americans
are already recorded on video cameras whenever they enter banks or building
lobbies, convenience or department stores, and whenever transacting at ATMs
" . . . 75 - 100 times on any given day but that isn't enough for the
American Gestapo. They plan to erect video cameras on streets, along public
highways, in neighborhoods and deploy them on helicopters and police cars to
record everything you and I do every day of the year."
According to a release from the
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights a special three-judge review panel recently
overturned the May 17, 2002 " . . . unprecedented public opinion by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court which found that the FBI had misled the
Court in 75 cases . . . " when it sought warrants to carry out Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance. The panel ruled that the Department of Justice "
. . . has broad discretion in the use of wiretaps and the surveillance of
suspected terrorists and foreign agents." This, surely, greased the wheels
for the IAO.
The IAO Mission is the development
and application of information technologies and systems in order to " . .
. counter asymmetric threats . . . " The IAO Vision defines terrorism as
"The most serious asymmetric threat facing the United States . . ." I
will hazard a guess that by "asymmetric" these people mean to
identify any behaviors or behavior clusters which deviate from what would be
predictable along a normal symmetric bell curve - ie, well within the bounds of
a standard deviation on either side of the curve (and more likely, no more than
10 to 20% to the right or left of dead center). But being neither a
statistician nor an engineer I can only speculate.
What seems less speculative is the
government's intent to measure the presence of a domestic terrorist threat by
some mysterious aggregate of indicators of nonconformity or individual
uniqueness, and its absence by conformity. Thus we will indeed be fearful, many
of us, to express our creativity and originality, for fear of harsh accusations
and reprisals including loss of liberty or even life, and hesitant to tell the
truth as we distill it through our own discernment. And, thus, we shall surely
descend into a culture of mediocrity, playing it safe with opinions and
philosophies which are derivative and uninspiring.
One piece of good news: while it
went right down to the wire the final version of the Homeland Security Act
prohibits the government from implementing TIPS (Terrorist Information and
Prevention System). This would have created yet another department falling
under the umbrella of the IAO, involving information garnered by citizens spying
on one another. Bush introduced this disgusting concept in March, according to
Dan Eggen writing in the November 24 Washington Post, "as part of a
package of 'Citizen Corps' initiatives .
. . involving 'millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their
work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious
activity in public places'." Besides the alarm expressed by the ACLU and
other public interest groups that TIPS would lead to the enlistment of utility
workers, delivery drivers (and, as originally conceived, postal workers), there
would have always been the bizarre and sinister likelihood of people with
grudges fabricating "information" against others.
"An evil exists that threatens
every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure
our domestic security and protect our homeland."
-Adolph
Hitler. (Quote provided by Doug Thompson in "Welcome to the American
Gestapo" published in Capital Hill Blue on November 20.)
One piece of really nasty news
associated with the development of the IAO is the trashing of the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA).
"The Bush Administration has
acknowledged that existing FOIA exemptions already provide protection against
disclosures of information that pose genuine security threats," says
Public Citizen in its Congress Watch newsletter of November 21. Nonetheless,
any threat "such as chemical spills or maintenance problems" which
are disclosed voluntarily by a company to Homeland Security are now immune from
public disclosure because the government is prohibited from releasing that
information. Common Citizen goes on to report that under the Homeland Security
Act manufacturers of anti-terrorism technology are relieved of liability from
lawsuits for a wide variety of damages including those punishable for reckless
conduct. What an incentive for polluting businesses to come forward and inform
this discrete covert agency about a threat to the public health about which it
need never worry that the public will be informed! Kevin Goldberg, legal
advisor for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, expressed concern in an
AP November 16 article " . . . for example a nuclear plant and the agency
could withhold information about a security danger. 'If there's a problem so pervasive
and so dangerous that a private company needs to discuss it with the
government, it's probably important enough for the public to know', he
said."
The bill is " . . . a treasure
trove of favors for special interests . . . numerous corporate giveaways
unrelated to national security . . . " according to Public Citizen.
A Madison Capital Times editorial
entitled "Homeland Hypocrisy" cites an obnoxious section of the bill
" . . . that relaxed a ban on the awarding of Homeland Security contracts
to corporations that seek to avoid paying U.S. taxes by setting up off-shore
tax havens." Other articles noted that all a company would need to do is
set up a mail drop in the
The new cabinet-level $35.5 billion
budget Homeland Security Agency will bring together 170,000 federal workers
from 22 agencies in what is expected to be the largest government
reorganization in half a century. This includes members from The Department of
State, The Central Intelligence Agency, The Federal Bureau of Investigation,
The National Security Agency, The National Imagery and Mapping Agency, The
Department of Transportation, The Defense Intelligence Agency, Health and Human
Services and, per the language in the bill, "Any other agency of the
Federal Government that the President considers appropriate."
This huge plan involves the removal
of " . . . 850,000 federal workers from civil service protection and
farm[ing] their jobs out to private contractors," according to Harley
Sorensen writing in the November 18
Could this massing sacking have any
connection with Congress's recessing before extending Unemployment benefits?
Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle and House Democratic Whip Nancy Pelosi both
condemned the negligence. Republican House leaders refused to " . . .
address the issue due to the exorbitant costs associated with it," said
Greg Crist, spokesman for House Majority Leader, Dick Armey.
"This is a sad day for a lot of
workers," said Daschle. "Because of Republican inaction nearly one
million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits three days after
Christmas."
Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of
"For all the fun poked at the
senator's pompous Roman oratory," says Fred Kaplan at slate.com, "the
odds stand in his favor. The history of mega-departments is not an encouraging
one. The most obvious arguments for pessimism are the Department of Energy
(which has done little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil) and the
Department of Education (which has done even less to enlighten our children).
"Take a large federal
bureaucracy that has developed its own culture and rituals over many
decades," Kaplan continues, "tear it apart, stuff its denizens into a
much larger bureaucracy, force them to compete for scraps of the same budgetary
pie as the refugees from 21 other cultures - [Kaplan estimates that within a
few years the budget will triple] and, unless this hodgepodge is managed very
shrewdly, the most mild-mannered civil servant can be transformed into a savage
brawler in no time."
Drug
Companies Protected
Among the provisions opposed by
Democrats was one to protect drug companies from lawsuits over the side effects
of vaccines they create. According to Public Citizen's Congress Watch the bill
" . . . Broadens the definition of 'vaccine' for the purposes of the
no-fault Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to include preservatives . . .
"
The Republicans insisted that
liability protection is necessary to ensure that drug companies produce the
vaccines needed in the fight against terrorism prevailed. The language, as
shown below, does not spell out any specifics:
"SEC.
304. CONDUCT OF CERTAIN PUBLIC HEALTH-RELATED ACTIVITIES.
"(a) IN GENERAL- With respect
to civilian human health-related research and development activities relating
to countermeasures for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear and
other emerging terrorist threats carried out by the Department of Health and
Human Services (including the Public Health Service), the Secretary of Health
and Human Services shall set priorities, goals, objectives, and policies and
develop a coordinated strategy for such activities in collaboration with the
Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure consistency with the national policy
and strategic plan developed pursuant to section 302(2)."
But the open ended vagueness of the
language has many political critics and writers concerned. Barbara Loe Fischer,
co-founder and president on the National Vaccine Information Center (NIVC) says
that Sec. 304 " . . . hands over unprecedented power to federal employees
and does not preclude allowing them to use the military to strip citizens of
informed consent rights and force them to risk their lives with highly reactive
vaccines, such as the smallpox vaccine, that will injure or kill thousands of
Americans if used on a mass basis."
In a November 15 article from
PRNewswire said the NIVC " . . . maintains that section 304 of the bill is
fulfillment of a federal plan in development for several years to allow public
health officials to force vaccination and medical treatment on Americans
without their informed consent while removing all accountability from drug
companies and those who participate in enforcement of the policy when harm is
done."
Mitchel Cohen, Editor of Green
Politix and founder of the No Spray Coalition cites the Emergency Health Powers
Act "which has been introduced into state legislatures across the country
and which calls for the establishment of quarantine facilities for those who
fall victim to smallpox and other weaponized diseases, as well as for those who
refuse to take the vaccinations prescribed for them. The Plan," says
Cohen, is "to round up vaccine-resisters and put them in the same facility
as people who have contracted smallpox."
While it may be difficult to
validate these allegations from the vague language of section 304, it is far
more clear that the bill's language sharply limits Eli Lilly and other
pharmaceutical companies' "liability from lawsuits brought against them
from people suffering negative reactions to vaccinations . . . [which] have in
the past proven to be among the most dangerous . . . ha[ve] caused relatively
high incidences of serious illness and death," says Cohen.
According to Dan Morgan in November
15 Washington Post Eli Lilly " . . . is a major target in a spate of
lawsuits filed since 2002." The mercury-containing preservative
Thimerosal, made by Lilly and used in vaccines, has been alleged by many
families as having a connection to their children's autism. While the
manufacture of the additive was discontinued by Lilly in 1980, according to
Moran, the company " . . . continued to buy it from other manufacturers
and resell it for another decade."
Moran quotes Dallas attorney Andrew
Water in whose opinion section 304 " . . . looks like payback for the fact
that the [pharmaceutical] industry spends millions bankrolling Republican
campaigns." An opinion Public Citizen and other groups share.
Whistleblowers
at Risk
Employees of the new Department of
Homeland Security will have no recourse to immunity should they feel compelled
to report any egregious errors they witness within the agency. Whistleblower
protection (under the Whistleblower Protection Act) has been exempted for them
due to the insistence of the administration which alleges that any outing of
" . . . Department of Home Security incompetence or mismanagement might at
the same time reveal sensitive security information," said the Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights."
Bush expressed optimistic that the
terrorism insurance bill (capping the liability of insurance providers and
passing the costs to the taxpayers in the case of future terrorist attacks)
would reduce insurance premiums and " . . . get many real estate and
construction projects that had been put on hold moving again, creating
thousands of hard-hat jobs." (AP writer Lawrence L. Knutson)
New
Email Surveillance
The 16 page Republican sponsored
Cyber Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) was inserted in the HS bill in section
225. "Until we secure our cyberinfrastructure," said Rep Lamar Smith,
"a few keystrokes and an Internet connection is all one needs to disable
the economy and endanger lives." The bill broadens computer surveillance
and provides up to life terms in prison for any computer hacker who, knowingly
or not, recklessly puts others' lives at risk. But you'd better not uninstall
your anti-virus or fire wall software just yet. With Microsoft backing this
bill, you can be sure Bill Gates has figured out another way to get profit from
it.
Environment
in Danger
With the same seamless logic
Congress employed in response to the killings at Columbine High School by
loosening the restrictions on gun sales and encouraging the posting of the Ten
Commandments in schools, Congress has gutted the Environmental Protection Act
as one of its many sleights of hand in passage of the Homeland Security Act of
2002, claiming that with fewer pollution and accountability restrictions
manufacturers will be more motivated to pollute less.
Right. And besides, everyone knows
that tree huggers are terrorists.
That sucking sound is the economy,
your rights and privacy going down that Enron hole. It's only the tip of the iceberg folks!