by John Brown
Total Information Awareness (TIA), a program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was launched in 2002. It attempted to combine financial transactions, medical histories, travel and telephone records, reading materials, emails, and Web browsing into a comprehensive database. The idea was to discover hidden terrorist patterns and then look for similar patterns in the general population. Officially cancelled after media leaks, TIA went underground, changing its name to ADVISE (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement), a program of the Department of Homeland Security’s Threat and Vulnerability Testing and Assessment section. It was reported to be developing a massive data mining system to calculate a threat analysis score for everyone in the United States. This program, too, was officially cancelled. The National Security Agency’s mass surveillance data mining program, PRISM, reportedly operating since 2007, has a purpose similar to TIA.
Stellar Wind, the codename for another surveillance program of the National Security Agency, will operate in conjunction with the Utah Data Center (formally known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center). Originally scheduled to be operational in late 2013, construction has been plagued by electrical surges causing equipment “meltdowns,” postponing completion by a year. The largest in a network of “data farms,” the Utah Data Center will reportedly intercept, store, and analyze all communications, including the complete contents of emails, telephone calls, Web searches, text messages, and blog entries, and gather data on parking receipts, travel itineraries, financial records, and book purchases. Other data farm sites include Colorado, Georgia, and a large facility under construction at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.
The Terrorism Information and Prevention System (Operation TIPS) of 2002 was an administration proposal to encourage neighbors, utility technicians, and home meter readers to become informants and report anything “suspicious.” TIPS was subsequently cancelled after the media published articles raising concerns of civil liberties violations.
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 consolidated certain intelligence units and police functions in a new, cabinet-level department.
The REAL ID Act of 2005 established a de facto national identification card — in effect, an internal passport. REAL ID would incorporate various biomarkers in the card’s microchip, and contain proposed radio-frequency identification (RFID), not unlike current U.S. passports. The implementation deadline has been regularly extended due to concerns about its cost.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 contained the power to kidnap and “disappear” people, declaring them “unlawful enemy combatants” without formal charge or public trial. It eliminated the ancient right of habeas corpus; the right to challenge one’s imprisonment before an impartial judge. The habeas corpus provision was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008, but the rest remains.
National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20/51 of 2007 allows the president to take control of all State functions, including the Congress and the federal courts, and to direct the private sector in a “catastrophic emergency,” self-defined by the president.
The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2012 and 2013 established the president’s authority to designate, capture, and imprison suspects in military prisons indefinitely without charge or trial, including U.S. citizens on U.S. territory, and to ship them to any “foreign country or entity,” a power already claimed to be inherent in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists Congressional joint resolution. The AUMF, being open-ended and not a formal declaration of war, is itself problematic.
Today, the political left and right are melding together so that both can achieve their ends. The Left generally promotes State intervention domestically, while the Right generally favors State intervention abroad — but intervention is intervention. In a grand compromise produced by blurring the distinction between domestic and foreign, we get domestic intervention and foreign intervention — the worst of both worlds; an ever-growing, increasingly dangerous welfare-warfare State.
The War on Terror is being fought domestically through destruction of “essential liberty” at home and by open and covert war abroad. The technology and weaponry in State of Terror is already in use or has been demonstrated on the battlefield. The enabling laws are already in place. The building blocks of a future police State are gradually being constructed. By themselves, these building blocks may not constitute the existence of such a State any more than a pile of bricks constitute a house, but they provide the means to create and administer it, which is temptation enough. As James Madison said in a speech to the Virginia Convention in 1788: “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
Whether the society portrayed herein becomes reality will ultimately be determined by the voters, the courts, and other sectors of society.
John Brown
October 2013
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Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
1. The Bigger Issues
2. Identification, Please
3. Just Say No
4. Multi-Stakeholder Solutions
5. Time for a Change
6. Let's Make the Right Choice
7. Hail to the Chief
8. You Will Please Come with Us
9. Providing the Appropriate Tools
10. Show Him His Room
11. Tear Down Those Walls
12. You're with Us or You're with the Terrorists
13. Welcome to Camp 6
14. Any Last Requests?
15. Team VIPR
16. No Deal
17. Phantoms of Lost Liberty
18. Dear Blank
19. Welcome to National Airport
20. Preemptive War
21. I'll Prove You're Wrong
22. Building a Shared Vision
23. Dad Would Be So Proud of Me
24. Unsuitable for Release
25. Home, Sweet Home
26. This Is Why We Fight
27. George Has a Job for You
28. Get Me the Hell Outta This
29. Rock 'n' Roll Time
30. You'll Be All Right, Kid
31. Live Free or Die
32. A Significant Step Forward
33. We Cannot Afford to Wait
Afterword
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