Neolib Hack Samuelson Defends NSA Invasion Of Privacy

"In every interview Snowden has relied on the simple notion that informed the founders of our nation regarding the primacy of truth in public discourse.   His commitment to that ideal cannot be comprehended by a mass media culture of careerism informed by public relations that trivializes all differences of truth and logic into incomprehensible mulch. His is instead the simple veracity of the once honored slogan that the truth shall set us free and that it is overwhelming government power that is most threatening to that freedom." - Robert Scheer, on  smirkingchimp.com

I figured that eventually the WaPo Neoliberal hack Robert Samuelson would chirp up in a column to praise the NSA, and diss Edward Snowden - while again seeking to confuse his readers in conflating truths and jabberwocky.   Before even getting to his nonsense, it really ought not be a stretch to grasp that arch-Neoliberals would be wholesale salivating for the national security state, just as they drool for the military.

As Thomas Frank observes in his remarkable expose of the market worshippers, One Market Under God, the Neoliberal basic imperative is "let them eat stocks" (or mutual funds). This despite the fact that since the investment trusts of the 1920s (precursor to today's mutual funds) the traders and brokers have regarded the ordinary public as a "dumb herd" (p. 109) and sheep to be shorn. After the 1960s the message softened  - in order to lure more proles into the market - but the subtext has been the same: popularize the "Street", make people believe they're big shots too, and wait for the crash to suck up their assets.

The main message of the Neoliberal imperative: People must not depend on the government for their security, including for Social Security, veterans' benefits, Medicare or Medicaid.  If they are to sustain themselves they must be cajoled to do it by investment in the market where all factors are "democratized"  - and no one suffers, i.e. by having to pay more taxes so some old fart can get his prostate cancer treatments, or pay his monthly heating bills.

And to ensure this imperative is met, the Neoliberal pushes the political matrix to allocate ever more resources to military and national security interests, thereby leaving little for domestic social insurance programs. This, in fact, is what we beheld last month, when in a "bipartisan" deal, the Dems allowed the Reepos an extra $23b to use for military spending, while their side sucked up the loss in compensating domestic cuts - mainly by disallowing the extension of unemployment insurance.

For the same reason, a hack like Samuelson would plump for the NSA and the overall national security budget (now at $71b /year) increasing - again to put more pressure on domestic spending programs, including food stamps, Medicare etc. Samuelson actually has the nerve to spout this disingenuous tripe:


"There is more than a little hypocrisy to the outcry that the government, through the National Security Agency (NSA), is systematically destroying Americans’ right to privacy. Edward Snowden’s revelations have been stripped of their social, technological and historical context. Unless you’ve camped in the Alaskan wilderness for two decades, you know — or should — that millions upon millions of Americans have consciously and, probably in most cases, eagerly surrendered much of their privacy by embracing the Internet and social media."


Let's back up so that casual readers aren't lured into buying this bollocks. As I noted before, people willingly putting out their information in the expectation of social communication or comity- say on a blog, Facebook page, or Twitter, is NOT the same as having their social intent perverted by some impersonal spook technology to vacuum up every word for filing and cross-referencing.  In the latter case,  collecting every fucking thing surreptitiously then compiling it into a database for which criminal intent or terrorism might later be associated (including domestic terrorism for protesting against a fracking operation, or demonstrating against Wall Street shysters.)  Recall that investigative reporter Christopher Ketcham learned that  NSA's Main Core:

"Can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.”


Thus it  ought to be a no brainer that Samuelson's efforts to assuage doubts are not to be trusted. Apart from which, the casual blog poster, or FB poster doesn't expect his words to be collected by these disreputable sneaks and assembled in a program called "Main Core" - because those words were interpreted by some snotty eggheads as being indicative of "an enemy of the state".

None of that downside is noted by Samuelson, but we know this sort of 'dodge and hide' template is his forte.   Indeed, after his initial codswallop Samuelson seeks to further justify it by writing:

"The Internet is a vehicle for self-promotion, personal advertising and the pursuit of celebrity"

Again, even if it is, it doesn't mean people ALSO welcome having all their ruminations, images, beliefs, philosophies compiled by spooks into some nefarious hidden database that regards these as evidence for being an "enemy of the state".  No, people expect that IF that is done - and indeed it is using the NSA's MUSCULAR, PRISM and Xkeyscore programs - they want the fourth amendment followed and that means an individualized warrant brought before a proper FISA court - not the rubber stampers we have now.

Oh, and then we have Samuelson's brilliant  "solution":

"If Americans think their privacy is dangerously diminished, there are remedies. They can turn off their PCs, toss their smartphones and smash their tablets"


Yes, seriously, these are the very words of this character. If you are humbugged by the notion of the spooks vacuuming up all your words, beliefs, pictures and filing them into a Main Core program for "enemy of the state" profiling - you can always disconnect! Toss that Ipad or notebook down the chute and let not your hearts be troubled!

Oh, and then there's the "commercial scare" routine again:


"To these conscious sacrifices of privacy must be added murkier, collateral losses that are orchestrated by the world’s Googles, Facebooks, service providers and “data brokers,” writes Alice Marwick of Fordham University in the New York Review of Books. They scan users’ digital decisions (sites visited, products and services purchased, habits and hobbies favored) to create databases, often merged with other socio-economic information"


But again, Google, Facebook, ISPs etc don't have the power to take away your freedom, like the government does (say by invocation of its 'Continuity of Government' program - with all the data they've gathered on you being an "enemy of the state")

And then the hack strikes again:


"The NSA’s damage to privacy is dwarfed by the impact of market activity...... Suddenly, Big Brother looms. In our mind’s eye, we see the NSA’s computers scouring our every phone call. We’re exposed to constant snooping and the possibility that the government will misuse the information it finds.

The reality is far more limited. The NSA is governed by legal restrictions. It does not examine the full database. It searches individual numbers only after it has determined there’s a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” that a number might be linked to terrorist groups"  


Puh-leeze! All of this amounts to disinformation. The same sort of twisted nonsense Samuelson delivered earlier regarding "deficits" being created by JFK, during his administration, which I have already skewered. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/thats-right-now-blame-60s-jfk-for.html

The reality is that Samuelson's cited "legal restrictions"  governing the NSA are little better than the merest figleaf. Those (original) restrictions ceased to exist when the FISA law was changed after the Bushistas' illegal wiretapping over 2005-08. Instead of prosecuting the Bushistas, a compliant congress and the courts excused the transgressions and actually made them lawful!  Hence, whatever protections people think they have disappeared when the illegal variant of the FISA law was extended back in 2011.

We also know that it isn't necessary for NSA programs "to search the whole database" and that the Main Core will assemble suspicious words whether a human person searches or not.  This is also why the Occupy Wall Street protestors literally came under the gun.  Finally, even one of the original authors of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, insisted he never intended it to go as far as it has, and as Snowden revealed.  As he was quoted in a UK Guardian piece two months ago"


 "Oversight only works when the agency that oversight is directed at tells the truth, and having Mr Clapper say he gave the least untruthful answer should, in my opinion, have resulted in a firing and a prosecution,"

Sensenbrenner was referring to NSA honcho James Clapper lying before a Senate hearing  months earlier, when asked if the NSA did mass surveillance. So if Clapper was lying, it is obvious that Samuelson must be too by his specious defense of the NSA - and that those poor little souls aren't doing anything beyond the limits of Sec. 215 at all.  Oh no, so just rest your little heads! All is well!

Is Samuelson calling Sensenbrenner a liar?  If the original author of the Patriot Act believes the NSA overstepped the bounds of the law who the fuck is Samuelson to claim anything different?

Oh wait, he's a Neoliberal hack!

Next time you see anything from Robert Samuelson and wonder if it has some veracity, consider the source. Would you drink water from a sewer ditch? Of course not, so why take anything from Samuelson as useful information you can trust?

See also (from someone you can trust):

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-scheer/53531/exposing-public-wickedness-is-more-american-than-apple-pie

Americans Have No Innate Right to Privacy? WRONG!

The 40-odd year march in this nation’s decline has been marked not only by cynical transformations (e.g. citizens to consumers) but also the acceptance of political canards made possible by a degeneration of historical memory. Because the ‘life cycle’ of most Americans’ political-historical memory barely stretches 5 years, it is possible to hoodwink too many in the populace and especially getting them to accept as facts shibboleths that are anything but. A case in point is the conviction that there are only “negative” rights inherent in the Bill of Rights, and there can be no “positive” ones.


A negative right implies that there are ‘x’ things the government can’t do to you, say take away your guns or deny you property ownership, disposal. By contrast, positive rights assert there are actual positive rights to which you are entitled under the Bill of Rights, say health care and privacy. Most of those on the Right, who have only passing acquaintance with the Federalist papers, assert positive rights like to privacy don’t exist, but they are wrong.  This is important because one reason there hasn’t been more outrage at the disclosure of massive NSA surveillance is most Americans take for granted there is no innate right to privacy. I will argue, however, that not only does a right to privacy exist, but it underpins most other rights that inhere in the amendments to the Bill of Rights

For example, if the presumption to no right to privacy is valid, then the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights is meaningless. To restate that Amendment:


“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”


But note, “secure in one’s person, house, papers, effects” implies PRIVACY! These are after all MY private papers, my private effects, my house, etc. If an inherent right to privacy was a myth then by all accounts being secure in one’s person, papers, effects wouldn’t matter. Hell, let the whole freakin’ world see ‘em! This is why in a fascist dictatorship “personal effects” don’t exist. “Personal papers” has no meaning. The state has full monopoly, de facto ownership on whatever the person has, even his own body. Hence, in fascist dictatorships, such as existed in Nazi Germany, all personal effects, papers could be seized by the Nazis on a whim or remote suspicion - under the Reich Laws. A fundamental right to privacy, meanwhile, insists there exist bona fide entities that one can uniquely own, e.g. papers, effects – including photos or what not- that are private. Without this fundamental right, then, “personal papers, effects” has no meaning hence the 4th amendment is meaningless.


Prof. Garry Wills (‘A Necessary Evil: A History Of American Distrust of Government’, Simon & Schuster, 1999) further reinforces this point in his chapter ‘Constitutional Myths’(p. 108). He notes that citizens alone possess rights, which neither the states nor the federal government share. Both the latter retain powers and prerogatives, but not rights. Hence, the subtext is that rights can only accrue to human individuals.

The Ninth Amendment states that “the people retain unenumerated rights” "The people:" here refers to flesh and blood citizens, not to a bunch of contractual abstractions (states), or to corporations. .As Wills emphasizes and underscores (ibid.):


“The states have no natural rights. Their powers are artificial, not natural – they are things made by contract.”


Hence, the term "state's rights" is bogus, in error. States have prerogatives, not rights, because states exist as governmental entities not a persons-individuals.  It follows that the people then also have the unenumerated right to privacy. While said right isn’t specifically listed in the Constitution the Founders understood that as time went on new rights would emerge which they might not be able to think of (e.g. to health care). In terms of privacy, however, it is clear the language of the 4th amendment shows that privacy is presumed hence the Founders saw no need to elaborate it as a separate right. Hence, use of the descriptor “personal” applied to papers, effects etc. naturally means private! Even if one for some reason disputed the argument, he’d still be left with the fact of the unenumerated rights under the Ninth amendment.

What we conclude then is the NSA, government mass surveillance, mass warrants recently revealed, discloses a rejection not only of citizens’ fundamental right to privacy but any right to be secure in one’s person, papers, effects. So, screw the citizen, the gov’t has arrogated to itself the right to seize anything deemed personal or private once it’s within its purview – whether a phone record, an internet communication, email or whatever. The powers -that- be may really argue they’re doing this for our own good, but in reality they are acting the part of a fascist dictatorship in denying any right of privacy or recognition of individuality at all.  Note the reasons or their declared motivations for doing so are irrelevant.


Americans, if they have sense, should not fall into this trap and just shrug it off as no biggie. Instead they ought to be at least as outraged as I am and be writing to their reps, demanding the gov’t back off. Alas, it may be too late for that. Remember again, as Rachel Maddow observed in her May 3, 2011 show- Osama bin Laden’s aim was never to destroy the U.S. or kill thousands but to get it to spend itself into bankruptcy through over reactive wars and to eviscerate civil liberties for its citizens. To the extent those objectives have been accomplished, yes, OBL has won though he rests at the bottom of the sea. Had there been recognition of a right to privacy, we’d at least not have lost so many civil liberties- so might have been able to declare a partial victory.