For the first few years after 9/11, Bush team was triumphant in banning and curbing civil rights while expanding government regulation and surveillance by playing the terror card. Searches at airports, trains and buses became more common place in the US as well as rounding up people who “looked Muslim” or had “Muslim sounding names” — and Americans remained silent under the tacit agreement that Bush our father figurehead was simply taking measures to make us all safe from terrorists. But then reality started peaking through the Bush façade showing that his security measures were a sham and a failure. Americans started to slowly question Bush and toss out the duct tape proffered as a security measure. Pushing the terror card aside, what is the next greatest tool of vulnerability in America? Keeping our children safe from despicable, worthless sex and porno scum, which is Bush’s new fear card to ban and curb our civil rights to justify data banks and surveillance measures.
Americans quietly permitted Bush to strip away our civil rights because Bush’s measures to fight terrorism were deemed necessary to keep us safe. It wasn’t even so much that Americans approved of his measures, just that they approved of Bush fighting terrorism due to the fears and vulnerabilities created by 9/11. No one really questioned the measures, or even knew all the measures being used. But, then information started trickling out that Bush’s anti-terror measures were a failure at protecting Americans: Federal Air Marshals revealed they can not protect the public; Homeland Security Chief Ridge admitted security failures to Bush’s dismay; similar to tests that disclosed people were able to slip weapons onto planes, undercover investigators slipped radioactive material for dirty bombs across US borders in Texas and Washington; and while Bush team cited high numbers of people prosecuted for terrorism, the truth is that most defendants are charged with minor crimes not related to terrorism.
Now, we can assume that Bush had good intentions to protect Americans but just choose the wrong measures. Or, we can speculate that perhaps Bush’s specific anti-terror measures actually had dual purposes. That is, hopefully the measures would fight terrorism and thereby protect Americans while also incorporating a few items that would achieve long-term GOP goals to curb or ban civil rights long deemed pesky obstacles to achieving other political goals. The problem is that the original anti-terror motive may have become trumped by the political motives, which then rendered the measure ineffective for protecting against terrorism. For example, surveillance to protect Americans from terrorists can in fact be achieved while also protecting our privacy, but Bush simply choose a surveillance system that invaded our privacy rights and was also less effective in fighting terrorism.
What does all of this have to do with sexual perverts and porno? After 9/11, Americans’ top vulnerability was terrorism and personal fear for their safety. Bush played on this fear by playing the “terror card” in an established pattern: “A political downturn for the administration, followed by a `terror event’ – a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.” Now, Bush keeps playing the terror card, and increasing its usage as we draw near the midterm elections, but the impact is different on Americans, who are less likely to believe what Bush says, even about his past primary asset of the great fighter against terrorism.
Removing the terror card from the equation, or simply reducing its significance, what is the next greatest fear or vulnerability of Americans? Keeping our children safe, and particularly from sexual scum. Is it coincidence that the second most common rationale for Bush regulating our lives or conducting surveillance is protecting our children from sexual scum?
It was announced yesterday that the GOP are proposing a bill (the Deleting Online Predators Act) to require schools and libraries which receive federal funds to ban access to social networking sites — like MySpace, Friendster, Facebook and Xangacom — to protect young Internet users from pedophiles. There is no proof offered yet that these social networking sites will harm our children, but nowadays the method of operation is to cast or portray a website or other entity as “emerging playgrounds for sexual predators,” ban them and worry about proof later, if ever. The problem, like some of Bush’s anti-terror measures, is that this bill “could unintentionally block access to scores of other Web sites.” Question whether such overreach is unintentional given that “officials of the sites also say they are taking aggressive steps to protect their users.”
This is not the first time that sexual predators have been cited as the trigger to open the door to more regulation and banning of rights. The US Justice Dept. demanded customer data from Google and other Internet providers to enable the government to conduct a study on Internet child pornography. The study is designed to show the effectiveness of an online pornography law drafted by the Bush team. Bush team wants the Google data to test the effectiveness of filtering systems designed to protect children from sexually explicit material on the Internet. Question is why can’t Bush team just do its own google searches to obtain data for the study if the sole purpose is to show that google searches for nonpornography questions produce results which include pornography sites.
In addition, Bush team is demanding that Internet providers maintain detailed records of their customers’ online activities for 2 years (instead of the current practice of maintaining data for a few days or weeks) so that the government can expand its ability to track what customers do online. Specifically, Bush wants access to evidence which shows which sites are visited, the linking of online activity to Internet addresses assigned to personal computers and a list of who people communicate with at chat rooms as well as e-mail sent and received. The reason for the government demand is the value of having this evidence available for child-pornography and terrorism investigations. If companies refuse to cooperate, then Bush team has threatened to pass a law to force cooperation.
The problem with all of these anti-terror and anti-porn measures is that they are overly broad and also constitute a major break with precedent. In short, the government is sticking its regulatory head into a previously banned area, just like the proverbial camel who stuck his head into the tent, followed by the rest of its body. While the data would no doubt be useful to the government, the bottom line is that all data would be useful to the government, and it would make the government’s life a lot easier if there were no civil rights or constitutional boundaries on what data may be obtained by the government. Even at this early stage of negotiation with the Internet companies, people are discussing how this treasure trove of information would then be available for civil suits in cases of divorce, swapping of copyrighted movie and music files online and criminal investigations.
“This is not simply limited to kiddie porn or terrorism. It’s a real break with precedent,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Data retention is open-ended. The government is saying, ‘Keep everything about everyone and we’ll sort it out later.’ “
What’s next? In Scotland, the government is considering a satellite tracking system to conduct surveillance and monitoring of sex offenders after release from prison. In the US, a similar personal surveillance system is the use of RFID tags to track children for their own safety from kidnappers and pedophiles, which appeared a benign motivation that was quickly expanded to include tracking “library loans, disciplinary records, cafeteria purchases and visits to the nurse’s office” as well as students` punctuality and attendance. Fortunately, many are now opposing RFID tracking of children as too invasive of privacy and too much preparing or socializing children for a brave new world.
Does Bush need to protect us from terrorism and do we need government assistance to protect our children from sex scum? Absolutely, but the public needs to debate these issues as to what is the appropriate method rather than just quietly accepting the methods devised by the Bush team, particularly when those methods do not accomplish the stated goals accepted by the public for the program in the first place, and when the stated goals can be accomplished without turning America into a surveillance state. If we don’t speak up, then Bush will keep using our fears to expand his power.
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