You Have Been Warned: The NSA Red Herring

I have everything to say about nothing. It leaves me quite breathless.

USA Today yesterday reported a rather old ("Homer is new and fresh this morning, and nothing, perhaps, is as old and tired as today’s newspaper." - Charles Péguy) story about the NSA gathering phone records in the all-out war on terrorism (apparently The New York Times did this story in December '05). There is, reportedly, a lot of blustering and posturing around this bit of news, though it is clear that Fox News has got one thing right about the whole mess: USA Today buried the most important part of the story. [Addendum, 5.18.06: Fox issued a correction to this, stating that the USA Today article did not bury the lead on page 5; rather it was reported in ¶11]. That fact (and others) should help frame the comments of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who stated yesterday that it appears the Bush Administration is treating Americans badly, and that it is "just going to collect their ['tens of millions of Americans'] phone information for the heck of it." It is clear Mr. Leahy (see video clip here) was relying a bit too heavily on the press to inform his all-important understanding of this serious issue: He knows not what he is saying. And now, predictably, we shall have days of reading and hearing about a "fierce debate." 'Tis sickening. On top of that, we have USA Today publishing a story already fleshed out in other venues at the moment President Bush nominates a new man to head the CIA. Again, predictably, USA Today wonders if the nominee, in light of this NSA news, is in trouble. That this whole story seems deliberately timed to sabotage this nominee will undoubtedly go unnoticed by many observers.

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Of course, the whole story is about the NSA collecting phone numbers to determine phone call patterns. We are talking about numbers here. We are not talking about who is talking to whom.

But what is alarming is that the critics care less about the other eavesdroppers in our lives. I am talking about, of course, what I've mentioned over the last few weeks: The consolidation of power due to the digital and telecom revolution. (Related Contratimes posts can be found here, here, here, and here.)

Let's put it this way. If you have a cell phone, "they" know where you are, and what you're talking about. If you have an offsite voicemail, your messages are in someone else's keeping. If you watch DirecTV or some other satellite TV service, "they" know what you are watching. If you download music from "iTunes", they––the makers of the very Macs downloading such tunes––know what you are listening to (and how often and how many times you've burned a CD). If you use Google, or if you use GMAIL, which is a Google email product, your searches are being catalogued and your emails searched for marketing purposes. And if you are blogging on Blogger, which is another Google service, you are submitting all sorts of data about yourself with every keystroke. As one writer -- an expert on Google's business practices -- pronounced on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, "Google knows more about you than you know about Google." Indeed, it does. (Here is a clipping from the Boston Phoenix on the matter. And this report, citing research that over 75% of Google users do not know that Google stores personal data, is also interesting. And I can't neglect to share this piece with you, where Google is described as a "dream house", one that grows exponentially no less, and where an internet entity's "importance" is determined by how many links there are to that entity's given URL. You are what you're ranked; you are what you're numbered.)

My own posts about this have been perhaps too passive, too tentative. Perhaps I am concerned about alienating Blogger, which essentially hosts this site. But it is important to talk about, especially when one adds this rather interesting wrinkle: Al Gore is the co-founder and president of the Google TV venture, CurrentTV; and he is on the board of Apple Computers and is senior adviser to Google. And yet, as I've noted here, he is "concerned" that the consolidation of power in the media might destroy democracy.

My point is that we daily yield information to countless strangers who indeed have real political agendas. Does anyone think that Al Gore is not driven by power? Does anyone think that Google, CurrentTV and Apple are not politically interested or motivated? Come now. Get real. This is not fantasy. This is about what is happening right before your very eyes.

Never before in the history of the world has there been such a repository as the Internet. It provides all sorts of information about YOU, and it is easy to see how quickly it could be used to track down those who are not CONFORMING to the zeitgeist. Bloggers are especially vulnerable to this, for they are publishing (blindly, on servers owned and operated by whom?) all sorts of strong and challenging political statements––and theological and philosophical statements––that can (and most likely will) haunt them. I know: My internet "record" was used against me, viciously, by a Daily Kos blogger last week. This is not a game here: We are all doing data entry, so to speak, without having a clue where our data is going. And the data is all about us, entered by us ––willingly and willfully. If the jackboots come kicking in our doors, then we're to blame, for we have all made it rather easy for them to find the dissenters among us (and I am, I am certain, a dissenter).

And yet there is a "debate" in Congress brewing about something every Senator and Representative has known about for years. But the real threat is under your fingertips. You will hear nothing about that in USA Today.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Addendum, 5.14.06: James Taranto is right in pointing out that The New York Times misleadingly editorialized about NSA activity, "conflating" two disparate activities. It is also interesting that the Times editorial never mentions that this is essentially old news, news the Times broke in December. This all confirms my feeling that the timing of this "news" was simply to derail President Bush's appointment of General Michael Hayden to head the CIA, and to FOMENT PARANOIA among Bush critics.

Technorati tags: Al Gore, Google, Googlezon, NSA, spying, Wiretaps, USA Today