Anyone following the gradual transformation of the United States from an open society into a police-state has probably been mainlining the Greenwald-Snowden-NSA leaks case like a junkie shooting up China White.
For those who missed it, Edward Snowden, a private contractor working for the NSA, leaked several key documents which conclusively proved that the National Security Agency not only spies on all Americans’ electronic communications, but that they have the full-fledged support of the major tech companies, such as Yahoo!, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, among others.
This has been potent stuff, stuff that pretty much confirms what a lot of hard-core civil libertarians such as myself have suspected about the United States over the last few years: America has been drifting towards turnkey totalitarianism, using the War on Terror as the excuse to roll back civil liberties, and taking advantage of technology1 to create (in Snowden’s wonderful phrase) “the architecture of oppression”.
Something Edward Snowden said, in the Glenn Greenwald interview where he revealed himself as the source of the NSA leaks, struck me hard: “The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change.” (Video here, quote at 10:49. Also embedded below.)
He’s right, and it’s my fear too. In fact, it ought to be the fear of anyone who cares about the future of the United States as a representative democracy that stands for basic human rights and against oppression. If the people of the United States do not stand up to their government now, right now, in the face of this blatant violation of all the core principles of the American Constitution, then we’re screwed. If nothing is done now, then the next stop—inevitably, irrevocably—is police-state fascism American-style.
How’s this so? Here’s my argument:
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