Culture Vulture

Uncle Sam is Watching You

This is a view from north of the U.S. border, but as a member of the Canadian press it has become harder and harder for me not to notice, that Uncle Sam is rapidly turning into Big Brother. In the name of homeland security, the U.S. government now has the right to pry into and practice surveillance on its citizens. If you join a group that contains just a hint of dissension against American government policy (and this includes such national and international groups that have been know to criticize the U.S. government as NOW, CARE or the Human Rights Watch) you are probably in for a political colonoscopy.
Not that there is anything wrong in that. I am firmly convinced that if terrorists blew up the CN Tower in Toronto this country would be looking at the same Orwellian kind of surveillance and RCMP arrests. We might even be living under the curfews and martial laws that Montreal saw during the FLQ kidnappings that took place in the 1970s. Anyone who lives in Canada knows that this country is ultimately a police state and that any one at any time can lose all of their rights during a political or terrorist crisis. Our government rolled out the tanks in Montreal less than two years ago when the Coalition Against Poverty decided to protest the standard of living here by sending a bunch of kids out to wave flags in the streets. When it comes to the loss of your rights, Canadians are already disappointed idealists. In short, we are used to having the government looking up our asses.
That is why it is so interesting, in light of the Patriot Acts, to watch Americans slowly accept the inevitable side effects of terrorism. These so far include the right of the police, the CIA and the FBI to rummage through libraries and bookstores, the right to monitor the phone calls of what Ashcroft calls "persons of interest", the closed immigration hearings, unreportable secret arrests, and the prerogative to have whole categories of information suddenly placed off-limits to members of the press. It seems that Ashcroft, under the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," better known as "Patriot II" will have the power to also stop news stories and seize all records and information of members of the press who could be considered to be working on questionable material that may cause insecurity in the homeland.
This puts Americans in the remarkable position of not being able to trust anything that they read in the press.
Of course, all of this is going to be enforced by what I like to call the "unnamable they." Who exactly will be making these decisions to dump a reporter's computer files or forcibly detain an individual with a history of taking part in such anti-patriotic activities as a war demonstration? How well informed are they about their decisions" The tragedy is that they don't have to be informed at all, as was this case when zero tolerance of anything that alludes to or has the slightest hint of terrorism is enforced in a country.
Not that there is anything wrong with that. Everyone knows that the Bush administration can be completely trusted not to include political dissent and left-wing voices as "unpatriotic." Unfortunately, when dealing with terrorism, a government cannot afford to have such consensus as "agreeing to disagree." History has shown that any dissent often leads to such unpleasant tasks as ethnic cleansing, loss of individuality, and the oppression of intellectuals. The U.S. is dangerously close to turning into a propaganda machine for the intentions of the Bush administration.
However, this kind of one-on-one tyranny is nothing compared to the Pentagon's version of reality TV that is about to be unleashed upon the world. Combat Zones That See, also known as CTS, is scheduled to be unleashed on the world in early September and promises to be the most invasive mechanism yet for spying on citizens invented yet. The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to "track everything that moves." It is unclear how much this camera program, which can store and make sense of multiple-camera images and link your face, license plate and key words and images to terrorist activity was invented for military use, but is going to become mighty handy for domestic surveillance and also in countries like Canada, that the U.S. media tells us, willing harbours terrorists.
Under current legislation in the U.S., if you are "suspected" of terrorist activity, you can be picked up and held indefinitely, without charges and without access to a lawyer. Your loved ones will be told nothing and your usual rights will not be employed.
Under Patriot II, if you attend a legal protest sponsored by an organization the government has listed as "terrorist," the government can revoke your citizenship and you can be deported. There is no trial and it doesn't matter if you are guilty. According to FindLaw's Anita Ramasastry, a U.S. citizen may be expatriated "if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a 'terrorist organization'." Once again, under this, you can find yourself at the mercy of a nameless "they".
Total Information Awareness, recently renamed "Terrorist Information Awareness," is an act set up to predict terrorist actions by analyzing such transactions as driver's licenses, car rentals, airline ticket purchases, passport applications, visas, and work permits. All financial, education, medical and housing records, as well as biometric identification databases based on fingerprints, irises, facial shapes can now easily be made available to U.S. federal agents.
As more people of all political persuasions protest the gross violations of American citizen's rights and dilutions of the rule of law, hopefully, the American news media will find the integrity and courage to report fairly and accurately on these issues. My greatest fear as a foreigner, is that they will not be able to, in case they are arrested for terrorism themselves.
In the meantime, remember to smile for the camera. Uncle Sam is watching you.

Publication Date: 2003-08-03
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3002