NSA, FBI, IRS and the 4th Amendment: Why freedom matters…

I remember once when I was in college I took a trip home to the DC metro area with my girlfriend. She and I went to the movies not far from where my mother lived in a rather rough part of town called Capitol Heights, MD. I have no idea what we saw. I do however remember that we had a terrible time, and it had nothing to do with what was on the screen and everything to do with what was going on in the theater.

Not long before this at a different theater a few miles away in Oxen Hills, MD. I was standing in line with a friend and I saw two teenage girls fighting not 10 feet away. I grabbed one of the girls and someone else grabbed the other. That’s when I noticed that the other girl was bleeding profusely and the girl I grabbed had a 12 inch steak knife in her hand. It was something about a baby’s daddy is all I knew. Needless to say we didn’t see a movie that night.

So at this different theater we were hoping for better results. As soon as we sat down I wasn't so sure. People were talking to the screen, smoking in the seats and being rather raucous. My girlfriend mentioned the smoking and I said that if that was the only problem we encountered that night we would count ourselves lucky.

I mention all of this because when you think your life may be in jeopardy, it’s hard to enjoy entertainment… and that’s the whole point of movies. Movies require your buy in for success. They require you to turn off reality. They require you to become connected with the characters. They require the suspension of disbelief and much more if you are to get everything out of the movie and enjoy two hours of entertainment.

If you can’t do any of those things you can’t become engaged in the movie. If you’re worried that someone’s going to pull a knife, a gun or set the place on fire, you’re going to be busy looking around to scan the theater, listening for commotion or trouble and generally paying attention to everything but what’s on the screen. As a result you'd probably miss much of the storyline and likely would end up doing little more than wasting your time and money.

Just as movies require your buy in for success, so too does life. And that’s the problem with all of this seemingly ubiquitous government surveillance. The danger is not so much that Big Brother is watching and trying to control our every move. They don’t have to. Our knowing they could be is enough. Somewhat like the Observer Effect in physics, the observing itself impacts the people being observed.

Think about it this way, if you think it’s tough to enjoy a movie when you’re worried about what’s going on in the theater… imagine how difficult it would be to write a compelling, engaging movie while the whole time a government agent is standing over your shoulder. Whether you realize it or not, you’re writing that movie... it’s your life story.

How much different would your story be if you knew your every word and action might end up as part of some government dossier on you? How much could you embrace freedom and focus on having fun, sowing your wild oats, finding your passion, or risking failure to pursue some crazy dream if you were constantly wondering what some government bureaucrat with the power to throw you in prison or take your kids away might think of it?

And that’s the problem. Knowing our government is actively looking at emails, phone calls (or "just" meta data in some cases) as well as our online surfing and purchasing habits sends a chill down your back. With 315 million people in the country they're probably not looking at you… but they might be. Imagine you’re a journalist pursuing a story on the undue influence a company or union is having on a piece of legislation. How hard are you going to dig knowing officials could be watching? Or maybe you’re staying in a loveless marriage for the sake of your children but you have a mistress who makes you happy. Maybe you’re visiting a website of a fringe candidate who has some ideas you agree with but others you don’t. Maybe you’re unhappy with your job and are spending a lot of time on Monster.com.  Maybe you're researching erectile dysfunction.  Or perhaps you’re inventing a technology that will put a big government contractor out of business. How many of these things or others would you think twice about doing because you’d be worried about government snoops twisting your motives into some sham case or sharing your info with your family or neighbors or employer or anyone else?

We already know that government regulations touch virtually every aspect of our lives, but most of us apparently believed the fiction that we had a 4th Amendment right against unlawful searches and could therefore mitigate our exposure to government control. As the IRS scandal showed, there are instances where we have no choice but to interact with government, and the more they know about you the more force they can bring to bear on that engagement. The combination of a heavily regulated society and an all knowing government make for an oppressive mix.

Living a successful life and finding happiness are difficult enough in the best of times, when we spend our days trying to focus on making the best decisions for ourselves and for our families. How much less successful will we be if we now have to worry about what some faceless government officials think about our activities and what the consequences of their opinions will be? Is that really a recipe for a successful and fulfilling life?

Maybe your name will never land on the desk of some partisan or self-serving rouge government official’s desk. But that’s not the point. When the fear that it might is enough to cause citizens to change their behavior, the damage is already done. It’s difficult to imagine a more effective way to throttle back the freedom and creativity that made the United States the most successful and prosperous nation in the history of the world. All of this is particularly troubling today as technology is changing the world at an unprecedented rate, and it’s only getting faster. If the United States seeks to maintain its primary position in the world, it will require its citizens to be as focused on creativity and success as they can. It’s hard for them to do that as they're nervously worrying about Big Brother lurking around every computer monitor, phone line and street corner…

The Police State of Obamaville...

When people think of a police state, they usually think of heavily armed, uniformed police kicking in doors and dragging out family members in the dark of the night. A police state doesn’t require police kicking down your door… at least not in the beginning, particularly when one is evolving from some other form of government, say for instance a constitutional republic. I’m not sure any police state ever came about as a result of some politician saying “When I get elected I’m going to use various elements of the government to take away your civil liberties, oppress my opponents and crush any opposition.” Typically dictators come to power promising to restore order amidst chaos or empowering the people against a tyrannical or corrupt regime. Putin was seen as bringing order to a crumbling Russia while Castro led a revolt against the corrupt Batista and Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew a hated monarch.

But this is the United States and by definition it could never become a police state.

But just for argument’s sake, let’s imagine someone had designs on becoming a dictator and wanted to turn the US into a police state, what kinds of things might be helpful? Obviously no dictator worth his salt wants to have opponents running around shining a light on his actions or stirring up the population against him or his policies. If only there was a way to keep opponents quiet. One way might be to choke off their funding by keeping them from raising much money and by intimidating their supporters. Check and check!

Of course, what good is being dictator if you can’t listen in to what subversive things people are saying about you… or anything else? Not much. As such it would be great to have a program where the government could listen in on every single phone conversation going on in the entire country… Not just when citizens are talking to known terrorists overseas, but simply when they are talking, period.. Check! But young people barely talk on the phone anymore… all they do is text, so you’d want to make sure you can see what’s going on there too. Check!

Unfortunately for you, every conversation in the country doesn’t occur on a phone as sometimes people still actually talk face to face. You might consider placing listening devices everywhere so you could listen in on those conversations too. Not likely however given the logistical nightmare it would be. If only there were a way to use their phones as listening devices, even when they’re turned off. Check! And maybe you could use the phone’s GPS data to track where everyone was at any point in time… and who they were with. Check!

As popular as talking on the phone is, people still spend a lot of time on computers at home. You’d probably want to have a program that allows you to monitor virtually everything anyone does online. Check!

Of course there is more to life than just what people say to one another.

It might also be helpful if you could make it so that a big portion of the population were dependent upon a check from the government (i.e. you), that way you could use that dependency as a tool with which to keep people in line and to whip up populist sentiment against anyone who was seeking to oppose your policies. Check!

As healthcare is pretty important to people, it might be very powerful tool to have if you could figure out a way to put the government in charge of everyone’s healthcare. Need that gall bladder operation or that cholesterol medicine? Let’s see what you’ve been up to first… Check.

Finally, as every good dictator knows, it’s important to disarm your enemies and potential enemies. Here you’d have to be very creative. A national background check before someone could buy a weapon would be a place to start. This would be particularly helpful if the agency operating such a system was allowed to define who it thought might be too dangerous to own a gun. A national registration where gun owner’s names and addresses were listed would be nice, and it would tell you exactly where to go to collect the guns whenever you’re ready. Not quite yet, but working on it.

But of course this is all hypothetical. As President Obama said: “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”

I think we have some problems here… Even if this unprecedented level of power were exercised by someone as honest and virtuous – not to be confused with perfect – as George Washington, a man who turned down absolute power twice in one lifetime, it would be a problem. Barack Obama is certainly no George Washington and in his hands all of this is a giant problem. This power in the hands as one as arrogant, perfidious and incompetent as Barack Obama is the equivalent of setting fire to the Constitution itself.

As a nation of laws and imperfect men operating in a world where millions of people seek new ways to harm us daily, there are certain things that government must do, many of which may seem unseemly in the light of day. Most Americans understand that. The America Barack Obama is creating is something all together different. If a government listens to conversations of its citizens in some limited, controlled circumstances, most Americans would accept that. If however that power is virtually unlimited, and more onerously, it is combined with a government that simultaneously seeks to control virtually every aspect of a citizen’s life, from what they can say and who they can support, to what healthcare they can get to their ability to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights to the economic opportunities available to them, then the Constitution becomes little more than a piece of framed artwork.

All that being said, we owe Barack Obama a great deal of gratitude for all of this. Before him Americans were seemingly happy to continue moving down the one way path of allowing government to take control of more and more of their lives as they deluded themselves into believing that only men of great character would control the levers of power. By demonstrating with crystal clarity exactly how fragile our liberty is in the wrong hands, perhaps Americans will come to, push back and begin reining government back into the box our Founding Fathers drew for it so that no one of any stripe can turn it into a police state. Barack Obama may well end up transforming America after all. Hopefully it won’t be in quite the way he intended.

America crossing the Rubicon: The Boston Marathon terrorists succeed far beyond their wildest dreams...

As is often the case with terrorist events, the Boston Marathon bombings had an impact far beyond the bodies of the people harmed by the delivery vehicle itself. Of course that is the very nature of terrorism, where the goal is to use the media to leverage shockingly violent attacks – but usually limited in scope – into events that shock and scare a far larger population than they could every impact directly. Whether the motivation comes from inside the head of a single person or the machinations of a disparate international movement, the goal is always the same: drive a change in behavior that they could not otherwise accomplish through peaceful, lawful means.

One of the challenges faced by President Bush after September 11th was in suggesting how Americans should react. He was pilloried by many people for suggesting that Americans “Get down to Disney World in Florida…” and that we should “Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” That may have sounded frivolous, but the reality is, he was right in suggesting that Americans not let the cowardly terrorists cow them into hiding in their homes. Their goal was to negatively impact the United States and the American way of life. President Bush suggested Americans not allow the terrorists to make such an impact.

That doesn’t mean that there should not have been a reaction to the attacks. On the contrary. Security lapses, which would be comical if they were not so deadly, had to be addressed. From plane boarding to procedures governing the communication between government agencies, many things had to be changed and improved. While the TSA may be an utterly dysfunctional agency with inept procedures where inefficiency seems to reign supreme, it’s at least an attempt to address the procedures that allowed September 11 to occur. Other changes were put in place as well, from the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to the greater sharing of information among government agencies, both between different agencies of the federal government as well as between local, state and federal agencies.  Again, no perfect solutions – not the least of which is the excessive militarization of local police forces – but at least they attempt to address obvious problems.

There also remains much to do to improve security, particularly as it relates to borders, visa control and ports, but the reality is, and the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrated this clearly: there is simply no way to be 100% secure from terrorism. In a real life game of cat and mouse, each time government ups the ante on one aspect of security, the terrorists try and find another softer target and when something occurs the process starts all over again.

While a dozen years on the United States as a whole seems to have gone on relatively unscathed from September 11 – not to discount the life altering sacrifices made by the brave military and intelligence personnel – with Boston America may have crossed the Rubicon, and indeed, just as in Rome, the citizens of the Republic should be concerned.

On Friday April 19th America awoke to the warnings that the city of Boston was in virtual lockdown. Government organizations of every kind, from elementary schools to universities to every form of public transportation were closed. In Boston and its western suburbs citizens were “advised” to “shelter in place”. The 10th largest metropolitan area in the United States, the home of 4 million Americans was brought to a standstill by two misfits - one of whom was already dead - who had killed 4 people. In addition, remember, although these two men were indeed dangerous, this was almost a week after the bombings, the remaining suspect was on the run and there was little belief that he was in any position to inflict mass casualties on the citizenry of the Boston metro area.

So what we had were local and federal authorities searching for one man, and they essentially imposed martial law on an entire American city in order to find him. Indeed, men, women and children in Watertown were forced out of their homes at the point of a gun, simply because of where they lived. Millions of Americans were literally prisoners in their own homes in the pursuit of one man – albeit a dangerous one – but one man nonetheless, and one who was by all accounts on the run and likely wounded.

In this case the “shelter in place” orders lasted only one night because Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in a boat. (The order was lifted an hour before he was found.) But what if he had not been found on Friday and the search stretched into Saturday and Sunday and the Governor decided not to lift the order? Would people have been forced to stay home for two or three days? What if Tsarnaev had instead hidden and died in a storm drain and was never found. How long would the lockdown have remained in place?

Today a Mirandized Dzhokhar Tsarnaev can sit back and see that with two pressure cookers, he and his brother were able to effect an impact far beyond anything they might have imagined in their wildest dreams. Which brings us back full circle to the goal of terrorism in the first place: Have an outsized impact by the strategic use of violence. What kind of a message does it send to Al Quaeda affiliates around the world or terrorist wannabes across the country? Had the brothers Tsarnaev had similarly inclined friends in Washington, New York and LA would 10% of the American population have been locked in their homes, bringing the financial and government sections of the United States to their knees? What if there was one bomb followed by coordinated bomb threats in 50 cities across the country. How many of those cities would have ended up in lockdown? 2? 10? 25? How many is OK? How long might those situations last?

A few notes to remember: The Tsarnaev brothers were first identified because of images captured by the Lord & Taylor department store security cameras – not by a government asset. Although authorities quickly distributed their photographs, it took the duo carjacking someone and robbing a convenience store before they popped up on the radar. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found by a civilian who noticed a loose tarp and blood on his boat rather than by any government agents or assets. The point is, the Boston Marathon terrorists were found because of good old fashioned detective work and the empowerment of the citizenry, not because of the imposition of a city wide lockdown and SWAT teams pulling families out of their homes at the point of a gun.

Unfortunately, humans being what they are, terrorism will likely not be going away anytime soon. Relatively free nations like the United States will always make appealing targets for cowards who cannot win their battles in the realm of ideas. The Boston Marathon terrorist attack was indeed a tragedy, and for thousands of people their lives will feel the shockwaves for years to come. It should not however be the catalyst that sets Americans cowering in corners and letting themselves be locked inside their homes. It’s bad enough that the round the clock hysteria & error filled media coverage communicates to the terrorists a fiction that they have destroyed the American way of life and have the American people shaking in their boots. We should not allow “shelter in place” and military styled assaults on innocent civilians to become the standard by which we deal with such events, lest America become a police state and that fiction becomes our reality.