Checkpoint Charlie, 1988

Recommended Reading

May 14, 2009 "America's growing surveillance state"
July 17, 2010 "Fairfax man returning from Yemen stranded in Cairo after landing on no-fly list"
November 12, 2010 "Surveillance state 'more intrusive than ever'"
November 28, 2010 "Why the TSA pat-downs and body scans are unconstitutional"
November 30, 2010 "The National Security State Cops a Feel"
December 21, 2010 "Expending the Surveillance State"
March 4, 2011 "Muslim student sues FBI over GPS tracking device placed on his car without a warrant"
May 9, 2011 "Bin Laden's death doesn't end his fear-mongering value"
May 16, 2011 "Bin Laden bled U.S. of a cool trillion"
May 16, 2011 "Justices reject appeals on rendition..."
May 23, 2011 "The Secret Sharer"
June 10, 2011 "FBI Agent's Accidental Document Dump--and Uncle Sam's Fear of Antiwar Activists"
June 12, 2011 "F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds"
June 15, 2011 "Ex-Spy Alleges Bush White House Sought to Discredit Critic"
June 18, 2011 "Promoting Militarism While Hiding Bloodshed"
June 24, 2011 "The New Civil Liberties Fight"

The TSA's Latest Fear-Mongering

I just love stories like this [emphasis mine].

Officials Warn of Implanted Bombs in Terrorists

U.S. security officials reported today that terrorists plan on attacking commercial airlines by surgically implanting bombs in humans. The implanted device is an effort to get through airport security easily....

There is no imminent threat, although there was a briefing last week for international airlines and airports. John Pistole, TSA administrator, told CNN, "We see this as the latest iteration or the evolution of what terrorist groups are trying to do to circumvent our security layers."

No, "there is no imminent threat," but don't worry, I'm sure the TSA will make your travel as unpleasant as possible anyway. After all, the most important thing is that you're afraid--very afraid--of something the terrorists may or may not be talking about doing at some point.

As security expert Bruce Schneier explains in this video, the TSA's "mission, as we all believe, is to prevent airplane terrorism. But their real mission is to keep the TSA viable. They can't be irrelevant." The agency has to use scare tactics to justify its existence and its funding.

Expect more security theater. Especially now that we're hearing noises about how all this kabuki apparently still isn't enough. And make sure you don't complain about it, or you may get arrested.

Fear breeds compliance.

Introduction

I decided to start this blog because of my growing alarm at what is happening in the United States. The expansion of the National Security State during the so-called "war on terror" has meant increased government surveillance, secrecy, and ham-handed police-state tactics perpetrated on law-abiding citizens. This is a country where law-enforcement agencies spy on Americans without warrants, where public places are increasingly monitored by closed-circuit cameras, and where it's become almost impossible to get from point A to point B without passing through a checkpoint. Buying a plane ticket now constitutes probable cause for suspicion of terrorism, and we are all guilty until proven innocent, subject to virtual strip searches and/or invasive pat-downs at airports. And that's not even the half of it--extraordinary renditions, indefinite detentions, the USA PATRIOT Act, wars without Congressional authorization. Meanwhile the FBI, CIA, DHS, TSA--all of the alphabet-soup agencies--do not hesitate to fear-monger about terrorism in order to create a siege mentality and complacency among the general public.

I'm planning to use this blog to highlight examples of the National Security State in action. I will be focusing primarily on the United States, where I live. I have no partisan agenda, and I won't be giving any political party a pass. Just for the purposes of context: I am not an anti-government ideologue, a Tea Partier, or a libertarian. Paying my taxes doesn't make me feel oppressed, and I wholeheartedly support a government that invests in infrastructure and provides effective social services to those in need--in fact, I consider this a pressing moral responsibility. I am also not an anti-Obama fanatic. But the incremental gutting of civil liberties perpetrated by Barack Obama and Congress (as well as their predecessors, of course) is something I can't ignore or excuse. While the offenses certainly didn't start with this administration, it seems they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

One more thing: I am not a patriotic person, and I do not fetishize the Founding Fathers or the Revolutionary era. I do not believe in American exceptionalism, which is a lazy, small-minded, and corrosive ideology. But I do believe we had a few very good ideas in our early days, ideas that we tend to forget when we're frightened and manipulated by political rhetoric. This interminable "war on terror"--the constant threat of an apparently imminent attack--has been a very useful concept for the paternalistic power elite, with their militarism and their threat levels and their hypervigilance and their mantra of security, security, security. Meanwhile, what I call the "anything to keep us safe" crowd has, for the most part, acquiesced, and thus the National Security State has become the new normal.

I've named this blog Panopticon Letters after Jeremy Bentham's famous design for a prison in which inmates live under the all-seeing but unseen eye of an "inspector." While I'm not the first to use Bentham's design as a metaphor for the Surveillance State, I couldn't resist adopting it here.

Thank you for reading.