Funny (and Scary)

Recommended Reading

June 27, 2012 "Eye on Crime: The FBI Is Building a Database of Iris Scans"
September 29, 2012 "New Tracking Frontier: Your License Plates"
October 18, 2012 "Portable fingerprint scanners aid King County deputies"
December 10, 2012 "Oliver Stone's 'Untold History': The Birth of the Secret State"
January 5, 2013 "Blowing the whistle on Obama's America"
January 6, 2013 "Rapid DNA: Coming Soon to a Police Department or Immigration Office Near You"
January 8, 2013 "The Corrosive Effects of the National-Security State"
January 8, 2013 "Secret Double Standard"
January 8, 2013 "Executioner-in-Chief"
January 9, 2013 "New questions over CIA nominee Brennan's denial of civilian drone deaths"
January 10, 2013 "'Death of a Prisoner'"
January 10, 2013 "Drones are fool's gold: they prolong wars we can't win"
January 10, 2013 "Pull back the curtain on drones"
January 11, 2013 "NYPD Eyeing Drones to Monitor Crowds"
January 11, 2013 "Annals of the Security State, Glider Pilot Edition"
January 11, 2013 "Inside the Terror Factory"
January 13, 2013 "Invasion of the Data Snatchers"
January 14, 2013 "Anti-Surveillance State Activists Begin 'Game' to Destroy CCTV Cameras in Germany"
January 14, 2013 "Embracing the Legacy of Torture"
January 17, 2013 "'Mr. Drone': That 'other' Obama nominee and the American 'mainstream'"
January 17, 2013 "Obscurity: A Better Way to Think About Your Data Than 'Privacy'"
January 18, 2013 "TSA dumps near-naked Rapiscan body scanners"
January 19, 2013 "Torture and Zero Dark Thirty"
January 20, 2013 "The Folly of Obama National Security Officials Making Their Own Drone 'Rules'"
January 22, 2013 "CIA given free rein to pound Pakistan with drone strikes"
January 23, 2013 "The Surveillance State Wants You"
January 23, 2013 "Will Obama the Constitutional Lawyer Please Stand Up?"
January 25, 2013 "The President of Perpetual War"
January 27, 2013 "Obama's War on Whistleblowers"
January 27, 2013 "Kiriakou and Stuxnet: the danger of the still-escalating Obama whistleblower war"
January 28, 2013 "Pentagon's new massive expansion of 'cyber-security' unit is about everything except defense"
January 31, 2013 "Protestors to demand an end to MBTA's random bag inspections"
January 31, 2013 "Judge Stops Censorship in Sept. 11 Case"
February 2013 "Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition"
February 1, 2013 "The Carlin Doctrine"
February 1, 2013 "As US Advances Toward Surveillance State, Iceland Reportedly Kicked Out FBI Agents Prying Into WikiLeaks"
February 1, 2013 "Milan appeals court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnap case, throwing out earlier acquittals"
February 3, 2013 "JSoc: Obama's secret assassins"
February 4, 2013 "Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans"
February 5, 2013 "Brennan nomination exposes criticism on targeted killings and secret Saudi base"
February 5, 2013 "Obama Targeted Killing Document: If We Do It, It's Not Illegal"
February 5, 2013 "SPD's eyes in the sky: Four drones closer to a surveillance state"
February 5, 2013 "CIA rendition: more than a quarter of countries 'offered covert support'"
February 5, 2013 "Everything We Know So Far About Drone Strikes"
February 5, 2013 "How Obama Transformed an Old Military Concept So He Can Drone Americans"
February 5, 2013 "Drone Strikes' Risks to Get Rare Moment in the Public Eye"
February 5, 2013 "Report on Targeted Killing Whets Appetite for Less Secrecy"
February 5, 2013 "The American lockdown state"
February 6, 2013 "Drone Strikes Test Legal Grounds for War on Terror"
February 6, 2013 "Congress to See Memo Backing Drone Attacks on Americans"
February 7, 2013 "'Most Transparent Administration Ever' Is Still Not"
February 7, 2013 "Poll: Drone Strikes on American Terror Suspects No Longer Popular"
February 7, 2013 "Obama Released Bush's Torture Memos. Why Not Release the Targeted-Killing Memos?"
February 7, 2013 "Police using discreet car surveillance cameras to be forced to put up signs"
February 7, 2013 "Living in a Constitution-Free Zone: Drones, Surveillance Towers, Malls of the Spy State, and the National Security Police on the Northern Border"
February 8, 2013 "The law of war does not shield the CIA and John Brennan's drone kill list"
February 8, 2013 "Obama's Drone Leaks: New Imminence, Old Tactics"
February 11, 2013 "Drone Home"

More of This, Please

Recommended Reading

March 21, 2012 "Employers ask job seekers for Facebook passwords"
June 19, 2012 "Female Passenger Groped by TSA Gropes Back, Charged with Battery"
July 26, 2012 "U.S. policing: Institutionalising brutality?"
July 27, 2012 "U.S. Spies Probably Won't Blow Up Our Airplanes, TSA Concludes"
August 10, 2012 "Bruce Schneier's Telepathic Takeover of the TSA"
August 11, 2012 "Racial Profiling Rife at Airport, U.S. Officers Say"
August 29, 2012 "Body Scans Junked? DHS, Darpa Look for New Airport Sensors"
September 4, 2012 "What Obama Won't Say in Charlotte: War on Terror Is Done"
September 7, 2012 "Tracking School Children With RFID Tags? It's All About the Benjamins"
September 19, 2012 "Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2012"
September 25, 2012 "'Every Person Is Afraid of the Drones': The Strikes' Effect on Life in Pakistan"
October 2012 "Counting Deaths from Drone Strikes"
October 3, 2012 "Lawmakers spar over quality of Homeland Security intel efforts"
October 8, 2012 "Obama's Drone Dilemma"
October 11, 2012 "Don't Ask and Don't Tell: Six Critical Foreign Policy Questions That Won't Be Raised in the Presidential Debates"
October 13, 2012 "Questions on Drones, Unanswered Still"
October 17, 2012 "The Drones Are Coming to Libya"
October 18, 2012 "Rewarding Impunity"
October 18, 2012 "CIA seeks to expand drone fleet, officials say"
October 19, 2012 "TSA Removes X-Ray Body Scanners From Major Airports"
October 21, 2012 "Will the Apocalypse Arrive Online?: How Fear of Cyber Attack Could Take Down Your Liberties and the Constitution"
October 23, 2012 "Former C.I.A. Operative Pleads Guilty in Leak of Colleague's Name"
October 23, 2012 "Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding names to kill lists"
October 24, 2012 "U.S. creates database mapping where and when it can kill its enemies"
October 24, 2012 "A CIA veteran transforms U.S. counterterrorism policy"
October 24, 2012 "Shifting Mood May End Blank Check for U.S. Security Efforts"
October 24, 2012 "Seattle Police display drones they hope to deploy"
October 29, 2012 "High Court Weighs Surveillance Suit"
October 30, 2012 "The Long Third War"
November 2, 2012 "The world is safer. But no one in Washington can talk about it."
November 4, 2012 "The Permanent Militarization of America"
November 7, 2012 "ACLU congratulates Obama, says close Cuban camps, ground drones"
November 13, 2012 "FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation"
November 14, 2012 "Was Petraeus Borked?"
November 15, 2012 "TSA X-Ray Body Scanners Sit Idle in Warehouse"
November 24, 2012 "Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy"
November 27, 2012 "Offensive Maneuver"
November 27, 2012 "Have U.S. Drones Become a 'Counterinsurgency Air Force' for Our Allies?"
November 27, 2012 "NSA whistleblower Bill Binney on the surveillance state"
November 28, 2012 "Will Congress Protect Your Inbox From Warrantless Snooping?"
November 30, 2012 "Reigning in the Drone War"
December 1, 2012 "DIA sending hundreds more spies overseas"
December 2, 2012 "NSA Whistleblower: Everyone in US under virtual surveillance, all info stored, no matter the post"
December 4, 2012 "Bradley Manning lawyer: soldier's treatment a blemish on nation's history"
December 4, 2012 "No Warrant, No Problem: How the Government Can Still Get Your Digital Data"
December 4, 2012 "Hannity Warns Against Surveillance State He Helped Create"
December 5, 2012 "Syria not alone in spying on citizens"
December 6, 2012 "What Life Looks Like Under a National Security State"
December 6, 2012 "End the war on terror and save billions"
December 6, 2012 "Warrantless Surveillance 101: Introducing EFF's New NSA Domestic Spying Guide"
December 7, 2012 "Cutting through the Controversy about Indefinite Detention and the NDAA"
December 7, 2012 "The Senate Report on CIA Interrogations You May Never See"
December 10, 2012 "Public Buses Across Country Quietly Adding Microphones to Record Passenger Conversations"
December 11, 2012 "5 Unbelievably Creepy Surveillance Tactics"
December 12, 2012 "The Surveillance State Grows Another Tentacle"
December 12, 2012 "Surveillance State: Wiretapping Public Transportation"
December 13, 2012 "CIA 'tortured and sodomised' terror suspect, human rights court rules"
December 13, 2012 "U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens"
December 14, 2012 "The Woes of an American Drone Operator"
December 16, 2012 "Group Aims to Be a Conduit for WikiLeaks Donations"
December 16, 2012 "Supersizing Secrecy"
December 17, 2012 "In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere blug splats"
December 17, 2012 "Your Cellphone Is Spying on You"
December 18, 2012 "An All-American Nightmare: Why Zero Dark Thirty Won't Settle the Torture Question or Purge Torture From the American System"
December 20, 2012 "What Kind of Body Scanner Does Your Airport Have?"
December 21, 2012 "The coming drone attack on America"
December 23, 2012 "FBI Investigated 'Occupy' As Possible 'Terrorism' Threat, Internal Documents Show"
December 28, 2012 "Senate to Intel Agencies: We Don't Need to Know How Often You Spy on Americans"
December 28, 2012 "Senate Approves Warrantless Electronic Spy Powers"
December 28, 2012 "The Inactivation of the Body Scanners"
January 2, 2013 "Outrage: Texas Women Cavity Searched by Police Over Alleged Marijuana Smell"
January 3, 2012 "Obama allowed to keep his murder memos secret"

"Imagine a World Full of Drones"

Recommended Reading

February 20, 2011 "Do cameras stop crime?"
February 22, 2012 "Despite Being The Most Watched City In The World, London Is No Safer For All Its CCTV"
March 15, 2012 "President Obama Signs 'Anti-Protest' Bill H.R. 347"
May 14, 2012 "Bomb Plot Raises Questions About Airport Security"
May 17, 2012 "London's Amazingly Explicit Surveillance State Mascot For The 2012 Olympics Has a Huge Camera Eye That 'Records Everything'"
June 24, 2012 "A Cruel and Unusual Record"
June 29, 2012 "A New Standard for Oxymoronic Newspeak"
July 2, 2012 "Striking Back at Drone Attacks"
July 5, 2012 "The Military Solution: The Lessons Washington Can't Draw From the Failure of the Military Option"
July 8, 2012 "Wireless Firms Are Flooded by Requests to Aid Surveillance"
July 9, 2012 "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama"
July 10, 2012 "White House order on emergency communications riles privacy group"
July 11, 2012 "Making Obama's Kill List"
July 16, 2012 "Obama's 'Global Jail' in Afghanistan"
July 16, 2012 "TSA Fails to Comply With Year-Old 'Nude' Body-Scanner Court Order"
July 18, 2012 "Senator questions Facebook exec about facial-recognition feature"
July 18, 2012 "Personal info tapped with an app"
July 19, 2012 "That Makes No Sense!: Your Security's a Joke (and You're the Butt of It)"
July 23, 2012 "The Public Is Left in the Dark When Courts Allow Electronic Surveillance"
July 24, 2012 "Millions of Americans now fall within government's digital dragnet"
July 25, 2012 "NYPD 'consistently violated basic rights' during Occupy protests - study"
July 27, 2012 "Don't believe the Skype: it may not be as private as you might think"
July 29, 2012 "Former NSA Official Disputes Claims by NSA Chief"
July 29, 2012 "Police Shootings Echo Nationwide: Aurora Gets the Attention, But Guns Are Going Off Everywhere"
July 31, 2012 "Congress Wants to See Obama's 'License to Kill'"
August 1, 2012 "F-15s scrambled as United flight diverts on unclaimed camera"
August 9, 2012 "US Attorneys Refuse to Assure Judge That They Are Not Already Detaining Citizens Under NDAA"
August 14, 2012 "Nobel Laureates Protest NBC's Warmongering Reality Show"
August 22, 2012 "The National Security Agency's Domestic Spying Program"
August 22, 2012 "Giving In to the Surveillance State"
August 23, 2012 "NYPD: Muslims' Conversations About Anti-Muslim Bias Justify Spying on Muslims"
August 29, 2012 "All the Pentagon's Lawyers"
September 4, 2012 "Democrats Retreat on Civil Liberties in 2012 Platform"
September 6, 2012 "Obama Finally Talks Drone War, But It's Almost Impossible to Believe Him"
September 6, 2012 "Dumb and Dumber: Obama's 'Smart Power' Foreign Policy Not Smart at All"
September 7, 2012 "Big Brother In Your Car"
September 10, 2012 "9/11 at 11: the lost United States of 10 September 2001"
September 11, 2012 "The Persecution of John Kiriakou: Torture and the Myth of Never Again"
September 11, 2012 "Another Guantanamo prisoner death highlights Democrats' hypocrisy"
September 13, 2012 "Monopolizing War?: What America Knows How to Do Best"
September 13, 2012 "How the Gov't Talks About a Drone Program it Won't Acknowledge Exists"
September 17, 2012 "The Bush Administration's Oft-Repeated (and Now Challenged) Waterboarding Claims"
September 19, 2012 "Drone warfare's deadly civilian toll: a very personal view"
September 21-23, 2012 "Medical Professionals Who Torture"
September 25, 2012 "New Standford/NYU study documents the civilian terror from Obama's drones"
September 26, 2012 "Our Bipartisan Apathy Toward Civilian Drone Deaths"
September 27, 2012 "New Justice Department Documents Show Huge Increase in Warrantless Electronic Surveillance"
September 30, 2012 "Obama risks handing 'loaded gun' drone programme to Romney"
October 1, 2012 "Supreme Court Dismisses Airport Scanners Challenge"
October 3, 2012 "Inside Pakistan's drone country"
October 4, 2012 "Gitmo Detainee's Body Being Held in Secure, Undisclosed Location"
October 7, 2012 "Overwrought Empire: The Discrediting of U.S. Military Power"
October 10, 2012 "Still Classified: Terror Suspects' Own Accounts of Their Abuse"
October 18, 2012 "Groups Fault Boston Police For Surveillance"

Mission Statement

If any article sums up the philosophy of this blog and my feelings about the War on Terror, it's this excellent one by Spencer Ackerman, published on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It's called "How to Beat Terrorism: Refuse to Be Terrorized."

Ten years ago today, 2,996 people were murdered, unleashing a pair of destructive, mutually reinforcing trends. To prove their relevance, terrorists keep trying to attack the United States at home. And the media and politicians react to it with hysteria, running in fear of getting blamed for a successful attack and perpetuating the gigantic, expensive, counterproductive National Security State. As awful as the snuffing of so many souls on 9/11 was, the second trend has often proved more dangerous than the first.

In case you haven't noticed, hysteria is what the terrorists want. In fact, it's the only win a decapitated, weakened al-Qaida can get these days. The only hope that these eschatological conspiracy theorists possess for success lies in compelling the U.S. to spend its way into oblivion and pursue ill-conceived wars. That's how Osama bin Laden transforms from a cave-dwelling psycho into a world-historical figure--not because of what he was, but because of how we reacted to him.

And that points to the only way out of a trap that's lasted a decade. It has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with politics. The U.S. has to embrace the reality that terrorism is not anything remotely like the existential threat we make it out to be. We can honor those 2,996 without being permanently haunted by them.

Another great article, written by David Shipler and published just a few days before Ackerman's, includes a lot of specific details and historical context.

"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree," James Madison told the Constitutional Convention. We should depend not on officials' goodwill, he was saying, but on a system of restraints. This is what the Patriot Act has damaged, alarming those who believe with Madison that government will do whatever it is allowed to do....

The erosions of constitutional rights have to be clear and obvious enough to mobilize the public. Violations committed in secret are hard to get mad about, especially when you're scanned, frisked, and searched whenever you get on a plane. We mutter complaints, then go along because we are persuaded that we have to relinquish privacy and dignity for security. This sets us up to accept other intimate intrusions. Once people let their bodies be probed and patted and rendered naked by the TSA, they have trouble generating outrage when their bank accounts, e-mails, and phone records are examined by the NSA--especially since they don't know it's happening.

I especially like this: "Having an open society entails some risk. Perfect security, after all, is an aspiration of the police state."