Sunday, 11 September 2016
9/11: The Rise of the Surveillance State
Written by C. Mitchell Shaw

On September 11, 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airliners and flew three of them into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The fourth plane, which was reportedly headed to the White House, crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. By days end, almost 3,000 souls had perished and another 6,000 people were injured. The New York city skyline and the American political landscape were both changed. Fifteen years later, it appears that another casualty of that day was privacy. The Twin Towers came down and the surveillance state rose.

Almost immediately after 9/11, a series of events demonstrated that the power-brokers and insiders in Washington never let a tragedy go to waste. The USA Patriot Act was signed into law on October 26, 2001 — just six weeks after the attacks and while Americans were still reeling from the shock. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began as the Office of Homeland Security two weeks before the Patriot Act was signed and was made official on November 25, 2002. In the meantime, more and more surveillance cameras began appearing on street corners and government buildings. Under the newly enacted Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of everything from phone calls to texts to e-mails to Internet browsing histories to which books were checked out from the library became the standard tools of government in the “war on terror.” Anyone who spoke out against the rising surveillance state was quickly accused of not understanding the danger of terrorism or — worse — siding with the terrorists.

In the 15 years since that dreadful day, the surveillance state has risen to a level unimagined by most at the time. Just a brief look at the last two years is enough to cause any concerned patriot to be worried about where the surveillance hawks are taking America. In December of 2014, Judge Richard Posner — a Reagan appointee to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals who has been called the most cited legal scholar of the 20th century by The Journal of Legal Studies — said the NSA should have free range to "vacuum all the trillions of bits of information that are crawling through the electronic worldwide networks” adding that the only reason anyone would have for objecting is that they are "just trying to conceal the disreputable parts of [their] conduct.”

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What mass surveillance has managed to accomplish — at least in large part — is the erosion of the idea of privacy and liberty. Many Americans have come to accept the practices of being stripped (whether literally or digitally) or groped before being allowed to board a plane. Many have come to expect that their every web search, e-mail, phone call, text, and other communications will be logged and monitored.

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http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/it...veillance-state



I have always thought that it is 'interesting' that less than one month after 9-11 he Bush CREATED an unnecessary department - Homeland Security - Executive Order 13228 of October 8, 2001 Establishing the Office of Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Council
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register...2001-wbush.html

few week later the Congress established it as law.

tI's as if the establishment of the DHS was just waiting for the right crisis.