Who Watches the Watchmen?

As I’ve come of age in America, I’ve watched our society adapt to new technologies and new social and governmental behaviors. Two of these have been the intrusion of closed circuit TV cameras (CCTV cameras) into public spaces and the increased surveillance powers of the police and government agencies.

CCTV has gone from an occasional sight in convenience stores to an expected fixture in gas stations, retail stores, banks, ATMs, grocery stores, and anywhere that anyone participates in commerce. From there they have expanded to CCTVs manned by the police observing public spaces in the name of publc safety; from red light cameras to general intersection cameras to monitor traffic.

Surveillance powers have expanded to include warrantless searches of vehicles and pedestrians, seizures of cash from motorists and travelers, and general roadblocks to check the papers of jeder deutsche Bürger – uh, excuse me – every American citizen who happens to be using the road at the time under the guise of addressing the “drunk driving problem”. In reality, these checkpoints serve to acclimate the American motorist to random and arbitrary challenges to their right to proceed, and generate revenues for the police state through fines and warrants. Here in Kansas City, drunk driver arrest rates at checkpoints are typically around 10% or less (the standard intoxication rates of any group of citizens or drivers is about 10%) while around 20% or more are fined or arrested for outstanding warrants (generally for other unpaid fines).

On the Federal level, the government has unprecedented (and illegal) powers to monitor all internet traffic to sift the data for patterns (supposedly to find terrorists), and illegal wiretaps on American citizens. The government has also apparently been monitoring mail sent through the postal service. Congress has capitulated to the Bush Administration’s illegal demands time and time again, in spite of public sentiment and outrage.

Bush has admitted to authorizing the NSA, a secretive spy agency, to conduct warrantless wire taps on American citizens. The spying even extends to postal mail. The NSA has also been collecting phone records in an attempt to build a database of every phone call that is made.

Who has oversight over this shadow government of wiretaps, data collection, CCTV cameras, roadblocks, and warrantless searches? Certainly not the people. Despite all the opposition to these programs by the public, they continue. This situation has devolved to the point that America has been labeled an “endemic surveillance society“, a label we share with such strong, noble representative democracies despotic totalitarian regimes such as Singapore, Russia, China, and Malaysia.

Yet this stems not from any fundamental moral or ethical failing of the general American citizen, but from a deep seated terror within our governmental institutions. American government has become so corrupt, so fascist, and so opposed to the will of the general public that the government feels it must keep us monitored, under lock and key, to do all in their ability to control and oppress the American people from rising up and exerting their true power over the American government. If the average person were aware of the depth of corruption, treason, and tyranny practiced by our government,

…they would chase us down the street and lynch us. – George HW Bush

Dick Cheney has been described as the most secretive Vice President in history, having a “man-sized” safe in his office; the government under the Bush Administration has classified, gagged, censored, and edited more information than any other presidency I am aware of. These men have repeatedly denied Congressional subpoenas for information, in violation of Federal law and the necessary functioning of the American governmental system.

Recent exposes have demonstrated a whole new level of deception by the traitors who run the American government. Sibel Edmonds has been under a gag order since 2002 has finally decided that enough is enough, and is speaking up about the intelligence she has gathered that prompted the Bush Administration to suppress her testimony.

“She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.”

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.

In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.

You can read the whole story here. In an excellent analysis at the Brad Blog we find more details.

● Foreign intelligence agents from Turkey, Israel and Pakistan enlisted the support of high-level US officials in order to acquire a network of moles deep inside of sensitive American military and nuclear agencies, including “PhD students – with security clearance [at] Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.”

● Members of the diplomatic community were given lists of potential “moles” at the sensitive installations. Edmonds tells the Times: “the lists contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to.”

● Well-known US officials were then bribed by foreign agents to steal US nuclear secrets. One such incident from 2000 involves an agent overheard on a wiretap discussing “nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama,” in which the agent allegedly is heard saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”

● Nuclear secrets were then subsequently sold by foreign agents to America’s enemies, including Iran, North Korea and Libya.

● Pakistani officials involved in the nuclear black market network have significant cross-over with al-Qaeda and 9/11. Officials such as the chief of ISI, Pakistan’s spy agency, allegedly sent $100,000 to 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, and aides of A.Q. Kahn — who had used the stolen secrets to develop nuclear weapons for Pakistan — met with Osama bin Laden “weeks before 9/11…to discuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device.”

● Elements of the US government have repeatedly shut down investigations into these crimes under the guise of protecting “certain diplomatic relations.”

● The US government has been aware of all of the above information since at least 2001.

Further analysis is available at the Huffington Post.

This is a bombshell. While the government has been spying on the people of the United States, that same government has been furthering the ability of foreign governments to spy on us. Who is it that deserves a careful eye? The American people, or the American government?

It is clear the American government has sold out the interests of the American people to foreign governments and investors. Our government no longer represents us. It is not the people who need to be monitored, but the government. Fortunately, We the People have several measures available to us to rectify these issues and keep them from recurring.

The biggest problem here is oversight – the American people are so far removed from their representatives and government officials that we have no real idea what they are doing and can only gleam this information from their appearances on TV, in newspaper reports, and press releases. Since the government has become so obsessed with monitoring American citizens every actions, I suggest we turn this around on them.

“Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” –Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence, 1776. ME 1:29, Papers 1:429

Governmental secrets do not exist to protect the people, they exist to protect the government from the people and to keep the people from learning about the systemic corruption of their government.

The government clearly cannot be trusted to carry out the interests of the American people while maintaining official secrets to hide information contrary to the welfare of our People and our State. We can no longer allow our government to maintain secrets – no official secrets, no state secrets, no top secrets, no gag orders, no nothing whatsoever. Our government runs on our taxes using our money, and only exists by our will. We the People own the government; we are not theirs, they are ours despite what they would have you believe.

We the People must insist on utter transparency on every level and in every way for our own safety and protection.

• We must institute and institutionalize a system of utter transparency in our Federal government.
• All new government documents must be published and archived online where anyone can access them at any time for any reason without any interference or obfuscation.
  • This includes all government documents, budgets, communications, reports, analyses, absolutely any information created in governance.
• All existing government documents, current and historical, must be released, published, and archived online in the same manner, no matter how sensitive, embarrassing, compromising, controversial, or anything else. NO SECRETS.
• All government offices and workplaces must be monitored by a camera system that is freely accessible from the internet, video and audio, 24/7. Executive, Legislative, Judicial, all Bureaus, Agencies, and so forth.
• All government agents’ communications must be recorded and archived on a freely accessible website for review and reference by the American people. This is on every level, Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Bureaus, Agencies, and so forth. Anyone who receives a federal paycheck or works for the federal government must have all their professional communications recorded, published, archived, and publicly available.
• All meetings, conferences, discussions, negotiations, and interactions of any sort participated in by any government agent must be recorded in audio and video, published, archived, and made publicly available on the internet.
• All the financial records of all government employees must be… I think you get the idea.

A few additional measures must be instituted regarding surveillance by private enterprise and local policing.

• All private CCTV cameras monitoring publicly accessible places, places of retail and commerce, outdoors and in, must provide their feed in real time to a freely accessible website.
• All police cameras must provide their feed in real time to a publicly accessible website.
• All police stations, prisons, jails, courts, and other aspects of civil policing, law enforcement, and judiciary must be monitored in audio and video and the feed must be made available in real time to a freely accessible website.

Get the picture? You watch us, we watch you.

The government and police do not trust us to be good citizens; we cannot trust the government and police to be good governors and policemen. Since constant surveillance has been employed to monitor, supervise, and and control the behavior of the American people, I can find no suitable alternative but to do the same – monitor, supervise, and control all behaviors engaged in by the American government, judiciary, and law enforcement to ensure that their actions are legal and executed in the interests of the American people.

Right now, our government survives under it’s dark, thick blanket of secrecy. We must lift the veil and shine a light throughout our government. We must institute complete and utter transparency in every way and every form in every aspect of American governance. This is our government in the sense that We the People are its owners and controllers. We are responsible for oversight. We must know everything they do.

No more secrets.

No more lies.

We must watch the watchmen.