A CNN headline in
late November 2015 announced that the National Security Agency, or NSA, would
cease collecting telephone data and storing that information for the foreseeable
future. While some may hail this as proof that it’s the citizens of the United
States who have the power - not government agencies - I would caution everyone
not to jump to the conclusion that the program has been terminated. What it really
means is that the NSA will stopped TELLING us that it is collecting the data.
If you are naïve enough to believe that they will willingly discontinue something
they have been doing illegally for years (and getting away with it), then you
don’t know how our secret agencies work.
In June, President Obama
signed a reform measure that took away the NSA's authority to collect phone
record bulk data of Americans. So in June the measure was signed, and now at
the end of November, the NSA claims they are finally going to comply, although
they requested continued limited access to the data until February 29, 2016. But
that’s just a formality meant to assure us they would obey…grudgingly. Since
when has the presidency been any threat to our intelligence agencies,
especially after JFK was murdered? The report went on to state that “the
government will move to a more "focused and targeted" approach in
gathering intelligence”, which is how the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence white-washed it. The change in intelligence gathering comes after
over two years of agency lying, misrepresenting, stone-walling, and making
threats after details about the program were leaked by former National Security
Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The NSA knows no one will actually challenge
them on it. Americans are good at making a lot of noise but not stopping illegal
activity within our own borders.
Former CIA director Richard Helms Former CIA Counterintelligence Chief Angleton
Domestic spying should
come as no surprise to anyone; it is nothing new in our country. A program
called Operation CHAOS was set up by CIA director Richard Helms and run by
James Angleton of the CIA’s counterintelligence staff starting in the mid 1960s to keep
tabs on Americans, not our enemies or hostile foreign governments, but U.S. citizens.
These were people that Helms and Angleton deemed a great danger. Nothing has
changed. It’s only gotten bigger, sneakier, more compartmentalized, and more
adept at spying on us. No one sums it better than Richard Helms who wrote this
in his memoir, “In the secret operations
canon, it is axiomatic that the probability of leaks escalates exponentially
each time a classified document is exposed to another person – be it an agency
employee, a member of Congress, a senior official, a typist, or a file clerk.
Effective compartmentalization is fundamental to all secret activity. The
potential for leaks, deliberate or accidental, is vast.” Or to put it more
simply, we can keep it under wraps if fewer people are privy to the program. They’ll
still do it but the data collecting will henceforth just be “unreported.” What we don’t
know won’t hurt us…is how the NSA sees it. Don’t expect to ever enjoy the
freedoms of the Fourth Amendment again.
The NSA considers itself and what it
does as above the law…any law. Self-preservation of the agency and the operation
it is involved with, is its only prime directive. Adherence to the Constitution
and obedience to the American people through its elected officials is a gnat
flying around the NSA’s head. They pay just enough attention to shoo it away
now and then. This ending of the bulk data collection is the most recent “shoo”. March all you want, protest all you want, demand accountability all you want. The NSA only hears when and what it wants to hear.
We know what's going on; we just can't seemingly stop it.
Some within the government
have tried to maintain NSA stood for No Such Agency and that if, even if it
existed, it was no threat to U.S. citizens, while the rest of us understand it
means Now Spying on Americans.
Something the NSA routinely
scoffs at is that the purpose of the United States Constitution is to limit the
power of the federal government and its agencies, not the American
people. Rest in peace Fourth Amendment.
