Eclecticism

So, over the past few weeks, it’s been announced that Henry Kissinger is heading up the 9/11 inquiry, and John Poindexter is the new head of the Total Information Awareness office. And we’re supposed to accept these announcements as good decisions?

When in office, Henry Kissinger organized massive deceptions of Congress and public opinion. The most notorious case concerned the “secret bombing” of Cambodia and Laos and the unleashing of unconstitutional methods by Nixon and Kissinger to repress dissent from this illegal and atrocious policy. But Sen. Frank Church’s commission of inquiry into the abuses of U.S. intelligence, which focused on illegal assassinations and the subversion of democratic governments overseas, was given incomplete and misleading information by Kissinger, especially on the matter of Chile. Rep. Otis Pike’s parallel inquiry in the House (which brought to light Kissinger’s personal role in the not-insignificant matter of the betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds, among other offenses) was thwarted by Kissinger at every turn, and its eventual findings were classified. In other words, the new “commission” will be chaired by a man with a long, proven record of concealing evidence and of lying to Congress, the press, and the public.

— Slate, “The Latest Kissinger Outrage — Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation? (via Antipixel)

Some people are suspicious that the degenerate Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness system will be used to harass and track the activities of people who some significant fraction of society disagree with. They fear a replacement of today’s general tolerance (and official blindness to one’s Bill-of-Rights-protected activities such as speech and association), with specific harassment of those whose names pop up in the database. Such harassment of people who are not reasonably suspected of criminal activity would destroy much of value in our society, such as the presumption of innocence and the “live and let live” philosophy that encourages diversity. Offering dissidents “a death of a thousand cuts” by constantly harassing them and denying them the privileges of ordinary life would be far worse than charging them with a (bogus) crime, which they could clear up merely by demonstrating their innocence in court.

It would be good to have an early public demonstration of just how bad life could become for such targeted citizens. While ratfink’s system is probably not working yet, and a large part of it is classified, much of it can be manually simulated for demonstration purposes. Public records can be manually searched and then posted to the net by people who happen to be looking there for something else. Many Internet public records search sites also exist; try searching for “People finder”. (Matt Smith at matt.smith@sfweekly.com has offered to “publish anything that readers can convincingly claim to have obtained legally”.) Photographs and videos of the target, their house, car, family, and associates, can be made and circulated to demonstrate facial recognition techniques.

— Eyeballing Total Information Awareness (via Aaron Swartz)

I think if I could cringe any more violently, I’d implode.