Every Single Day, Every Word You Say, I’ll Be Watching You
By Anthony Gregory • Tuesday January 10, 2012 10:53 AM PDT • 20 Comments
The Department of Homeland Security has declared its intention to gather personal data on journalists or others who might use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” I suppose that would include those of us at the Independent Institute who blog, tweet, and update Facebook.
New guidelines allow for a broader reach in collecting such personal information than before. Any reporter or broadcaster, from a Fox News anchor to a lowly little blogger angry at the government, could find himself ensnared by DHS’s newest arm of the surveillance state.
Almost seven years ago, it became known that the FBI was monitoring the ACLU and antiwar groups. The institutional paranoia extended to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, who even made sure to spy on those dangerous terrorists known as Quakers.
With Obama in charge we see the full power of the bipartisan surveillance state—an apparatus that sees any thorn in the side of the regime as a potential threat to national security. The DHS, in particular, has targeted both “rightwing extremists” and peace activists. And of course, everyday Americans are caught up in the dragnet of the NSA’s wiretapping program, itself a huge presidential power grab even compared to the very lax standards that existed under FISA and the Patriot Act.
On occasion, the feds’ surveillance activities have seemingly thwarted a nefarious plot—but much more often than not, these plots turn out to be contrived by the very infiltrators said to be shielding the public from harm. The FBI has an especially illustrious record in this regard. But DHS, a cabinet-level bureau that turned ten years old only months ago, will have plenty of opportunities to prove itself just as capable of “intelligence” gathering—if that’s how we wish to describe a department whose officials can’t even tell the difference between an African-American from Texas who can’t speak Spanish and an illegal immigrant from Colombia.
With the Fourth Amendment practically gone, perhaps we can finally declare the war on terror over? After all, if the terrorists hated us for our freedom, they must not hate us so much anymore.
HT: Gary Theroux
Tags: Civil Liberties, Personal Liberty, Presidential Power, Surveillance, Technology, Terrorism, The State, War 
Do I understand this correctly? The Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet-level bureaucracy, appointed by the President, which serves the Executive’s wishes at his beck and call, and has full police authority including arrest and detain without habeas corpus, without charges, and without speedy trial?
AND – this Executive also desires a separate national police force as large and as well funded as our military departments?
Even Carter is looking pretty good by comparison!
Ryan Whitaker | Jan 10, 2012 | Reply
Do I hear echoes of Europe in the 1930s? “Gee, if we only give Mr. Hitler one more little piece of the continent, then maybe he’ll be satiated and won’t want to gobble up any more. Oh, wait — now he wants this piece, too — and this one.” Of course, Hitler — a great proponent of unlimited government control and power, was a Nazi — that word being a contraction of “national socialist.” Can you think of any control freak in Washington today who is a power hungry, big government socialist?
Mark Charger | Jan 10, 2012 | Reply
I know your not calling Obama a socialist Mark. He’s basically a goddamn moderate repub, if anything. Do a lil research & try again...
Justin | Jan 10, 2012 | Reply
Mark, fascism is not socialism, right wing “conservative” war mongering is closer to Hitler than the current president, you must have been thinking someone more like Stalin. Either way extremes are idiotic and ignorant. True freedom lies in the middle of “fair” and “free”.
Blinkey | Jan 10, 2012 | Reply
Anthony Gregory, 1/10/2012
There is no broader reach from the DHS than marginalizing and rebuking the Founding Fathers as terrorists.
Thanking you for this opportunity to comment.
James de Laurier | Jan 10, 2012 | Reply
I for one don’t care if Big Brother bashes into my door and shoves his extra large boot onto my throat and huffs and puffs until the chickens crow. As soon as he’s finished water boarding me, and learns that my lies are totally worthless, and that I relax deeply, reading, thinking, conversing with my brothers who’re also afflicted by his brutal insanity, I’ll revert to the same belligerent speaking and writing I now do, almost every waking hour. There’s a Bigger Brother watching Big Brother. He is the one I fear and will please, with 100% devotion, forever. Why ‘men’ cower to the littler brother, I cannot understand. Shame on you!
JosephHuntington | Jan 11, 2012 | Reply
Help, Help, I’m being repressed!
Michelle | Jan 11, 2012 | Reply
Live free or die.
Peggy Drake | Jan 11, 2012 | Reply
And, it was only two weeks ago that Homeland Security put a SWAT team around the Social Security office in SW Florida and demanded to “see your papers” before they would let you in. That is shades of Nazi Germany.
Rick Caird | Jan 11, 2012 | Reply
Justin – you need to do a little research...there’s plenty of evidence freely available on the internet that paints a clear picture of Obama’s socialist agenda (like the fact that his first run for public office was under the New Party ticket in Chicago).
Lorre | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
If any of you have been watching over the past year, you’ll know Obama has signed into law bills that strip away our constitutional rights. This is the same exact thing done by Hitler before he took total control and the German people. It was at this point that the killing began!
This November you will most likely see martial law declared by the Obama Administration because of some claim he puts forward that terrorist are manipulating the votes, or he will claim some national emergency to enact that state of martial law. That is when you will all see people you know not being around anymore!
Neb Selim | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
It is at times like that mentioned that the nearest Militia needs to deploy and take out those swat flys! The officers who participated in that action were committing Treason!
Neb Selim | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
And we whisper to ourselves, ‘When will we have had enough?’
Now I really understand the premise of The Planet of the Apes (the book).
ben | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
A rights-violating government is a rights-violating government no matter if you call it fascist, communist, nazi, right-wing dictatorship, left-wing dictatorship, or the government of the U.S.A. There is one principle that endures: The bigger and stronger the government, the weaker and more vulnerable the people, with less liberty and freedom for all.
D. M. Mitchell | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
Well said!
Let us not become so consumed with all the rhetoric and division by party affiliation etc that we will not be able to see the larger more important changes that are part of the bigger picture.
I care not Republican, Democrats, right or left, but rather am concerned about those whose masquerade as supporters of America, the constitution, freedom, and our children’s futures whose actions prove just the opposite.
Just the thought of both major political parties leveraging a war on terror in the name of protecting freedoms only to actually be removing those freedoms completely sickens me.
I sincerely hope the American people wake up and act while protesting and voting powers can still be used to remove incumbents from both parties and start restoring the freedoms and conditions that made this country great.
If not I am afraid the future is bleak at best and will become some of the most informative history of our time for future generations.
LD | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
They can do what evvah they want with me...they can pack me in an Alpo can if they want to. I’ve enjoyed living 65 years in a free country and those young moronic slugs cant take those 65 years away from me...no matter what they do.
BTW I dont think it’ll be a martial law thing but if the dems even think they’re gonna lose the Senate, there will be one heck of a “crisis” designed to cause panic....just like 2008. It’s their new tactic for elections “stun ‘em and then dumb ‘em [up].”
JoeBejma | Jan 17, 2012 | Reply
I can not help but agree with you.It is that simple.People,do not be fearful,stand together and keep your senses attuned to your surroundings.
Joe Christopher | Apr 13, 2012 | Reply