National Security
One thing that never ceases to amaze me about the current U.S. administration is their over-reliance on claiming things as “National Security” matters. When they’re caught doing something illegal, they say they can’t disclose information because it would be adversarial to national security.
For instance, the headlining story on Common Dreams today was about the administration attacking the pretenses of the lawsuit against AT&T. An excerpt:
The Bush administration has launched a multipronged attack on a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of collaborating with the U.S. government in illegal electronic surveillance, arguing that customers can’t prove their phones were tapped or that the company or the government broke the law — and that, in any event, the entire case endangers national security.
Those assertions in a move for dismissal were based on arguments and evidence that the government submitted to a federal judge under seal, keeping them secret from the public and from the privacy-rights group that filed the suit on behalf of AT&T customers.
The sealed documents and a heavily edited public version were submitted in federal court in San Francisco early Saturday along with declarations from John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency. Both officials attest to the need for secrecy as a reason to keep the lawsuit, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, from going forward.
“Any attempt to proceed in this case will substantially risk disclosure of … privileged information and will cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States,” Alexander said in a public filing accompanying his sealed statement.
This guise of National Security has become a very convenient way to keep a concrete wall between the government and the citizenry. Something that is profoundly undemocratic since democracy itself hinges on governmental (and corporate) transparency.
And correct me if I’m wrong but if the government says that the trail should not proceed because it will reveal things that may harm “national security,” aren’t they admitting that the NSA wiretapping was assisted by AT&T, thus proving their guilt?
The fact of the matter is, this administration has taken many steps toward an Orwellian world where we mustn’t think and act about certain things because it isn’t healthy for those in power. Next thing you know, people like me will be confiscated on some street corner late at night by some hooded men in a white van absent of windows and brought to Room 101.
By: Incoherent Theory’s TG