Our Inalienable Rights Can Never Be Recovered

Abstract

We live in a Surveillance State in a Surveillance World. The Surveillance State dragnets the lifestyles and beliefs of each of us – political views, associations, books and periodicals, friends, acquaintances, medical concerns, sexual proclivities, marital relations, and religious worship and beliefs. Those dragnets are protected by secrecy, lies, blackmail, financial and political extortion, torture, defamation, prosecutions, imprisonment without due process, and a lack of any effective safeguards. In a congressional hearing, when Senator Ron Wyden asked the National Security Administration director whether the agency was collecting data on Amercans’ phone calls, the NSA chief falsely denied it. After his lie had been exposed, he admitted it, with no apparent embarrassment. When Edward Snowden released the documents that revealed the existence of the problem, President Obama said that he was pleased that a healthy debate had started. He then promptly smeared and hounded Snowden for having started the debate. In addition, the government tried to obtain the death penalty and, in the alternative, 136 years in prison, to punish another whistle-blower, Pfc. Bradley Manning. While waiting 16 weeks for his trial to begin, Manning was stripped of his clothes and held in solitary confinement. The surveillance dragnets are ever-expanding and omnipresent. They can never be removed or restricted, and our Constitution, with its Bill of Rights and separation of powers, has been lost forever.