the Orwell Approach
This behemoth will reside across the river in the Pentagon itself and is demurely named the “Total Information Awareness” (TIA) program.
Cartoon: John Ashcroft Attorney General November 29, 2002 Dissenting from the Zeitgeist By Samuel Francis EVEN before President Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act this week, creating a governmental behemoth that swallows 22 existing agencies and turns them into one giant fist poised to crush civil liberties, the national media knew very well what the law that stitched together the new department meant. Here is what the Christian Science Monitor reported about the DHS
on Nov. 21, two days after the Senate followed the House in passing the law: “Make a call from a pay phone at the ballpark, and it may be tapped. Pay for a sandwich with a credit card, and the transacti
on may wind up in an electronic file with your tax returns, travel history, and speeding tickets. “These are some of the ways that the biggest reorganization of the federal government in half a century could trickle down into the minutiae of the daily life of Americans.” The question Americans might want to ask, while it is still legal to ask questions at all, is, why didn’t the press report these trickle-down effects before Congress passed the law?
In fact, some people did discuss the threats to freedom and privacy the Homeland Security bill represented, myself among them, but most Americans were too frightened of terrorism, too trusting of the federal leviathan, and generally too ignorant about the dangers their freedom was facing to pay much attention. But the vast new agency just created is not the only threat they need to worry about.
The same day the Monitor was belatedly telling us about the erosion of liberty the new agency will cause, the Washington Times was belatedly reporting that the Pentagon had confirmed that “a high-tech data collection system [that] will monitor credit-card transactions and airline ticket purchases is being created to thwart terrorist attacks.” This is entirely separate from the behemoth down the street at the DHS.
This behemoth will reside across the river in the Pentagon itself and is demurely named the “Total Information Awareness” (TIA) program. But then again, the leviathan may not really need new laws, vast bureaucracies, and secret programs driven by technologies out of science fiction to throttle what remains of American freedom.
Already, inebriated with the air of the Zeitgeist, prosecutors are starting to crack down — not on “terrorism,” necessarily, but on the dissent and eccentric ideas that are really what worries the architects of the New World Order. IN Great Britain, a newspaper columnist for the Daily Telegraph , Robin Page , was arrested this month on a charge of inciting “racial hatred.” Mr. Page, the Telegraph reported
on Nov. 22, had spoken at a county fair, arguing that if Londoners had the right to celebrate “black and gay pride,” then rural minorities also had the right to celebrate their own culture. “All I said was that the rural minority should have the same rights as blacks, Muslims and gays,” Mr. Page insists. Shortly after his speech, Mr. Page was asked by county police to come down for an interview because of “complaints” they’d received about his remarks.
He did, but he refused to answer questions without his lawyer present, was arrested and thrown in a jail cell. He agreed to answer questions without a lawyer to avoid spending the night in jail. He was then asked if he was a racist and told to report