Courtesy of Pam Martens.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund Has Created a Public Web Site to Address the Sprawling Surveillance of Americans: BigBrotherAmerica.org
According to Simon Chesterman, who has written extensively on surveillance, over the past four decades the number of Americans killed by international terrorists was about the same as the number killed by lightning strikes or allergic reactions to peanuts. But that has not deterred the U.S. government from marshalling the resources of 16 agencies and an annual budget of $75 billion to “protect” us.
In 2009, as reported in the Washington Post, Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, blurted out the scale of the program during a morning conference call with reporters. According to Blair: “This morning, we’re talking about the very important business of a blueprint to run this 200,000-person, $75 billion national enterprise in intelligence.”
No where is this surveillance juggernaut more noticeable than in the streets of Manhattan where thousands of both public and private CCTV cameras capture the comings and goings of law abiding citizens.
Of equal concern in New York City, this massive buildup has taken place without public hearings by the City Council. Also alarming, Wall Street corporations and their personnel have been tapped to participate in the program, fueling the perception that this is a corporate social control movement rather than a necessary police function.
It is equally disconcerting that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly are repeatedly providing tours of the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, where Wall Street firms sit elbow to elbow with the New York Police Department, monitoring live feeds from CCTV cameras that show the round-the-clock comings and goings of law abiding citizens on the streets of Manhattan.
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