Spying is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, not Catch Terrorists | Global Research
Spying is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, not Catch Terrorists | Global Research
While many Americans understand why the NSA is conducting mass
surveillance of U.S. citizens, some are still confused about what’s
really going on.
In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald writes:
The perception that invasive surveillance is confined
only to a marginalised and deserving group of those “doing wrong” – the
bad people – ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power
or even cheers it on. But that view radically misunderstands what goals
drive all institutions of authority. “Doing something wrong” in the eyes
of such institutions encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent
behaviour and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.
The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being
placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views
and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, they were all “doing something wrong”: political activity that threatened the prevailing order.
The FBI’s domestic counterintelligence programme, Cointelpro, was
first exposed by a group of anti-war activists who had become convinced
that the anti-war movement had been infiltrated, placed under
surveillance and targeted with all sorts of dirty tricks. Lacking
documentary evidence to prove it and unsuccessful in convincing
journalists to write about their suspicions, they broke into an FBI
branch office in Pennsylvania in 1971 and carted off thousands of
documents.
