MEDIA ROOTS- Two important news stories this past week illuminate a trend toward the crumbling privacy rights of the public, while corporations are expanding their rights to trump those of living, breathing American citizens.

Back in September, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration’s Internet Wiretapping Proposal was Met with Silence. Last week, the story continues with the report that FBI Director Robert Mueller met on Tuesday with top executives of several Silicon Valley firms including Google and Facebook, in an intensified push to expand government wiretapping of online communications.

This move would be carried out by an expansion of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which, at present, requires phone and broadband network providers to immediately comply with wiretapping orders.

In this story we learn that companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Research in Motion, as well as providers of encrypted email and messaging services like Skype, would be required to design systems to intercept and decode encrypted messages. Any services that are based overseas and accessed by users in the United States would also be mandated to re-route communications through a server on US soil for accessible wiretapping.

The second story comes from the independent press– As the government’s surveillance program further closes in on our privacy and threatens the constitutional rights of Americans, AT&T is making precedent setting challenge to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in a Supreme Court battle that could remove what transparency is left regarding corporate activity. AT&T is doing this by invoking FOIA exemptions that are created to help protect an individual’s private data by claiming to be a “corporate citizen” entitled to “personal privacy.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of public interest groups urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in an amicus brief to reject “privacy” protections for corporations under FOIA, arguing that the intent of FOIA’s privacy provisions have always been unmistakably interpreted by law to protect individuals, not corporations.

In an article for the EFF Rebecca Jeschke explains,

If AT&T is allowed to expand the law’s privacy protections to “corporate citizens” then broad new swaths of previously public records will be hidden from view. It’s not hard to imagine how documents on the BP oil spill, or coal mine explosions, or the misdeeds of Bernie Madoff’s investment firm might be significantly harder to find if AT&T’s misguided arguments prevail.

But this is only the most obvious problem with the idea of “personal privacy” for “corporate citizens.” Currently, government agencies routinely post reports and data about corporate activities on their websites without a specific FOIA request. But under the appeals court decision, this kind of free flow of information will be chilled by the fear of a lawsuit. Additionally, this interpretation of the FOIA would require government agencies to consult with corporations before the release of any information that arguably implicated their “privacy” interests. This would create more delays in an already lengthy FOIA process, and allow even more opportunities for corporations to block important records from the public eye. Tellingly, corporate entities would end up enjoying more privacy protections than the law currently affords individuals, who are not given any notice about potential record releases under FOIA.

Unfortunately, Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission already set the legal precedent that AT&T will rely on to claim this victory. How will the Supreme Court be able to deny AT&T, and other corporations, the protections that human individuals receive under FOIA, when the Supreme Court has already baptized corporations as constitutionally protected individuals, like you or I?

Shadowed by the mainstream media’s studious disregard, corporations continue to claim victory over a fight to expand their power and domain, while the citizens of this country struggle to maintain their rights and increasingly eroded political clout.

Many democrats and progressives that helped to elect Obama through a record number of individual financial contributions believed that his administration would stop the corporate power push, while restoring our civil liberties. On the campaign trail, Obama promised to restrict the warrantless wiretaps of the Bush administration’s Orwellian Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, also known as the USA PATRIOT ACT. Yet, when it comes to protecting our civil rights, this President is no different than his predecessor– in February, Obama signed the PATRIOT ACT extension without reform.

Then, as if Obama had never been educated in Constitutional Law or held qualm with the illegal wiretapping under Bush, he stood in defense of warrantless wiretapping while invoking the State Secrets Privilege. Thankfully, in March, a federal judge deemed the National Surveillance Agency’s program of warrantless wiretapping illegal, despite the Obama administrations attempts to dismiss the suit by claiming a trial would lead to the disclosure of “state secrets”.

Interestingly, attorney Steven Goldberg explains in an interview with DemocracyNow! that there have been warrantless wiretapping cases that have not been allowed to proceed in court, because people could not prove that they had been wiretapped. Goldberg represented an Islamic charity that filed suit against the government after receiving a classified document that proved them victims of warrantless eavesdropping. This is the case that brought forward the decision against the NSA, and it is the only case that has been able to prove wiretapping.

It is difficult to know how the government is using its extensive surveillance powers or what other privileges may be drafted and justified through propagandized fear and base emotion. As our government and courts paved the path for the expanding power and influence of corporations, elected leaders and unelected businessmen are working close together shaping policies and ideas as they share positions in think tanks, on boards of directors and in political cabinets. An authoritarian government begins to emerge when unelected leaders join government leaders to institute laws and policies that serve their interest above those of the people, whose rights and political influence are increasingly diminished to nothing more than the symbolic act of voting.

Article by alicia, editor for Media Roots

Image by charles fettinger/flickr

Media Roots Radio Episode 2 by Media Roots

MEDIA ROOTS – In this edition of Media Roots radio Robbie and Abby Martin discuss pharmaceutical drugs, the co-opting of the tea party from the neo-conservatives, and go after “liberal” commentators like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher that frame the debate in a destructive way. We also break down the true threat of terrorism, and the importance of privacy in our lives.

The above timeline is interactive. Scroll through it to find out more about the show’s music and for the links to resources mentioned during the broadcast.

If you would like to directly download the podcast click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display. To see a larger version of the timeline with clickable resources go to the soundcloud link below the player. If the link is down, use an alternate backup stream HERE.

Listen to last week’s broadcast introducing Robbie and Abby and discussing the Obama administration.

This Media Roots podcast is the product of many long hours of hard work and love. If you want to encourage our voice, please consider supporting us as we continue to speak from outside party lines. If you donate, we want to thank you with your choice of art from AbbyMartin.org as well as music from RecordLabelRecords.org. Much of the music you hear on our podcasts comes from Robbie’s imprint Record Label Records, and Abby’s art reflects the passion and perspective that lead her to create Media Roots.

$40 donation: One 8×10 art print and one RLR release (You choose! Tell us in the Paypal notes.)

$80 donation: Two 8×10 art prints and two RLR releases (You choose!)

$150 donation: Four 8×10 art prints and four RLR releases (You choose!)

Even the smallest donations are appreciated and help us with our operating costs.

Thanks so much for your support!

Listen to all previous Media Roots Radio broadcasts here.

MEDIA ROOTS- Recently, I remembered a little known video by physicist and 9/11 researcher David Chandler, tackling the statistics on the ongoing “War on Terror”. Here it is. I borrowed the title from a salty comment by David in his own Youtube thread.

On 9/11, according to the official death toll, 2,976 victims and 19 hijackers died. Since then, we have been engaged in the “Global War on Terror”, colloquially known as the GWOT. This war, as Dick Cheney, the ‘Sith Lord’ without a beating heart warned us, won’t end in our lifetime, or at the very least, may take decades. Initially, in the aftermath of 9/11, there was a worldwide outpouring of support and solidarity for the U.S., as French and Italian newspapers proclaimed: “We are all Americans” and Vladimir Putin said, in a televized address: “Russia knows directly what terrorism means, and because of this we, more than anyone, understand the feelings of the American people. In the name of Russia, I want to say to the American people — we are with you.”

A week later, the anthrax attacks followed, further terrorizing Americans who had already been traumatized. At times it felt as if World War Three was imminent. NATO, in response to the 9/11 attacks, invoked article 5 for the first time in its 52-year-long history, in early October 2001. But who to put in the crosshairs of NATO’s vengeful military bravado? Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld preferred Iraq, because he didn’t really think Afghanistan had any good targets to bomb. Ultimately, he’d get them both, leading us into the seemingly insurmountable mess the NATO partners are in today.

It didn’t end there though. Several incidents occurred that further motivated Europe to close ranks and line up behind U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. The train bombings in Madrid, in March 2004. The assassination of Dutch author, film maker and firebrand Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, in November 2004. The London bombings of July 7, 2005, followed by another, failed attempt at a terrorist attack two weeks later. One year later, in July 2006, two suitcase bombs were discovered in trains in Germany. In the worldwide crossfire, as the Iraqi, Afghani and Palestinian death toll mounted, and the outrage over the Bush administration’s shameless Iraqi WMD lies climaxed, jihadis couldn’t have found a more fertile recruitment pool. Terrorism and a peculiar mix of counterterrorism and imperialism were now entangled in a vicious circle of reciprocity, and it was, and is, hard to determine which is a response to which.

Terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe have altered our societies. They have changed the way we travel, the way we conduct criminal trials, the way we think about our civil liberties. The Wolfowitz Doctrine’s emphasis on unilateralism evolved into the Bush Doctrine: waging preemptive war against nations that might pose a threat to our security, timid protestations from the UN notwithstanding.

We are constantly encouraged to be on the lookout for danger, report suspicious activities and watch for left luggage in airport terminals or bus stations. And if we don’t do it, creepy, fully automated camera surveillance systems will do it for us. In that sense, the Bush Doctrine has wormed its way into our everyday lives, and we frenetically look inward to foil plots before they happen, to detect radicalization in our friends and enemies, colleagues and neighbors. Radicalism, we are told, is a precursor of terrorist tendencies. Therefore, all radicals are potential terrorists.

Thought crime is no longer a taboo; Orwell rolls in his grave. It wasn’t the action, but the reaction in the form of totalitarian legislation that brought us here. We are told terrorists attack us because they hate our freedoms. The past decade tells a different story: terrorists may terrorize, but no entity hates our freedoms more than our own government, which is always in an excellent position to act upon its hatred. We are nurturing a culture of vigilantes and snitches. Politicians campaign on fear, and have pissing matches with their challengers about who is most ‘patriotic’ and best prepared to ‘protect’ the country.

In our ‘protection-addiction’, we unleash the full spectrum of counterterrorist measures not only on terrorists, but on ourselves. One example of security obsessed lunacy is the placement of children and even babies on so-called “no-fly” or other related watch lists. Bureaucracy or not, mistaken or not, it’s absurd. And if that wasn’t quite absurd enough for you, how about ‘terror babies’?

In the cacophony of news reports about thwarted terrorist attacks, and the spectacle of bellicose propaganda, we aren’t allowed a breath, we aren’t allowed a thought, not a whimper of protest against this juggernaut of self-defense overkill and the constant, compulsive, neurotic self-inspection. We are behaving like hypochondriacs. Increasingly, the otherwise distinctive line between terrorism and dissent, terrorism and crime, terrorism and immigration fades in the public’s mind.

The advent of the internet enabled citizens worldwide to interact and exchange news reports, dissenting opinion and historical context, bypassing the mainstream media filter. A filter that is said to separate the wheat from the chaff, but instead drowns out undesirable critical thought that goes beyond established ‘acceptable’ boundaries. The accepted, mainstream perceptions and historical chronology about the terrorist attacks that shaped our collective foreign policies are rarely accurate. This applies to the majority of citizens of NATO countries. I have yet to ask someone: “Who is currently thought to be responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks?” and get the correct answer or anything other than a blank, mystified stare. I suggest you try it on the first gullible ignoramus who calls you a conspiracy nut. The legacy of the anthrax attacks: every time a malcontent sends an envelope of talcum powder to a government agency he has a dispute with, chaos ensues.

As a senior adviser to George W. Bush told Ron Suskind:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The ‘new realities’ of the GWOT have led to a new form of perpetual mass hysteria. ‘New realities’ involve, for example, color-coded threat level conditioning. We’re stimulated to be afraid. Incursions on democracy, the separation of powers and civil liberties which were once unthinkable become commonplace, as future generations grow up never questioning the big brother apparatus supposedly there for their own protection. Like wild animals domesticated, it’s a matter of time, patience and training. Anachronistic notions of civil and human rights slowly become extinct. In the GWOT, double standards with respect to human rights are considered pragmatic, as if the necessity of unethical practices (torture, rendition, extra-judicial assassinations) are self-evident.

We’re blatant hypocrites, let’s not pussyfoot around it. By today’s dystopian norms, the enlightened radicals who built the foundations of Western constitutional democracy would be considered terrorists, which is fascinating, in a morbid, cynical way. But what’s even more fascinating is the persistent and growing desire to eliminate all risk from our daily lives. It’s from this desire that insurance companies reap the profits. Fear of terrorism essentially boils down to fear of death. Fear is a primal biological mechanism to help animals protect themselves from harm. Too much fear leads to paralysis. Too little fear causes recklessness. So… how about a little reflection. What would it take for people to assess their own security rationally? Who is really paranoid here, civil and human rights activists or the die hard proponents of the GWOT? Time to have a hard, confronting look at some statistics.

Casualties of the GWOT:

• *Iraq: 62,570 to 1,124,000

• *Afghanistan: between 10,960 and 49,600

• *Somalia: 7,000+

It should be noted that the lower casualty estimates of the invasion and occupation of Iraq have been heavily criticized by, among many, Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com and Project Censored. Meanwhile, the GWOT is expanding to Yemen, but its manifestations remain largely under the mainstream media radar. Key question, of course, is how many civilian American casualties are due to terrorist attacks. In 2009, 25. That’s twenty-five, in case you missed it. (The US government definition of terrorism excludes attacks on U.S. military personnel.) Worldwide, the number was considerably higher, but includes wounded, as the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) notes:

“Almost 58,000 individuals worldwide were either killed or injured by terrorist attacks in 2009. Based upon a combination of reporting and demographic analysis of the countries involved, well over 50 percent of the victims were Muslims, and most were victims of Sunni extremist attacks.”

Mind you: the government has its own, curious definition of terrorism:

“In deriving its figures for incidents of terrorism, NCTC in 2005 adopted the definition of “terrorism” that appears in the 22 USC § 2656f(d)(2), i.e., “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.”

In other words, the state assures you that the state, by definition, is incapable of terrorist acts. Wisely, the report concludes:

“The Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS) data provided in the National Counterterrorism Center’s Report on Terrorism is the triumph of empirical analysis over primal fear of terrorism and impulses to react rashly.”

In that context, consider the following table: Annual Causes of Death in the United States

It’s hard to miss the hilarious ‘0’ in the Marijuana row, however, did you also notice the penultimate row? According to a study published in “Annals of Internal Medicine”, 7600 Americans die and another 76 000 are hospitalized each year because of side effects of “non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs” such as aspirin. That’s approximately two-and-a-half 9/11’s per year. How about a war on aspirin?

Written by Michiel de Boer