Treason, the Death of Our private lives, The Right to be left alone.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. - The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, December 15, 1791
Issue:
The United States government is committing wholesale treason against its people - you, me and us - in its flagrant violation of our privacy and the Fourth Amendment. Our government is joined in this treason by corporations that violate our privacy for their own profit and for the supposed benefit of our government. Yet we, the people, do not yet seem to comprehend the full measure of this war that is waged against us.
What matters to us anymore? Perhaps the loss of our private lives to unbridled intrusion by government and businesses? Evidently not, because we do virtually nothing to stop it. The United States government, in league with the private sector, has dispensed with the Fourth Amendment and is working to destroy the First, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Ninth, effectively gutting the Bill of Rights. The costs to each of us are incalculable, even unimaginable, but they are real and are transforming our lives for the worse.
Deception:
The deception comes from government and business yet we also deceive ourselves. We go about our daily lives as we have for generations, believing that our conversations, activities and possessions are ours and that the world sees of us only that which we choose - or are openly compelled - to share. Even as we have slowly come to understand the endless depths of deception committed against us by government and business as they intrude into our lives we inure ourselves to the reality and to what it means, to what it portends. We live in a comfortable yet uneasy bliss, wanting to believe as we always have that our lives are somehow still our own aside from our responsibility to obey laws, pay taxes and perhaps answer to those we hold dear.
Reality:
We live in a radically changed reality than that of even twenty years ago. We have very little of the privacy we previously cherished and protected. We now live in a world against which we have previously and repeatedly gone to war and sacrificed lives and wealth - for over two centuries - so that we and others might retain our fundamental right to be left alone, as well as to retain our own rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We are no longer left alone. We are monitored, surveilled, tracked, and archived. For each of us there now exists a permanent record of the most intimate details of our lives that will be available for view as long as human civilization governs Earth. As the days and months and years progress we may increasingly witness not only the complete loss of our privacy but the loss of our freedoms of speech, movement, association, livelihood and due process.
Perhaps this does not matter to you. Perhaps it does. Regardless, our nation was born of the fires of oppression by government, of discontent with lack of self-determination, and of rebellion against those who suppressed our speech, invaded our privacy, seized our property and ruled without our consent. Our country's birth was not without its own exercises of oppression: given its savage, brutal and fatal repression of Native Americans, Africans, immigrants, the environment and unaccountable others it is difficult to romanticize the founding our our nation. Yet that does not negate the good: the establishment of a government in which personal freedom conjoined with personal responsibility to others was enshrined in the governing charter of a democratic society.
Treason:
What is treason? It is the betrayal of trust. Is it the unauthorized release of government secrets that reveal a government's deception against its own people? Or is it the actions of those in government and business who commit this deception against the people?
Treason is also the crime of trying to overthrow your country's government. Whistle-blowers such as Edward Snowden are not treasonous nor do they act out of malice. Rather, they act out of a fundamental human desire to warn and protect. Their actions serve to provide awareness of crimes committed against society.
The betrayal of trust and the overthrow of our country's government is not committed by whistle-blowers, it is not even being committed by terrorists. This treason is instead being committed by our Congress, our Executive Branch, our Judicial Branch, our military and our intelligence agencies in the form of the National Security Agency ("NSA"), Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA"), Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") and the secret courts authorized by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA"). They violate our rights under the Fourth Amendment and lie to us about that fact. They are joined by the mainstream press, which largely protects them through its abrogation of responsibility to investigate and report. They are joined as well by the corporations that increasingly govern our daily lives and work in concert with government to deprive us of our privacy for their own profit.
In so doing, they are depriving us of our liberty, for liberty includes the right to be left alone. We are no longer left alone.
Yet what of the claim that we must be stripped of our privacy so that the government may protect us from harm?
This is deception. Life is always lived in the balance between personal liberty, civic responsibility and safety. The core principles of our democratic society are based squarely in the center of this balance and require constant adjustment achieved through the democratic process. Our government has not been able to make a case that any of the oppression and deception it commits against its people is materially relevant to our safety. Even if it could, the government's tactics to deal with any such threats must be thoroughly vetted by, and adhere to, our constitutional processes and demands.
This is where the treasonous acts of government and business have taken root and invaded our lives, planted by fear and nurtured by deception, committed as they are in the virtual absence of the democratic process. It is a full and bitter harvest. We are ruled by secret courts whose very existence violates every precept of democracy. We are governed by politicians who first and foremost serve the interests of the business class. We are informed by a press which caters to Congress and the President in exchange for access and which panders to the corporations that own them or pay their way. We are dishonestly served by businesses that steal our privacy and our dignity in exchange for the goods and services for which we pay in money, labor and investment. Justice is meted out in favor of those who can afford the best legal counsel or come from the right demographic groups.
Evolution:
We have always struggled in our defense of our most basic rights, those proclaimed by our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and most critically, our Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to our Constitution). Regrettably and rather unbelievably, we have given up on the Fourth Amendment. Kindly be forewarned: others are set to follow, lined up in the gunsights of business and government like little tin ducks at a shooting range and given no more accord:
How can this be illustrated? These amendments will be explored in future essays but in short, it goes like this: the destruction of privacy through the collection and archiving of communications inhibits the free exercise of speech because it presumes guilt in advance of suspicion or crime. In the abstract this may seem unimportant, or relatively so, but its effect on free speech is as insidious as the secretive spying programs established by government and business and largely hidden, even today, from the people. Knowing that everything you do and say, no matter how benign, is collected and retained by government and business leads to self-doubt and worry and hesitancy of expression. This has a fundamentally destructive effect on communication, culture, business and freedom.
As for the right to due process, the right to a jury trial and the right to be spared cruel and unusual punishment: the violation of all of these rights is already on display as part of the government's larger war on its people, the war most visibly represented by our loss of privacy but which is waged as well on these judicial rights. The government increasingly considers citizen dissent of any kind to be on par with terrorism, and we see how the United States government treats "suspected" terrorists: years of brutal captivity without charge, trial or any access to justice. Bear this in mind: it is not only foreigners that our government treats this way. With each passing day the government's renegade abuse of our privacy is morphing further into the suspension of our rights as citizens.
The United States possesses an admirable heritage of respect for fundamental human rights that is being sorely tested today. Our Bill of Rights is the envy of much of the world, particularly in respect to the Amendments noted above. Many people have worked hard and sacrificed much to ensure that its provisions are observed, honored and respected. It is a national shame that we increasingly treat it with neglect and even disdain.
Yet one of these Amendments has received little attention even as it is perhaps the most promising in its message and intent. The Ninth Amendment calls upon our government to respect those rights that have neither been granted nor prohibited by the Constitution. In their wisdom the nation's founders recognized that not all rights could be known or recognized in 1787 and therefore allowed that the nation's people must be empowered with those rights.
Other countries have come to identify a new right, one which is neither granted nor prohibited by our Constitution and is not yet a part of our national dialogue: the right to be forgotten. Generally used to describe the right to have our data routinely expunged from the permanent digital archives, this right would be better redefined as "the right to be left alone". Our data should be ours alone, not appropriated by government or business for their own gain.
It is time for the people of the United States to lay claim to this right, to defend it against a government and business community that increasingly refuse to leave us alone.
Solution:
The solution lies in our return to the fundamentals of democracy: respect for, and observance of, the principles that are the foundation of our constitutional democratic republic. It lies in the understanding that freedom and liberty come from strength and vigilance, not fear and oppression. It comes from the understanding that truly free people acting in concert can exercise better judgment and consideration than rulers who are not only insulated from their constituents but hold them in contempt. It comes from observing the course set by the many people of our past who, having suffered the oppression of a government contemptuous of their lives, chose to risk their own lives by overthrowing that government in their pursuit of their lives, their liberty and their pursuit of happiness.
End Note:
This essay is published in observance of "The Day We Fight Back: February 11, 2014", a joint effort by multiple Civil Rights and Freedom of Speech groups that work tirelessly to protect our freedoms.
Contact your representatives and tell them to protect your rights:
The United States government is committing wholesale treason against its people - you, me and us - in its flagrant violation of our privacy and the Fourth Amendment. Our government is joined in this treason by corporations that violate our privacy for their own profit and for the supposed benefit of our government. Yet we, the people, do not yet seem to comprehend the full measure of this war that is waged against us.
What matters to us anymore? Perhaps the loss of our private lives to unbridled intrusion by government and businesses? Evidently not, because we do virtually nothing to stop it. The United States government, in league with the private sector, has dispensed with the Fourth Amendment and is working to destroy the First, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Ninth, effectively gutting the Bill of Rights. The costs to each of us are incalculable, even unimaginable, but they are real and are transforming our lives for the worse.
Deception:
The deception comes from government and business yet we also deceive ourselves. We go about our daily lives as we have for generations, believing that our conversations, activities and possessions are ours and that the world sees of us only that which we choose - or are openly compelled - to share. Even as we have slowly come to understand the endless depths of deception committed against us by government and business as they intrude into our lives we inure ourselves to the reality and to what it means, to what it portends. We live in a comfortable yet uneasy bliss, wanting to believe as we always have that our lives are somehow still our own aside from our responsibility to obey laws, pay taxes and perhaps answer to those we hold dear.
Reality:
We live in a radically changed reality than that of even twenty years ago. We have very little of the privacy we previously cherished and protected. We now live in a world against which we have previously and repeatedly gone to war and sacrificed lives and wealth - for over two centuries - so that we and others might retain our fundamental right to be left alone, as well as to retain our own rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We are no longer left alone. We are monitored, surveilled, tracked, and archived. For each of us there now exists a permanent record of the most intimate details of our lives that will be available for view as long as human civilization governs Earth. As the days and months and years progress we may increasingly witness not only the complete loss of our privacy but the loss of our freedoms of speech, movement, association, livelihood and due process.
Perhaps this does not matter to you. Perhaps it does. Regardless, our nation was born of the fires of oppression by government, of discontent with lack of self-determination, and of rebellion against those who suppressed our speech, invaded our privacy, seized our property and ruled without our consent. Our country's birth was not without its own exercises of oppression: given its savage, brutal and fatal repression of Native Americans, Africans, immigrants, the environment and unaccountable others it is difficult to romanticize the founding our our nation. Yet that does not negate the good: the establishment of a government in which personal freedom conjoined with personal responsibility to others was enshrined in the governing charter of a democratic society.
Treason:
What is treason? It is the betrayal of trust. Is it the unauthorized release of government secrets that reveal a government's deception against its own people? Or is it the actions of those in government and business who commit this deception against the people?
Treason is also the crime of trying to overthrow your country's government. Whistle-blowers such as Edward Snowden are not treasonous nor do they act out of malice. Rather, they act out of a fundamental human desire to warn and protect. Their actions serve to provide awareness of crimes committed against society.
The betrayal of trust and the overthrow of our country's government is not committed by whistle-blowers, it is not even being committed by terrorists. This treason is instead being committed by our Congress, our Executive Branch, our Judicial Branch, our military and our intelligence agencies in the form of the National Security Agency ("NSA"), Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA"), Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") and the secret courts authorized by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA"). They violate our rights under the Fourth Amendment and lie to us about that fact. They are joined by the mainstream press, which largely protects them through its abrogation of responsibility to investigate and report. They are joined as well by the corporations that increasingly govern our daily lives and work in concert with government to deprive us of our privacy for their own profit.
In so doing, they are depriving us of our liberty, for liberty includes the right to be left alone. We are no longer left alone.
Yet what of the claim that we must be stripped of our privacy so that the government may protect us from harm?
This is deception. Life is always lived in the balance between personal liberty, civic responsibility and safety. The core principles of our democratic society are based squarely in the center of this balance and require constant adjustment achieved through the democratic process. Our government has not been able to make a case that any of the oppression and deception it commits against its people is materially relevant to our safety. Even if it could, the government's tactics to deal with any such threats must be thoroughly vetted by, and adhere to, our constitutional processes and demands.
This is where the treasonous acts of government and business have taken root and invaded our lives, planted by fear and nurtured by deception, committed as they are in the virtual absence of the democratic process. It is a full and bitter harvest. We are ruled by secret courts whose very existence violates every precept of democracy. We are governed by politicians who first and foremost serve the interests of the business class. We are informed by a press which caters to Congress and the President in exchange for access and which panders to the corporations that own them or pay their way. We are dishonestly served by businesses that steal our privacy and our dignity in exchange for the goods and services for which we pay in money, labor and investment. Justice is meted out in favor of those who can afford the best legal counsel or come from the right demographic groups.
Evolution:
We have always struggled in our defense of our most basic rights, those proclaimed by our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and most critically, our Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to our Constitution). Regrettably and rather unbelievably, we have given up on the Fourth Amendment. Kindly be forewarned: others are set to follow, lined up in the gunsights of business and government like little tin ducks at a shooting range and given no more accord:
- First Amendment: the right to free speech
- Fifth Amendment: the right to due process
- Sixth Amendment: the right to jury trial
- Eighth Amendment: the right to be spared cruel and unusual punishment
- Ninth Amendment: the right to enjoy those rights not specifically granted by Congress.
How can this be illustrated? These amendments will be explored in future essays but in short, it goes like this: the destruction of privacy through the collection and archiving of communications inhibits the free exercise of speech because it presumes guilt in advance of suspicion or crime. In the abstract this may seem unimportant, or relatively so, but its effect on free speech is as insidious as the secretive spying programs established by government and business and largely hidden, even today, from the people. Knowing that everything you do and say, no matter how benign, is collected and retained by government and business leads to self-doubt and worry and hesitancy of expression. This has a fundamentally destructive effect on communication, culture, business and freedom.
As for the right to due process, the right to a jury trial and the right to be spared cruel and unusual punishment: the violation of all of these rights is already on display as part of the government's larger war on its people, the war most visibly represented by our loss of privacy but which is waged as well on these judicial rights. The government increasingly considers citizen dissent of any kind to be on par with terrorism, and we see how the United States government treats "suspected" terrorists: years of brutal captivity without charge, trial or any access to justice. Bear this in mind: it is not only foreigners that our government treats this way. With each passing day the government's renegade abuse of our privacy is morphing further into the suspension of our rights as citizens.
The United States possesses an admirable heritage of respect for fundamental human rights that is being sorely tested today. Our Bill of Rights is the envy of much of the world, particularly in respect to the Amendments noted above. Many people have worked hard and sacrificed much to ensure that its provisions are observed, honored and respected. It is a national shame that we increasingly treat it with neglect and even disdain.
Yet one of these Amendments has received little attention even as it is perhaps the most promising in its message and intent. The Ninth Amendment calls upon our government to respect those rights that have neither been granted nor prohibited by the Constitution. In their wisdom the nation's founders recognized that not all rights could be known or recognized in 1787 and therefore allowed that the nation's people must be empowered with those rights.
Other countries have come to identify a new right, one which is neither granted nor prohibited by our Constitution and is not yet a part of our national dialogue: the right to be forgotten. Generally used to describe the right to have our data routinely expunged from the permanent digital archives, this right would be better redefined as "the right to be left alone". Our data should be ours alone, not appropriated by government or business for their own gain.
It is time for the people of the United States to lay claim to this right, to defend it against a government and business community that increasingly refuse to leave us alone.
Solution:
The solution lies in our return to the fundamentals of democracy: respect for, and observance of, the principles that are the foundation of our constitutional democratic republic. It lies in the understanding that freedom and liberty come from strength and vigilance, not fear and oppression. It comes from the understanding that truly free people acting in concert can exercise better judgment and consideration than rulers who are not only insulated from their constituents but hold them in contempt. It comes from observing the course set by the many people of our past who, having suffered the oppression of a government contemptuous of their lives, chose to risk their own lives by overthrowing that government in their pursuit of their lives, their liberty and their pursuit of happiness.
End Note:
This essay is published in observance of "The Day We Fight Back: February 11, 2014", a joint effort by multiple Civil Rights and Freedom of Speech groups that work tirelessly to protect our freedoms.
Contact your representatives and tell them to protect your rights: