It is time to dismantle the national security and surveillance state...

The supporters of the national security and surveillance state, and there are many, particulalry in the editorial pages of major US newspapers and magazines, claim that, yes, they are also concerned about the scale of the Verizon and PRISM programs designed by the NSA.

The former, authorized by a secret court, enabled the NSA to demand that Verizon provide the phone records of all its 99 million customers for a three month period beginning late April, after the Boston Marathon bombing.

The second program provided the agency with direct access to the servers of major internet companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple. Hence the e-mails, search history and file transfers of the customers of all these providers were obtained by the NSA, without the latters' consent...

Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11-abuse that , so far, does not appear to have happened, wrote, the relieved Tom Friedman, of the NYT.

We have to remain vigilant that the snooping stays within reasonable bounds,stressed TIME's Joe Klein.

Yet, in the end, they have absolutely no qualms about sacrificing their fundamental rights if that is the price to pay to protect the country.

I have no problem with the government knowing that I'm doing my job, concluded Mr. Klein.

A great many lives are potentially at stake and our national security is more important than any marginal-indeed, mythical-rights that we may have conceded in the Patriot Act legislation, he wrote.

The right to privacy, the Fourth Amendment, marginal, mythical rights?

Equally, Mr. Friedman believes what he calls the trade off is worth it.

I'll reluctantly, very reluctantly, trade off the government using data mining to look for suspicious patterns in phone numbers called and e-mail addresses, he wrote.

The Verizon program targets evry single one of its customers. Hence, the agency knows who you called, when, where and for how long...According to the WSJ, ATT&T and Sprint customers were also targeted. Does the NSA really need of all your phone records to keep you safe?

Can it, should it be trusted not to divulge or exploit information you may want to keep confidential?

Why?

Unlike the Verizon program, PRISM granted the NSA access to the content of your-mails and other data. Hence, communicatuions are directly monitored by the agency.

The consent of the providers is not required and, apparently, not requested.

If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge, a senior IT executive told The Guardian.

The PRISM program allows the NSA, the world's largest surveillance organization, to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders, wrote The Guardian.

But that does not seem to matter.

In the case of the PRISM program, the NSA is targeting foreign nationals, not US citizens, and not even individuals in the United States. And all of this collection is being done with a warrant, issued by a federal judge, under authorities approved by Congress, wrote Marc A. Thiessen, an enthusiastic supporter of the NSA programs, in the WP.

This seems harmless enough for, as we know, foreigners have no rights whatsoever anyway...

This has particularly offended the European Union, which is demanding an explanation from Washington...

Yet, what makes Mr. Thiessen so sure that, tomorrow, the NSA will not be interested in his e-mails and  files? Will he then still claim that Big Brother isn't watching you?

With the technologies now available, and currently exploited to the fullest by the NSA and other intelligence agencies, can we trust the powers that be not to spy on you, whenever they deems it appropriate to do so?

The apologists of the national security and surveillance state contend that those who ask such questions are but mere paranoids of the left and right, to quote the trusting and confident Mr. Klein.

Yet, that paranoïa, if that is what it is, is constantly being fueled.

The architects of the security and surveillance apparatus, MM Cheney, Bush and Obama, foremost among them, have done their utmost to ensure that what is being done in your name to protect the country from terrorist attacks (a threat even Mr. Klein concedes is a low-level terrorist threat) remains secret, and is thus never the object of a free and open debate.

The assumption here, is that the state knows what it has to do, does not need anyone's input, and that a robust debate could prove disruptive, and potentially lethal to an extensive surveillance program.

Case in point, the state claims that the programs are authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Democratic Senators Ron Wydem of Oregon and Mark Udall of Utah dispute this contention.

How does the government interpret Section 215? That is classified, and thus a state secret...

Similarly, the PRISM program, according to the government, is authorized by Section 702 of the 2008

Fisa Amendments Act. How?

That, naturally, is classified information...

As a result of the debate the Snowden leaks has engendered, and that, disingenuously President Obama pretends to welcome, although he has never done anything to initiate and promote such a discussion,  Democratic Senator Jeff Merkelly of Oregon indicated on Tuesday that he intended to propose a bill that would compell the government to render public its interpretations of the two laws mentioned..

I think that Americans deserve to know how our government is interpreting the Patriot Act and the Fisa Amendments Act, a spokesman for the senator declared.

Today, the supporters of the national security and surveillance state are simply asking us to trust the government, because they feel confident, or wish to, that it is acting appropriately and legally, even if we and they, have no idea what the administration makes of those laws...

We may very well be paranoîd, but are they not naïve?

Last March, during a public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, was aked the following question: does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

No sir, not wittingly. There are cases when they could inadvertantly perhaps collect, but not wittingly, he answered.

That statement, needless to say, was brazenly disingenuous, though none of the NSA's supporters seemed the least troubled by it...

Clapper almost conceded as much, in an interview with Andrea Mitchell of ABC. I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner, he said.

And yet, we are taken to task for not trusting the servants of the national security and surveillance state and calling into question their commitment to protecting our fundamenrtal rights and the Constitution. Mr. Klein scoffs at those he claims see the federal government as a vast corporate conspiracy or a criminal enterprise.

Let us for a moment examine the record of the new security and surveillance structure created by the Bush and Cheney administration, and bolstered by the current president.

Warrantless wiretapping; secret prisons; Guantanamo; military commissions; indefinite detention; torture; drone strikes that have killed thousands in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somlia; targeted killings without due process of American citizens including teenagers.

Should we allow the architects of such a national security structure to be the custodians of our fundamental rights and freedoms?

Paranoïa or naïeveté?

Mr. Friedman is ready to foresake his fundamental rights because he fears a second 9/11 would lead to the creation of a police state; he thus seeks  to prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government license to look at anyone, any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime, he wrote.

But, is this not precisely where we are today?

In his interview with The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden said the following:

Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector. Anywhere. I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal e-mail.

Should a government in a democracy wield such powers?

How do we know it is not doing so already, domestically?

Should we simply trust it not to do so?

Why?

Have not governments always used to the fullest extent all the powers that they had and even those they did not have if they could get away with it?

And, if such powers are not abused today, how can we ensure that they will not be tomorrow by less scrpulous leaders?

Are Americans prepared to take that risk?

Yes, but what if another 9/11 were to occur?

And we really are in a continuing, low-intensity, high-risk conflict with a diffuse, committed and ideologically motivated enemy. And, for a moment, just imagine how much bloviating would be wafting across our political spectrum if, in the wake of an incident of domestic terrorism, an American president and his administration had failed to take full advantage of the existing telephonic data to do what is possible to find those needles in the haystacks , wrote David Simon creator of HBO's The Wire, quoted by Mr. Friedman.

What are the odds of that ever happening again?

Should we foresake our fundamental rights anyway, just in case?

And yet, is that sacrifice even necessary?

Is trampling the Constitution the wisest way to ensure America is no longer the target of Islamic extremists?

Why do they attack America in the first place?

That is the first and fundamental question to ask.

The policies that the US pursues in the Muslim world, it is safe to say, have alienated millions and infuriated a significant minority, who believe that America is waging war on Islam, particularly since 9/11.

And who can blame them for thinking that?

Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, drone strikes...Just how many Muslims have America and the West humiliated and killed since 9/11?

What then should be the first step in a new policy aimed at mitigating this fury?

Stop killing Muslims and supporting those who do!

How much does the security and surveillance structure cost per year to the American taxpayer?

How many hundreds of billions of dollars?

Think of the amount of goodwill the US could purchase with just a fraction of that amount by funding hospitals, schools, agricultural projects, and electrical plants in Pakistan and Afghanistan; if the US made a genuine and even handed effort to finally resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; if the US stopped supporting oil-rich tyrannical kingdoms and sheikdoms in the region; and negotiated in good faith at last with Iran, instead of pursuing a sanctions-based policy that has been failing since 1979?

That will do more to protect the homeland than any PRISM program...

Indeed, in the meantime, it is not the NSA, the CIA, the DHS, the TSA the CPB that will shield the US from harm. It is a sane and benevolent foreign policy.

Alienated Muslims youths who become extremists do not loathe Americans for who they are...but for what they do, especially in the Muslim world.

The reaction to 9/11, which I would characterize as hysterical, was understandable given the scale of the horrendous and barbaric attack...

In 2013, twelve years on,  it is time to roll back the national security and surveillance state while it is still possible to do so...Let us hope it is not already too late...

(the photograph above of Edward Snowden in HK newspapers is by Bobby Yip/Reuters)