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The
latest scheme to enslave
us in the name of waging a "war on terrorism" is
so bizarre, so obviously the product of a nascent megalomania,
that it seems like something out of a very bad novel. According
to published reports, the U.S. government is compiling a database
that will be used to monitor "every
purchase made by every American citizen." The program
is being developed by a
convicted felon.
According
to Edward
Aldridge, undersecretary of Acquisitions and Technology,
this is going to be an invaluable "tool" that "would
look for telltale signs of suspicious consumer behavior."
Fox News reports:
"Examples
he cited were: sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way
air or rail travel, rental car transactions and purchases
of firearms, chemicals or agents that could be used to produce
biological or chemical weapons."
So,
comrade, you're only traveling one-way to Chicago – now why
is that?
So,
citizen Raimondo, you just withdrew nine-tenths of the money
in your bank account – do you care to explain yourself?
(Hey,
I live in San Francisco, brother – that's my rent!)
The
new era of techno-totalitarianism is upon us. Or is it?
While
never underestimating the evil intentions of our aspiring
Ministry of Governmental Omniscience (MOGO), the idea of "total
information awareness" is utterly impossible – which
is why socialism is a discredited failure and the Soviet Union
is no more. For the Soviet commissars, and their Western amen
corner, in positing the superiority of economic planning over
the "anarchy" of the market, overlooked a simple
fact of human nature. Human beings are fallible, limited not
only in their knowledge but also in their capacity to take
in and analyze information. In the market system, prices summarize
and describe a reality that no single human mind can encompass
or even comprehend. Economic calculation in the socialist
commonwealth is an impossibility, as
Ludwig von Mises was the first to point out, due to the
blackout of information provided by prices. The socialist
planners sought to substitute themselves for the price
system: socialism, which was unable to allocate resources
efficiently, was doomed from the start.
MOGO
will meet the same fate as the Soviets, and techno-totalitarianism
is doomed for the same reason as its Marxist and national
socialist antecedents: it cannot possibly fulfill its extravagant
promises. The Communists promised their subjects material
abundance and a great leap forward into modernity: what they
got instead was abject poverty and absolute cultural and technological
stasis. The techno-totalitarians promise us physical security:
if the pattern holds, what we'll get is another 9/11.
For
if the illusion of "total awareness" becomes widespread,
this can only foster a dangerous complacency – while the terrorists
go around the fringes of society, and the innocent are caught
up in the same system that strip-searches
little old ladies at airports. It's all so pathetically
predictable that to watch the process unfold is like seeing
a terrible accident take place, only in slow motion, the horror
accentuated by an eerie feeling of déjà-vu.
The
Washington Times reports the dizzying scope of our
rulers' ambition:
"The
program will fund research and development of technologies
that will allow the federal government to track the e-mail,
Internet use, travel, credit-card purchases, phone, bank records
and every type of available public and private data in what
the Pentagon describes as one 'centralized grand database.'"
And
what will they do with all this information? Computers can
store data, but they cannot tell us what to retrieve. The
creators of these machines are still the ultimate decision-makers,
and we are back to the same old problem. Human fallibility
definitely is a problem for aspiring dictators, who
have been dreaming of infallibility through "total information
awareness" since the
days of Domitian. They will never attain it. But that
isn't going to stop them from trying – and acquiring enormous
power in the process.
The
glorification of technology as the magic key to all mankind's
problems is the cause of what may be a fatal hubris on the
part of our technocrats. Their conception of what machines,
by themselves, can do is outrageously inflated, almost mystic
in its unthinking faith. Admiral Aldridge bloviates:
"It's
kind of a signal-to-noise ratio. What are they doing in all
these things that are going on around the world? And we decided
that new capabilities and new technologies are required to
accomplish that task."
But
what are these magical techniques, otherwise known as "new
technologies," that will give us the means to select
the right information out of an abundance of data? As explained
by the Washington Times:
"For
example, the system will try to find any terrorist links between
people issued passports, visas or work permits and the purchase
of weapons or explosive materials, Adm. Aldridge said. It
would cull data from credit cards and purchases such as airline
tickets and rental cars."
Too
much "noise" was precisely our problem, pre-9/11:
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies were inundated
with too many warnings, threats, and rumors of war. The lesson
of the Rowley
memo, and of the Arizona FBI agent whose warnings effectively
predicted
the attacks, is that we already had "total
information awareness" prior to 9/11 – but no one
to put the pieces of the puzzle together. This DARPA
project would increase the noise level, without introducing
any element of viable selectivity.
Given
"total information awareness" pre-9/11, analysts
would have had to select out all Middle Easterners who had
been granted visas to study aviation in the U.S. – but authorities
never anticipated the form of the attacks, and were convinced
the blow would be aimed at American facilities abroad. The
human intelligence factor was missing. Far from arguing for
the souped up, chrome-plated, hi-tech approach favored by
the technocrats, the lessons of 9/11 point to a revival of
the good old-fashioned techniques of traditional spycraft,
such as infiltration, the cultivation of informants, bribery,
etc.
Consider
the possible uses of "total information awareness" – intercepting
email, wiretapping phone conversations, tracking every move
of the computer mouse, each and every economic transaction – and
consider all the really efficient uses to which such information
could be put: blackmail, thievery, economic regulation and
tax collection come immediately to mind. Finding terrorists
comes somewhere around last on the list, just above creating
trust and defending the Constitution.
I
won't bother dumping on Poindexter when John Sutherland did
it so well in the Guardian, except to say that
the head of the Information
Awareness Office is the perfect incarnation of the techno-totalitarian
high priest. Poindexter is a convicted liar and professional
flim-flam man, who usurped the powers of the President and
decided that he had better run American foreign policy
– for the good of the nation, naturally enough. He got off
on a technicality and has now been assigned the task of protecting
us from terrorism.
I
feel safer already. Don't you?
THANKS,
BERKELEY LIBERTARIANS!
My
talk at Berkeley, sponsored
by Cal Libertarians, was great fun. Thanks to the promotional
work done by the members of this very active and lively group
of young libertarians, we had a substantial crowd – and a
very interesting one. The question-and-answer period was the
best part, or at least I thought so, with students – including
a gaggle of College Republicans – challenging but also
elaborating on some of the points I made. I was particularly
gratified that several questions directly addressed issues
raised in some of my past columns: hey,
these guys (and gals!) are regular readers! What more
can a writer ask, or want?
The
student movement against the war is growing, in numbers and
intensity, and libertarians are generating excitement on campus
for the first time since the late 1970s. I'm really excited
by our campus outreach program: this is clearly having an
impact. Whenever I think the cause of preserving our liberty
is lost, and the looming threat of, say, Poindexterism is
about to engulf us, something like this happens to renew my
faith in the future.
Hey,
you student activists! Psssst! Wanna cause some trouble
on your campus, and get the rad-lib lefties and the
College Republicans in a lather – and thinking? Get in on
the action by clicking here.
–
Justin Raimondo
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