Leviathan exposed

Jun 12, 2013 Editorial

In the post WWII era, the USA positioned itself as the exemplary model of democratic governance. In fact, in the last decade it explicitly announced that the cornerstones of its foreign policy would be to “export” democracy to other countries. This new policy initiative was launched simultaneously with its “global war on terror” in the wake of 9/11. Early on there were concerns raised abroad as to whether the spreading of “democracy” might not be simply a tactic in the latter war. Domestically, the concerns centred on the implications of placing the country on a permanent war footing since the parameters of the global war on terror were constantly shifting.
The shocking revelations last week of unimaginable surveillance of private communications demonstrate that the early fears were not misguided. They offered irrefutable proof that the imperative for the creation of the Leviathan is always a clear and present danger that must be confronted by those that care for a truly democratic order. Back in the 17th century, in the midst of civil strife, the political theorist Hobbes posited that for there to be order in a society, as opposed to the “war of all against all”, the state must possess absolute power.
Since his time, however, it has become accepted that the “democracy” of “rule by the people”, which Hobbes feared, was the best form of governance. As Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” It is interesting that Hobbes spoke during a period of “war” and Churchill directly after WWII, because while democracy has become the dominant form of governance in the modern world, politicians have persistently used the presence or threat of war as the excuse to limit the democratic rights of citizens. And this is the lesson that has emerged in the present disgraceful exercise of hubris and overreach by the American administration.
The National Security Agency has been around for a long time and was allowed much latitude because its activities were directed against foreigners. But the terrorist attack of 9/11 offered the administration of George W. Bush the excuse to extend its reach of spying exponentially through various stratagems. Take the aspect of the revelations that has most shocked ordinary citizens: that from Facebook and Yahoo to the telephone giants Verizon and Sprint, most telecommunication sites have been passing on data freely to the NSA.
This type of data sharing was supposed to be protected by the laws articulated under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 introduced by that pillar of civil liberties Senator Edward Kennedy and signed into law by the non-bellicose President Carter. However after 9/11, there were massive alterations to the FISA which were compounded by clever double speak by NSA officials. For instance, the required reports of requests for data sharing had remained quite constant. But what is now revealed is that the devil is always in the details: now one request could literally cover billions of pieces of data.
It has reached a point where there are secure facilities in the phone and social network companies created just for the NSA to download their data. While the private companies have offered heated denials of their involvement, these were not parsed closely enough to hide the loopholes through which the government was able to secure their cooperation. And in addition to these sources, the NSA satellites in the sky were vacuuming up untold bits of transmissions from across the world.
In Guyana, it is maybe to our benefit that we have not reached the level of technological sophistication as the US and its NSA. But it should not escape our attention that our government has launched our very own CIA on the grounds of Castellani House, where two reporters were detained sometime ago for “trespassing”.
It was the press that broke the story of the rampant Leviathan created in the US. It is the duty of the Guyanese press to ensure that it does not get replicated here.

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