Of all the excuses ladled out for the Obama administration’s shredding of the Fourth Amendment while assaulting press freedom and prosecuting \u201cnational security\u201d whistleblowers, none is more pernicious than the claim that technology is responsible.<\/p>\n
At first glance, the explanation might seem to make sense. After all, the capacities of digital tech have become truly awesome. It\u2019s easy to finger \u201ctechnology\u201d as the driver of government policies, as if the president at the wheel has little choice but to follow the technological routes that have opened up for Big Brother.<\/p>\n
Now comes New York Times<\/em> reporter Charlie Savage, telling listeners and viewers of a Democracy Now interview<\/a> that the surveillance state is largely a matter of technology: \u201cIt\u2019s just the way it is in the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a great way to depoliticize a crucial subject \u2013 downplaying the major dynamics of the political economy, anti-democratic power and top-down choices \u2013 letting leaders off the hook, as if sophistication calls for understanding that government is to be regulated by high-tech forces rather than the other way around. <\/p>\n In effect, the message is that \u2013 if you don\u2019t like mass surveillance and draconian measures to intimidate whistleblowers as well as journalists \u2013 your beef is really with technology, and good luck with pushing back against that. Get it? The fault, dear citizen, is not in our political stars but in digital tech.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Amy Goodman asked Savage about the Obama administration\u2019s record-high prosecutions of whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, he summed up this way:<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of technology, it\u2019s impossible to hide who\u2019s in contact with whom anymore, and cases are viable to investigate now that weren\u2019t before. That\u2019s not something Obama did or Bush did. It\u2019s just the way it is in the 21st century, and investigative journalism is still grappling with the implications of that.\u201d<\/p>\n A more astute and candid assessment of such matters can be found in \u201cThrough the Looking-Glass,” where Lewis Carroll wrote this dialogue:<\/p>\n “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, “it means just what I choose it to mean \u2013 neither more nor less.”<\/i><\/p>\n “The question is,” Alice replied, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”<\/i><\/p>\n “The question is,” Humpty Dumpty responded, “which is to be master \u2013 that’s all.” <\/i><\/p>\n The surveillance state is not the default setting of digital technology. The surveillance state is a failure and suppressor of democracy.<\/p>\n A surveillance state or a democratic system \u2013 which is to be master?<\/p>\n Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where he coordinates ExposeFacts<\/a>. Solomon is a co-founder of RootsAction.org, which has encouraged donations to the Sterling Family Fund<\/a>. Disclosure: After the guilty verdict five months ago, Solomon used his frequent-flyer miles to get plane tickets for Holly and Jeffrey Sterling so they would be able to go home to St. Louis.<\/i> His books include<\/i>War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of all the excuses ladled out for the Obama administration’s shredding of the Fourth Amendment while assaulting press freedom and prosecuting \u201cnational security\u201d whistleblowers, none is more pernicious than the claim that technology is responsible. At first glance, the explanation might seem to make sense. After all, the capacities of digital tech have become truly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-26029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26029"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26031,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26029\/revisions\/26031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26029"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=26029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}