Mad Quickies: Last Gasp Books, Animal Activist Art, Your Privacy, Shakespearean Insults and More!

I was asked what I thought about the Bob Cesca link posted here that criticizes Greenwald’s TED talk.

The point of the “Daily Banter” website is, as they say themselves, “daily snark.” It’s not well intentioned and sincere, it’s meant to rile folks up. I mean, just read the title of the article! So I don’t trust them to begin with. And read the comments below Cesca’s article to get a sense of who reads that site on a regular basis – there is a lot of dopey and simplistic knee jerk hate of Greenwald and Snowden expressed there. It’s a very one sided conversation going on in the comments sections, which says a lot about who enjoys that site, I think.

About the actual article – Cesca’s “strawman” comment is itself a strawman. Clever!! Why he feels the need to be an apologist for the NSA is beyond me, but many folks do it. Greenwald never claims the NSA are themselves publishing our stuff. GGs thought provoking point was about what happens to us as individuals and as a society, and to creativity and dissent, when we live in world where we know we are being watched at all times. The Panopticon. It’s a deeply troubling thing to contemplate, and is the main thing that has worried me ever since Snowden’s revelations were made public. It’s long term impact is tragic and terrifying to contemplate. Equally terrifying is that so few seem to care. If this was the early 70s’, the uproar would be deafening (that uproar back then over Watergate related revelations of domestic surveillance led to the Church Committee hearings and the creation of the FISA court to theoretically curtail such abuses), but in our post 9/11 fearful society, the majority are too cowed and scared and self-policing to do anything about it.

This comment of Cesca’s is just pulled out of nowhere- “Very few reputable people use this ‘I have nothing to hide’ line of reasoning in defense of NSA any more.” I was reading many, many comments sections of many news sites in the months that followed Snowden’s leak (self torture, I know, but I was fascinated to see how it was playing out), and I can tell you that the “Why is this anything to worry about because I have nothing to hide?” argument was being made CONSTANTLY. And still is.

And this point of his is just plan goofy-

“3) NSA isn’t spying on you personally. Not without an individual warrant. If that’s not good enough for you — the existence of individual warrants to target you for surveillance, then you’d better extend your angst all the way down to your local police force and the Constitution itself, which permits searches with warrants.”

Sigh. While they may not being doing anything with the information yet, they *are* in essence spying on all of us. Their literal motto is “Collect It All,” and they are sucking up every single e-mail, skype call, cell phone call, every damn thing is being saved in perpetuity for use if and when they ever need it. It’s come out that the number of folks on a “watch” list is over one million. Given what I do with my own art and activism, whattya wanna bet that I am on that list? And the FISA courts record is that out of the thousands and thousands of requests they get for a warrant, they literally grant nearly every single one. It seems clear that they are a rubber stamp fig leaf of “democratic process and oversight” with very little meaningful review.

With all we know of the horrific, illegal and undemocratic things our own government and intelligence agencies have done over the decades, with all the lies we know about and secrets that have been factually exposed, with all of our illegal acts of aggression against other countries, Cesca’s article is essentially arguing that now…now….. we ought to trust these folks. Well, har har har!! What snark, Daily Banter! You go, girl! Stockholm syndrome!

Can this guy really be serious, or is this just his schtick to make money with a website? Whichever it is, he’s a pretty silly person, and not helping this very important conversation.