Jun 17, 2013 The Making of a Totalitarian State The U.S. government has been caught red-handed spying on the American people. Edward Snowden, who worked as a federal contractor revealed in an interview with The Guardian that the National Security Agency has a program that allows it to access the phone and Internet records of over 100 million accounts. The NSA had set-up a program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats. Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube, and Apple are all participating in this top-secret spying program. Barack Obama tried to defend the program but his argument seemed more like an ominous prediction than a reassurance: “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.” Perhaps, Senator Barack Obama of 2007 had it right when he warned that the gross surveillance policy of President Bush: “Puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.” What troubles me the most about this latest attack on our civil liberties is that it was all done secretly. The firms that are having their data intercepted are gagged by law from warning their customers that they being watched. We’ve also had two clear cases where government officials lied to Congress about spying. Attorney General, Eric Holder, said the Department of Justice was not spying on reporters, and NSA head James Clapper said his agency does not intercept phone calls or online information of Americans. More than half a century ago, Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address, warned Americans of the dangers posed by the country’s growing “military-industrial complex” – a phrase that has come to represent the lobbying groups that seeks to continue or increase military spending by the national government. Today we face a greater danger from the intelligence-industrial complex. The U.S. spends at least $80 billion a year on intelligence gathering, which is more than the defense budgets of all but a handful of countries. Every day, 854,000 U.S. civil servants, military personnel and private contractors go about the task of mining data. With the military-industrial complex we normally end-up with military hardware we don’t need. With the intelligence-industrial complex we run the risk of losing our freedom. The government claims that all the data it focused on foreign nationals, but how can we trust them in the face of recent spying scandals. The IRS’s targeting of conservatives groups should alone show the importance of keeping tight controls on the government. The blanket claims by Washington leaders that all is well and we can trust them in this matter is not good enough. I would compare this situation to someone who has been convicted in the past of child molestation, telling his parole officer he plans to open a daycare center. Another credibility problem for the government is the huge data center the NSA is building in Utah. This center will be so massive in its capabilities that it will be able to record all the phone conversations of average Americans. If the government is only focused on terrorists, why do they need this amount of data storage? Most people in America are apathetic about the government’s snooping into their personal data. A good representation of this general view can found in a late night comedian responded to the scandal. Jay Leno joked, “We wanted a president that listens to all Americans - now we have one.” Leno then added, “Well, this has become a huge controversy after it was revealed that the National Security Agency seized millions of Verizon phone records, and of course this has caused panic among civil libertarians, constitutional scholars and cheating husbands everywhere.” For someone who understands Bible prophecy, there is nothing humorous about our government acting like Big Brother. The Bible warns that in that last days the Antichrist will have total control of the citizens of planet Earth. If the NSA PRISM program is not part of the Beast’s 666-mark system, it will at least be a prototype of the network he sets-up. “And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one can buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:16-17). --Todd
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:16:40 +0000
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