Those of us of retirement age have a different frame of reference about espionage than younger generations. We personally remember that Communists were a menace, we read the books 1984 and Brave New World from afar, probably ignorant of the meaning of the word "dystopia," describing that particular class of literature*. (I must confess that I was ignorant of its meaning until just today). Even back then, I was a news junkie and knew who Alger Hiss, Whitaker Chambers and the Rosenbergs were. We got really afraid after Senator McCarthy told us that there were Reds everywhere!
Ubiquitous is the word I want: u·biq·ui·tous (y-bkw-ts) adj.
Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent: “plodded through the shadows fruitlessly like an ubiquitous spook” (Joseph Heller).
u·biqui·tous·ly adv. u·biqui·tous·ness n. (see dictionary citation in "References" below)
The cameras are always on in Great Britain, according to the Wall Street Journal. Nor do the Brits seem overly fearful about it. Quoting the 7/8/05 story,The British capital has more surveillance cameras monitoring its citizens than any other major city in the world. The highly visible gadgets are posted on the corners of many buildings, on new buses and in every subway station. Since 2003, the license plate of every car driving into central London during weekdays is filmed as part of a program to reduce traffic congestion. London charges a fee to cars and also uses the films to catch and fine cheats. In all, there are at least 500,000 cameras in the city, and one study showed that in a single day a person could expect to be filmed 300 times.Mixed blessings - How many electronics retailers will report boom sales of camera phones, digital and video cameras this holiday season? How many of us have started to use YouTube in our blogs? Surely there is nothing to fear here, or is there? A related story from today's BBC News article headlined,
Private life exposed by net video
Internet law professor Michael Geist wonders what effect ubiquitous cameras and easy ways to share video will have on notions of public and private. . . Over the past few decades, there have been other instances of amateur video or surveillance cameras capturing major moments.
U.S. continues its domestic spying program with little change - Senior members of the National Security Agency (NSA) briefed the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board over the Thanksgiving weekend. The board will hold its first public hearing at Georgetown University on December 5. So far this board is very weak. We should be very concerned about this because I am convinced that the tentacles of this program are ubiquitous - there's that word again - at least as of now. Quoting John Solomon, of the AP carried in today's Yahoo! News,
Two of the five board members told The Associated Press on Monday they were impressed by the safeguards the government has built into the NSA's monitoring of phone calls and computer transmissions and wished the administration could tell the public more about them to ease distrust.No NSA bill yet, Congress may change and do oversight to protect civil liberties next year. In the meantime, perhaps to get ahead of the congressional oversight curve, the Justice Department's Inspector General has begun an investigation of the NSA's domestic intelligence program. Quoting Lara Jakes Jordan, of the AP carried in today's Yahoo! News,
The inquiry by Glenn A. Fine, the department's inspector general, will focus on the role of Justice prosecutors and agents in carrying out the warrantless surveillance program run by the National Security Agency.
Fine's investigation is not expected to address whether the controversial program is an unconstitutional expansion of presidential power, as its critics and a federal judge in Detroit have charged.
. . . In January, Fine's office rejected a request by more than three dozen Democrats to investigate the secret program, which monitors phone calls and e-mails between people in the U.S. and abroad when a link to terrorism is suspected.
Fine's letter outlining his review was welcomed by congressional Democrats. At the same time, they said it falls short of examining issues at the heart of the debate — how the spying program evolved, and whether its creation violated any laws.
In an amazing irony, it is not enough that Threat Warnings from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security try to keep us afraid. As if they did not have enough to do here at home, the department has been busy teaching members of Communist China's government how to control crowds when the Olympics is held there in 2008. The effort will also make it easier for China to further limit press freedom.
So what has changed and what has stayed the same? Our old Cold War nemeses, Russia and China, are back in the espionage news. Those two governments remain unchanged, definite threats to their own citizens. There is, however, a very big change from back then. The United States and Great Britain now employ ubiquotous eyes and ears in the sky against their own citizens. One would think it is 1984 again.
References:
- ubiquitous. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved November 28, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?db=dictionary&q=ubiquitous
- Yahoo! News Espionage and Intelligence - list of related websites (see also post title link above)
- Schneier on Security - surveillance cameras in U.S. cities
- History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1999:
At Cold War's End: US Intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1989-1991 - *Wikipedia for "Dystopia" meaning,
A dystopia (alternatively, cacotopia[1], kakotopia or anti-utopia) is a fictional society that is the antithesis of utopia. It is usually characterized by an oppressive social control, such as an authoritarian or totalitarian government.
My "creative post" today at Southwest Blogger is about ancient memories.
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