Boundless Informant, Boundless Lies

Dear Mr. President,
First it’s the AP phone logs, then the Fox reporter phone logs, then the Verizon phone logs, then PRISM, then that secret directive for defensive and offensive cyberwarfare and now it’s Boundless Informant. What it all shows is that none of our leaders, least of all you, are to be trusted. First the snooping is “limited,” then it isn’t, the data “critical for national security” but it isn’t, it’s “saved lives in foiling terrorist plots”—that turns out not to be true either. “We don’t know how many people are being monitored. Don’t have the capability,” the NSA director tells Congress. A lie. Senator Wyden asks James Clapper, director of national intelligence: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” “No sir,” Clapper responds. Another lie. Now you tell the American people that congressional oversight is our best guarantee that we’re not being spied on? You think anyone believes that? There is no congressional oversight. The NSA lies to Congress—bald-faced lies—and those who actually want to rein in the runaway surveillance state of America have their hands tied by the likes of Feinstein in the Senate and Rogers in the House. I bet you’d like to get Glenn Greenwald in the same cell with Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, call in a drone strike and make all 3 of them disappear. And then there’s that leaker-at-large, the one who’s causing all the mischief, the one who believes the Constitution is still in effect. Where’s Seal Team 6 when you need them? So how’s that summit with China’s President Xi going, Mr. President? Did he bring along a copy of the Heat Map from Boundless Informant that shows a lot of spying on China? Directive 20 that’s an all-hands-on-deck to map out cyberwar? Or did the two of you compare notes, chuckle over all the uproar and agree to keep in touch? What gets me is, in addition to all the lies and obfuscations, the trampling of privacy and 4^th Amendment, and all the scare tactics, is that we’re trying to solve the wrong problems. The problem isn’t terrorists in Waziristan and Helmand or al Qaeda franchises in Africa that keep popping up like Taco Bells. That problem’s pretty easy to solve. We stop killing them, they stop killing us. Of course the hard part is seeing them as humans and treating them with respect. Then we tackle the real problems: hunger, health, global warming. Call off the wars, stop snooping and start acting like a Nobel Peace Prize winner.