"Get It All" Blowback

Dear Mr. President,

Last week it was Hollande calling to complain, yesterday Merkel, before that, Mexico’s Calderón, last month, Brazil’s Rousseff and before her, the EU, the UN… the list keeps growing, According to today’s Guardian, you can expect a lot more angry phone calls (“NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US official handed over contacts”). The article says you assured Merkel that you were not monitoring her calls now and wouldn’t in the future, the same assurances you gave Hollande, Rousseff and all the others. The surveillance program is being reviewed, you said, rebalanced. But the Guardian article shows that what the NSA calls “customers”—the State Department, Pentagon, etc.—were encouraged to hand over their rolodex files of high level foreign leaders’ phone numbers so they could be monitored. Many officials did without compunction, and soon as the NSA got new numbers they were “tasked,” a euphemism and obfuscation meaning those phones were tapped. In the document revealing all this (thank you, Mr. Snowden!), the NSA also admits that the numbers produced little reportable intelligence. But what it really shows is that 1) everybody is a suspected terrorist and, 2) the NSA surveillance programs are not about uncovering terrorist plots but about expanding the database and the universe of surveillance. The means to a goal has become the goal itself. To date the NSA has not shown a single instance of a plot foiled by their programs. They may have contributed information after the plot was discovered but they have never been more than a secondary source. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been siphoned from our own needs to build a surveillance boondoggle with zero value—no, with negative value, for it destroys trust and credibility among friends and allies around the world. And yet, you continue to defend and protect them as “an essential part of national security.” That’s bullshit and you know it, Mr. President. The NSA is a monster out of control, a danger to democracy, freedom and the security of everyone. I’m glad you’re getting angry phone calls. It seems the only way to stop this irresponsible and dangerous Nazi/Stasi surveillance state is through outside pressure since our own citizenry is too complacent, too comatose, too disengaged to rise up in protest. Quit denouncing and pursuing Edward Snowden. He is not the cause of the problem. The villains are Clapper, Alexander and all those who march to their mad fantasy of Get It All!