Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Glenn Greenwald and the surveillance state run amok

Excellent series of articles by Glenn Greenwald (here) on the widening fallout and real story behind the US Petraeus scandal.

Greenwald highlights the hypocrisy of the mainstream media and commentators who are concerned about the ethics and practices of the military as a result of a salacious sex scandal, but who largely ignore the catalogue of crimes committed by the military over the last decade.

Greenwald makes the point that the real story here is about an out of control security state built on a dangerous union between corporate and state power.
This is a surveillance state run amok. It also highlights how any remnants of internet anonymity have been all but obliterated by the union between the state and technology companies.

But, as unwarranted and invasive as this all is, there is some sweet justice in having the stars of America's national security state destroyed by the very surveillance system which they implemented and over which they preside. As Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation put it this morning: "Who knew the key to stopping the Surveillance State was to just wait until it got so big that it ate itself?"

It is usually the case that abuses of state power become a source for concern and opposition only when they begin to subsume the elites who are responsible for those abuses.

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