Gary North at EPJ:

“I’m glad that Snowden did what he did, because I wanted to hear evidence that backed up what James Bamford wrote about the NSA over two decades ago. It was nice to see that Bamford’s warning was validated by Snowden’s relations. But nobody cared about Bamford’s book, and nobody really cares about Snowden’s revelations — not enough to cut the NSA’s budget.

Snowden’s revelations serve as a mirror. We looked into the mirror, and we saw what manner of people we are. We just don’t care. We didn’t care in 1913, so why should we care today?

Once the voters concluded that they could force the rich to pay more in taxes than they did, privacy ended. Envy was basic to the grant of power to the IRS. Envy is alive and well. Privacy isn’t.

As long as there is an IRS, there will be an NSA.

CONCLUSION

Until the voters’ minds change regarding big government, exposure of major infringements on our liberties has no effect in rolling back the state.

If voters accept the interventionist state, they are glad to hear about the Bad Guys. “They are making us safer.” “They are protecting us from terrorists.” “We need them.” “The loss of our privacy is the price of liberty. It’s worth paying.”

The variant regarding the NSA: “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.”

“Your papers, please. You have nothing to fear if you have not done anything wrong.”

This assumes that the state is benign. It assumes that the state only goes after bad guys.

There has been no uprising of the American people to defend their privacy.

If you think I am exaggerating, I have two words for you: Lindsey Graham.

Now, the NSA can really get busy. “No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

The only thing that can roll this back is a budget crisis. To think that anything else can roll it back is naïve. Budget cuts can do it; nothing else can. It is going to take the fiscal crisis of the federal government to roll the system back. Nothing else will.”

Comment:

As to the conclusion that Snowden’s revelations ultimately help the NSA, I came to it the day I heard about them, as a search of this blog will show you.

[In fact, a conspiracy theory hatched here involving one Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald even got shot down in the major media, which misattributed it to Scott Creighton, at whose blog I left a link.]

However, I differ from North on his interpretation of these things.

And that is to be expected, because I don’t quote Bamford….and he does…and you can draw your own conclusions from that.

Here goes.

People are not rising up, because they cannot rise up.

If all your information (from financial records to medical records, from private conversations with lawyers to private conversations with family and friends, both respectable and embarrassing) are with the government and if the government has grown lawless, operating through private contractors and in bed with crony media, crony capitalists, and crony socialists, then exactly how  do you organize to resist without the fear that somewhere somehow something spoken in the privacy of your bedroom (Donald Sterling), some minor infraction that everyone commits (Dinesh D’Souza), some whispered false allegation substantiated by words torn out of context from a private letter or conversation, will not surface to destroy not just you, but your family, and not just for a brief moment, but for the eternity that is the web?

It is neocons now (D’Souza, Sterling) or celebrities and royals. But the masses themselves are not far behind, as the rise of revenge porn shows. From spying on illicit relations to spying on licit ones is but a step.

Words cannot be undone, but they used to be momentary and used to be for a few; they were between you and your god.

Now they are forever and they are for everyone; they are between you and the little gods who rule.

So, yes, no one is rising up.

But, to blame this on amorphous qualities shared by everyone (envy) and to tell us that people are ultimately at fault because they, like their rulers, suffer from it is to mistake the nature of the fight.

If envy enabled the IRS, envy will enable whatever succeeds the IRS.