May

17

On a message board recently, actually on a couple of them, I have seen threads about (US) border guards doing things like downloading content from peoples’ computers.

The posts have been running generally against this, with people citing all kinds of things about legalities and the constitution, some even suggesting that the population should resist this.

An article on a popular blog is waggishly critical of government review of private emails - yours, mine and everybody’s - and again, the comments run almost unanimously against.

What makes this interesting is that for the most part, these appear to be comments made by Americans.

But what does it mean, really? Do I, does anyone, really take as an indication that the American public is on the verge of rising up and exercising their right to change their government? Or, more aptly in the current situation, establish one?

Frankly, no. The message boards in question are inhabited almost exclusively by hard-core nerds, not at all representative of the population as a whole, and while this is a population sector almost certainly more “educated” and “informed” than the average American, in this case that average American, about whom we are always reading studies that show that he can’t find the United States on a blank map, much less any of the countries the United States is currently invading and occupying, might be a little better informed than the nerd elite on the implications and certainly the cultural realities of certain issues.

That “average American” is much more likely than his elite computer nerd brother to argue that anybody who is so anxious to keep secrets from the government in the name of privacy must have something to hide, and that he does not have anything to hide, and is glad that his leaders are protecting him and his family from all the people who hate Americans, and proud to be able to do his part by giving Uncle Sam carte blanche to view, even confiscate anything on his laptop or in his home, because there is a lot of anti-American sentiment out there, and the US is at war on terror.

While there may have been some discussion in the UN on just what “terrorism” means, it is pretty well established, both in the mind of our average American and in actual Washington-mandated practice, that “terrorism” is defined as opposition or resistance to US policies.

So when I read all these passionate declarations of opposition and language that could be interpreted as encouraging - or, as it would be called by Washington - “inciting” people to “resist” an element of America’s “war on terror,” while I am always glad to see people engaging in independent thought, my overriding reaction is not to leap up and shout “Yes! Revolution is just around the corner!”

Rather, I am plagued with a low-grade, vague uneasiness, worried that one of these sincere and independent-thinking folks might actually do it - might actually stand there at some airport and tell the operative that no, he may not download the contents of his computer, at least not without due process, and keep on citing those laws and consitutution bits all the way to his indefinite detention cell.

I would bet dollars to doughnuts that few, if any of the people who express opposition to the “government” in Washington reading the emails they send to their sweethearts, or downloading whatever private information and binary property may reside on the hard drives of their laptops, would profess to oppose the war on terror. I bet most of them “support the troops” even if they don’t “support the war” and I would probably be surprised to learn how many of them do “support the war.”

It is almost certain that none of them considers him or herself to be “on the side of the terrorists,” most of them probably believe the Legend of Osama with the same conviction that they believe the names on their own birth certificates, many of them have probably either “served their country” or are very proud of family members who have participated or are currently part of, US invasions of this or that far-flung land.

But the dudes working that airport gig are not, I don’t think, going to take all that into consideration. Nor are the dudes in Washington, one or more of whom will almost certainly be contacted at some point, if and when family and friends are ever apprised of their loved ones detention.

In all the discussions, only a few messages expressed support for Washington’s decrees. And one did not really express either support or opposition, but stated briefly that it would be prudent to think carefully before positioning oneself as an opponent of the war on terror - especially those who have children that they would not wish to see interrogated.

That reminded me of a post on another blog, a few years ago, about the seizure and interrogation by the CIA or some Washington-based alphabet soup of the seven and nine year old sons of a foreign national that the US considered to be an enemy of the war on terror.

To this day, no one knows what ever happened to whatever may have been left of those two little boys. While bits of the story did leak into some US media, it was not the kind of story that the average American really wants to hear more about, not the kind of story that advertisers and sponsors are really eager to see more of, and if you asked most of those average Americans today, they will tell you that none of that ever really happened, that it was all just terrorist propaganda, and even if it were true, the only reason that whichever media outlet mentioned it only did so because they wanted to make America look bad.

Some non-US media covered the story in more detail. The father was shown videos of his children being “interrogated,” and suffered a heart attack. The physicians who are charged with the duty of keeping “detainees” alive for further interrogation were unable, in this case, to obtain success, and the father perished. The little boys, no one knows.

Naturally, as far as the average American, and I would speculate, the vast majority of those computer geeks who advocate resisting the seizure of the contents of their hard drives and the reading of their emails, that or anything else that appears in non-US media is “not reliable,” because only US media can be counted on to tell the truth, especially when it comes to stories about things like that, because there is so much anti-American sentiment out there.

That incident is certainly not unique, the practice of “interrogating” family members, especially children, has been popular for millennia. The Romans did it, the Mongols did it, so did the Persians and so do the Americans.

The purpose of “interrogation” is not to obtain information. Removing for a moment, any and all questions of morality, every study ever done on the subject has consistently proven that any “information” thus obtained is worthless, as people will say absolutely anything if they believe that it will cause the “interrogation” of themselves or a loved one to cease.

And of course in the case of the “war on terror,” there is no “information,” at least in the sense that the popular TV shows and politicians would use the term, but that is irrelevant.

The real purpose is to send a message to those who stand outside the “facility,” and in that regard, it is most effective.

The reason that the message has not reached those computer nerds has to do, in my opinion, with the fact that most of those who have been seized since the US began its war on terror, are not of the US mainstream demographic.

And even among those sectors among whom it is impossible to find anyone who does not know of someone who was either detained, or simply disappeared one day, it is not a frequent topic of conversation.

Because the message has reached those folks. And they are not about to engage with you in small talk about their neighbor or their cousin having been decreed to be an opponent of the war on terror, because how do they know whether you might be trying to obtain some information from them about the whereabouts of his loved ones? Or whether you might be one of those loved ones, someone the detainee would not want to see interrogated, someone who might help get the message out - the message that opposing or resisting the “war on terror” is not without its consequences.

So while on the one hand, I applaud the feisty spirit of those internet posters who are outraged at this or that regime decree, I would also counsel them to think carefully, very carefully, about what they are saying, and how well it fits in with their larger belief system.

Are they really intending to cast their lot with the Resistance? Have they thought it all out, made their decision with eyes wide open, aware of all the implicatons thereof, aligned themselves with other like-minded individuals, made plans to provide for the safety of their dependents?

I am certain that none of them has done any of those things, because if they had, it is very unlikely that they would be posting on message boards that other impressionable and passionate young people should “resist” having their emails read or the contents of their computers downloaded at airports.


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