[News] In Grid We Trust - The Mad Activist and the Worm in the NSA

[Anti-Imperialist News]

In Grid We Trust:
The Mad Activist and the Worm in the NSA

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/day240613.html
by Susie Day

Dear Peace Blog --

Fuck you to hell.  I thought I was giving peace a chance when I spent 
all those years writing in you. About the dreams and schemes of a brave 
little peace activist standing up against state repression! I wrote with 
a sense of hope -- hope that society was making progress toward a more 
equal and just tomorrow.  Then KERBLAM!  I read in the/ Guardian 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order>/ 
that the National Security Agency has been carrying out massive domestic 
surveillance, collecting the phone records of Verizon's 100,000,000 
customers, one of whom includes ME:

    For the first time under the Obama administration the communication
    records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected
    indiscriminately and in bulk -- regardless of whether they are
    suspected of any wrongdoing.

Two days later, Edward Snowden revealed to reporter Glenn Greenwald 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/glenn-greenwald> a gi-normous U.S. 
cyber-spy campaign involving nine Internet companies like Facebook, 
Google, Skype, Apple, and YouTube. Greenwald 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/06/07/greenwald-nsa-web-mining-extremely-menacing/> 
neatly summarized how the NSA can grab and store whatever personal data 
it wants: "There are no checks.  This is how the world communicates, and 
the NSA is monitoring it at all times."

O Blog of Peace!  Why didn't you fight back?  Why did you just lie 
there, close your eyes, and think of Homeland Security?  Even as I type, 
here in the ersatz bohemia of this Eighth Avenue Starbucks, historic 
moments from years of protest are being sucked into a cyber-vortex with 
the /2.5 quintillion bytes /of data that, according to the /New York 
Times 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/us/revelations-give-look-at-spy-agencys-wider-reach.html>/, 
pour /DAILY/ into the NSA's vaults.  Soon all our heroic strivings 
against war, imperialism, racism, homophobia -- and government 
eavesdropping -- will be trapped inside that one-million-square-foot 
storage barn the government is building in the Utah mountains.

Worse: according to the Gallup 
<http://pollingmatters.gallup.com/2013/06/examining-americans-attitudes-about-nsa.html> 
website, most Americans "tend to disapprove" of being monitored, yet 
"find it acceptable in order to fight terrorism."  I feel like Dorothy, 
my ruby slippers tap-tapping in terror down the Yellow Puke Road.  The 
Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Lion have morphed into zombies and are 
staggering after me, hungry for my brains.  I'm screaming, Peace Blog. 
  Screaming: /Shouldn't somebody somewhere pay attention to that man 
behind the curtain/?

Dear Peace Blog --

I'm glad Starbucks kicked us out.  Fucking neoliberal baristas. 
  Capitalists just don't understand how screaming while typing improves 
your politics.  I'm happier here in this bar; it's more of "The People." 
  Those salt-of-the-earth, surveillance-complacent knuckleheads.

I'm sorry I was abusive to you, Peace Blog.  It's just that it hurts to 
find out the NSA has been reading you, and now knows what an idiot I am. 
  Or do I flatter myself that the NSA is at all interested in or 
threatened by my obsessive scribbling for radical change?  I can just 
see some government hacktivist rolling his (or her!) eyes in derisive 
condescension at the pathetic grandiosity with which I am even now 
typing in you.

Let's get drunk.

WHOA Peace Blog --

I must've stared for two hours at that dead worm at the bottom of that 
tequila bottle.  At first, I couldn't believe what Wormy was telling me 
to do: that I had to go buy an iPad.  But I did.  And I feel so much better!

You look so pretty on this iPad, Peace Blog!  See how your "pages" 
"flip," just like the pages of that $5.95 paper diary I tossed out in 
1992 when I bought my first computer?  I mean, if Marshall McLuhan 
<http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/electric-age/1977-surveillance.php> 
was right and the medium really /is/ the message 
<http://users.wpi.edu/%7Ebmoriarty/imgd2000/docs/McLuhan1.pdf>, who 
cares what I write -- as long as nifty media like this let me write on them!

See, all my life, Peace Blog, I've been addicted to the idea that: (a) 
if people would only listen to me; (b) I could stop injustice.  So 
untrue.  Now I see that: (a) largely /because/ people have been 
listening to me; (b) I have absolutely no control over anything.  But 
it's OK!  I shall surrender myself to my higher power. The NSA.

I have gone to the mountain and returned with this glowing iPad of 
Truth.  I now declare the National Security Agency to be One with the 
millennia-old Judeo-Christian deity commonly known as God.  God has 
domain names, IP addresses, and a terrible, swift carbon footprint. 
  Henceforth, I shall write "God" and "NSA" interchangeably; I shall 
worship them as One.  It just makes sense, Peace Blog, in that they both 
do so much monitoring.  But that's good, since they want to save us from 
the malware of terrorism.

I feel blessed, Peace Blog.  Blessed that the NSA watches over me, 
unworthy wretch though I be.  It's all part of God's plan that I must 
accept.  Because, like any good person, I have nothing to hide.  And 
because everything God does is legal.

It's like I'm downloading and installing a free update of moral software 
for Western Culture. There's only one Commandment: Thou Shalt Stay 
Logged On.  Yes, much like theologian Paul Tillich 
<http://books.google.com/books?id=NhsrRclfFbYC&pg=PA195&dq=%22sin+is+separation%22>'s 
belief that "sin is separation," with the NSA, the only real 
transgression is being off the Grid.

Privacy, schmivacy, Peace Blog.  Who cares if the NSA knows I'm standing 
in line at the needle exchange?  If I'm a documented American, I'm free! 
  So I forgive you, Peace Blog.  Because, like that worm in the tequila 
bottle, ultimately we're all going to end up transparent, inert, and 
just lying there.  I know I am.

Why?  Because I'm afraid to fight the power?  No.  Because I have a new 
iPad.  And as long as there's another electronic miracle to buy on 
credit, my life will be an open book.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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