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<span class="style1">In Grid We Trust: <br>
The Mad Activist and the Worm in the NSA</span><span class="style2"><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/day240613.html">http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/day240613.html</a><br>
by Susie Day</span>
<p>Dear Peace Blog --</p>
<p>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<em>
<a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order"
class="style5">Guardian</a></em> 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:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two days later, Edward Snowden revealed to reporter <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/glenn-greenwald" class="style5">Glenn
Greenwald</a> a gi-normous U.S. cyber-spy campaign involving nine
Internet companies like Facebook, Google, Skype, Apple, and YouTube. <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/06/07/greenwald-nsa-web-mining-extremely-menacing/"
class="style5">Greenwald</a> 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."</p>
<p>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 <em>2.5 quintillion bytes </em>of data that,
according to the <em><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/us/revelations-give-look-at-spy-agencys-wider-reach.html"
class="style5">New York Times</a></em>, pour <em>DAILY</em> 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.</p>
<p>Worse: according to the <a
href="http://pollingmatters.gallup.com/2013/06/examining-americans-attitudes-about-nsa.html"
class="style5">Gallup</a> 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: <em>Shouldn't somebody
somewhere pay attention to that man behind the curtain</em>?</p>
<p>Dear Peace Blog --</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Let's get drunk.</p>
<p>WHOA Peace Blog --</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/electric-age/1977-surveillance.php"
class="style5">Marshall McLuhan</a> was right and <a
href="http://users.wpi.edu/%7Ebmoriarty/imgd2000/docs/McLuhan1.pdf"
class="style5">the medium really <em>is</em> the message</a>, who
cares what I write -- as long as nifty media like this let me write on
them!</p>
<p>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 <em>because</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=NhsrRclfFbYC&pg=PA195&dq=%22sin+is+separation%22"
class="style5">Paul Tillich</a>'s belief that "sin is separation,"
with the NSA, the only real transgression is being off the Grid.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
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