50 More Reasons To Advance The Total Surveillance State?

Gary Gibson

"Our total and unrestricted spying on you has saved your lives." 

That's not exactly what General Keith Alexander said to the American public before a "largely friendly" House committee, but it is certainly what he meant.

The General, who heads the NSA, claims that the total surveillance spy program had prevented "potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11" and that at least ten of those thwarted plots involved targets right here in the fatherland, including a plot to attack the New York City subway system. Because the NSA was listening in on every single phone call and reading every email and text, deputy director of the FBI, Sean Joyce, claims that a Kansas man's plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange was thwarted. 

Of course, it's always a bunch of stuff with an unverifiable amount of danger that the government manages to disrupt, or things they initiated themselves by radicalizing some patsy and then very publicly arresting him. Things like the attempted shoe bomber are stopped by private citizens acting in their own naked self-interest for self-preservation. And things like the Boston Bombing manage to happen anyway. 

The excuse is always the same: it would be even worse if it weren't for the government. But it's government large-scale terrorism that induces small-scale reprisals in the first case most of the time. It's very hard to tell which acts of small-scale terrorism (as opposed to the large-scale government terrorism with drones and F18s) are false flags designed to advance the surveillance police state or line the pockets of the military-industrial complex and which are genuine. Sometimes these attacks kill both birds with a single stone, as when the attempted underwear bomber conveniently resulted in Homeland Insecurity's, Michael Chertoff's naked body scanners ending up in US airport terminals. 

We also can't help but think of another time a government official has claimed that the government's power to monitor and abuse has stopped lots of "terrorists". Recall that disturbing recording made by a Canadian man and his wife on a shopping trip as they were accosted by US border officials. The man and women ended up being treated like dangerous criminals by these actual dangerous criminals. One of these border officials made the obviously laughable claim that their aggressive tactics stopped "dozens of terrorists per day."



There is a certain brilliance to General Alexander low-balling the number to 50 plots stopped over a decade or so. It seems a lot more plausible than the dozens per day figure spat out by a border thug in a heated exchange. People are inclined to believe it. And such attempts at plausibility seem to be working based on the polls that show roughly half of Americans think the government still hasn't gone far enough in destroying privacy to catch the terrorists it's often responsible for creating in the first place. 

While every government is inherently immoral, not every government is nearly as far down the road of imperial police state as the US. In fact, there are plenty of fairly mild governments who don't bother their citizens much. They actually let them keep most or all of their income...and they don't listen in on all their phone calls or read all their emails! Crazy, I know, but those are the kinds of places that TDV Passports can help you become a citizen of (click here to learn more). 

And if you're looking for a place to live where the government not only isn't spying on you but where they also mostly let the free market raise standards of living -- and where you can be surrounded by folks who agree that life is better when the government isn't listening in on all your communications -- then you should definitely check out Galt's Gulch, Chile. 

US skies will be filled with drones with cameras that can record every physical event taking place in an area the size of a city. The air will be filled with drones as small as insects that can infiltrate all your personal spaces to record you. The government is capturing, storing and poring through every electronic communication in the country. And you really think that wall the Senate is voting on is to keep Mexicans out? 

Gary Gibson, The Dollar Vigilante’s Editor, cut his teeth writing for liberty and profit as the managing editor of the now-defunct Whiskey & Gunpowder financial newsletter. He now writes for and edits The Dollar Vigilante. In his capacity as managing editor of TDV’s monthly subscription letter TDV Homegrown, Gary insists on playing Russian Roulette by basing himself in the USSA heartland so he can round up information on how the TDV readers stuck in the USSA can best survive and profit in the increasingly turbulent times in the morally and financially bankrupt empire.

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