The Federal Reserve, responding to concerns about the economy and the stock market, and perhaps to criticisms by President Trump, recently changed course on interest rates by cutting its “benchmark” rate from 2.25 percent to two percent. President Trump responded to the cut in already historically-low rates by attacking the Fed for not committing to future rate cuts.
The Fed’s action is an example of a popular definition of insanity: doing the same action over and over again and expecting different results. After the 2008 market meltdown, the Fed launched an unprecedented policy of near-zero interest rates and “quantitative easing.” Both failed to produce real economic growth. The latest rate cut is unlikely to increase growth or avert a major economic crisis.
It is not a coincidence that the Fed’s rate cut came along with Congress passing a two-year budget deal that increases our already 22 trillion dollars national debt and suspends the debt ceiling. The increase in government debt increases the pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates artificially low so the federal government’s interest payments do not increase to unsustainable levels.
President Trump’s tax and regulatory policies have had some positive effects on economic growth and job creation. However, these gains are going to be short-lived because they cannot offset the damage caused by the explosion in deficit spending and the Federal Reserve’s resulting monetization of the debt. President Trump has also endangered the global economy by imposing tariffs on imports from the US’s largest trading partners including China. This has resulted in a trade war that is hurting export-driven industries such as agriculture.
President Trump recently imposed more tariffs on Chinese imports, and China responded to the tariffs by devaluing its currency. The devaluation lowers the price consumers pay for Chinese goods, partly offsetting the effect of the tariffs. The US government responded by labeling China a currency manipulator, a charge dripping with hypocrisy since, thanks to the dollar’s world reserve currency status, the US is history’s greatest currency manipulator. Another irony is that China’s action mirrors President Trump’s continuous calls for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
While no one can predict when or how the next economic crisis will occur, we do know the crisis is coming unless, as seems unlikely, the Fed stops distorting the economy by manipulating interest rates (which are the price of money), Congress cuts spending and debt, and President Trump declares a ceasefire in the trade war.
The Federal Reserve’s rate cut failed to stop a drastic fall in the stock market. This is actually good news as it shows that even Wall Street is losing faith in the Federal Reserve’s ability to manage the unmanageable — a monetary system based solely on fiat currency. The erosion of trust in and respect for the Fed is also shown by the interest in cryptocurrency and the momentum behind two initiatives spearheaded by my Campaign for Liberty — passing the Audit the Fed bill and passing state laws re-legalizing gold and silver as legal tender. There is no doubt we are witnessing the last days of not just the Federal Reserve but the entire welfare-warfare system. Those who know the truth must do all they can to ensure that the crisis results in a return to a constitutional republic, true free markets, sound money, and a foreign policy of peace and free trade.
There are enough laws on the books. There’s not a single new law that would change anything. First Trump agreed to ban bump stocks, a stupid argument if there ever was one. By labeling bump stocks “machine guns,” the ATF effectively changed their classification under the 1934 National Firearms Act(NFA) and made them illegal under the 1968 Gun Control Act (GCA), a move which retroactively criminalizes their purchase and ownership. By the way, the 1968 GCA was taken from Adolph Hitler’s gun ban.
If Trump signs any new laws, this will drive a huge wedge between him and his supporters. True, there is no one else to vote for, but Trump supporters will not go out in droves as they did in 2016, which could give the election to the Democratic Socialists. If the President backs down on his promises, he will lose…and the left wants our guns, they want them out of our hands, and when the movie, The Hunt, becomes reality even though it’s now been pulled, we won’t have any way of firing back.
As a nation under the U.S. Constitution we are 230 years old. It may surprise readers to learn that for the first 124 of these years we had no federal income tax and handled our expenses quite well. Today the 55% who pay federal income taxes (77.5 million do not) pay nearly a fifth of their income to the federal government. Prior to 1913 one kept what is now taken from them.
How would you spend it if not taken? You would spend the extra fifth of your salary on thousands of items that are made by others as well as services you might like. This not only would enrich your life but it would provide jobs for others making those items or providing those services. Many middle class folks could purchase a new car every other year with what they are forced to give to the federal government.
Would you spend it more wisely than the federal government? Certainly! Most of the money taken from you by the federal government is spent on perpetual war, foreign aid, grants to privileged portions of our society, and endless unconstitutional subsidized programs; the last two categories of which basically take the money of those who produce and redistribute it to those who do not. Even some non-tax payers get income tax refunds—so corrupt is the system.
Of course, those receiving and benefiting from these programs will defend them. But the fact remains that tax monies provide largely government jobs, which are almost entirely consumption jobs (jobs that consume the production of society but produce little consumable). Such jobs cannot produce for public consumption a potato, a carton of milk, or even a can of hair spray. They bring another person to the table to eat, but not another to produce something to eat.
What largely brought about the give-away programs of the Twentieth Century was the now 106-year-old 16th Amendment—the federal income tax. All three 1912 presidential candidates Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, and their respective parties, wanted this financial water faucet that they could turn on at will. With it they could purchase anything—even people.
Prior to 1913 the federal government remained mostly faithful to her grants of power in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which left them with only four powers: to tax, pay the debts, provide for the general welfare, and provide for the common defense. Because the federal government has the inclination to maximize their authority the last two power grants, general welfare and common defense, each had eight qualifiers to harness them more fully. Outside these qualifiers the federal government had no power to tax or spend.
General welfare then meant everyone equally (general), as opposed to “specific welfare” or “privileged welfare” as it is today, targeting those to forfeit and those to receive monies. The Constitution did not deny states, counties, or cities from having such programs, only the federal government. But politicians soon learned that the more they promised to the people, from the money of others, the easier it was to get elected and stay elected.
The problem with the federal government going off the list and funding things clearly not on it was that each time they did so the stronger the inclination to do so again. One minor departure begets another until one notices that what the federal government does has little or no relationship to the list. I ask my students what would happen if they took to kindergarten a lollypop and gave it to one child? What would the others say? Where is mine? Try taking away long provided benefits from a privileged group, as for example food stamps, and see how popular you are with that voting group in the next election.
So why does the government now need a fifth of everything you make and it is still not enough? Answer, because we went off the listed powers of the Constitution and every departure required more taxpayer funding. The solution to less tax is less government. A side benefit is more freedom. The productive classes would not be hurt. Seldom do they qualify for the federally subsidized programs anyway.
The fifth taken from the productive classes would be spent by them creating a haven of jobs for those who wished to work. The cycle of dependency would be drastically reduced. The federal government would no longer be an enabler to those not working. States would decide for themselves what assistance programs they could afford with some states offering more and others less as the Tenth Amendment mandates.
So, how did we cover the expenses of the federal government—even wars—our first 124 years? Products coming into the country were assessed a fee to market in the U.S. called a tariff. We got product producers in other countries to cover our national expenses and thus we were able to spend on ourselves every cent of what the federal government now takes, which inadvertently stimulated the economy. No one should be able to argue that our exceeding $22 trillion national debt is fair, has really worked for any of us, and is a better plan.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College.
“The empires of the future are empires of the mind.” – Winston Churchill
While I’m gratified that so many Americans are at last waking up to the sorry state of our Republic, I have to take issue with the oft-stated notion that America is becoming an empire. On the contrary: America has been an empire for some time now. What is happening to us in terms of our loss of liberties and our government’s increasing aggression, both at home and abroad is not the onset of some new thing. It is, rather, the final stage of an illness that has proven fatal to every people who have ever contracted it—a disease of the mind. For before an empire can be birthed on the world stage it must first be conceived in the minds of men, and the imperial mindset was present in our United States of America from the very beginning.
But how could this be? After all, imperial notions seem far removed—if not entirely antithetical—to American idealism as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. America was conceived in the idea that governments exist in order to protect the rights of individuals, and thus cannot justly exercise power over and above the consent of the governed. Empires, on the other hand, are inherently creatures of force and collectivism; they subvert the rights of individuals in favor of furthering the power of the state. Indeed, the very mention of the word empire conjures up images that are anathema to the classical American mindset: tyrants seated on elaborate thrones, immense standing armies, masses of the common people in servitude (or at least behaving themselves discreetly under the state’s watchful eye), torture chambers, ideological oppression, and rampant decadence.
If we look back on our history with a critical eye, however, I think we’ll notice that imperial ambitions, while not consistent with our core doctrines, are, nonetheless, not as far divorced from our thinking as we would prefer to believe.
The Imperial March
After fighting a revolution to throw off the yoke of an empire, the United States of America began acting, in many ways, as an imperial power itself. President James Monroe effectively made this a matter of policy in 1823 when he articulated his famous “Monroe Doctrine.” The Monroe Doctrine gave the US an actionable interest in the affairs of the entire western hemisphere, and was based on the justification that European maneuverings in the Americas were inherently “dangerous to our peace and safety.” The European nation-states were based on different political systems than our own, Monroe argued; therefore, any expansion on their part in our backyard was a natural threat to us.
Given the relative weakness of the US military at that time in history, the Monroe Doctrine was quite a bold stance. It was indicative of two ideas that would, together, form the cornerstone of American nationalism and, later, militarism: 1) an understanding of the fact that America’s experiment in self-government was fragile, and 2) the fact that Americans were quickly coming to view themselves as the providentially appointed guardians of political righteousness. Journalist John O’Sullivan expressed both ideas in 1845 when he declared that it was America’s “Manifest Destiny”—our clear, divinely appointed mission—to “overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”
In 1853, the US government decided that the Pacific trade had also been entrusted to us, and insisted upon using Japan as a refueling stop on the way to China. This in spite of the fact that Japan was a notoriously isolationist nation at that time in its history and wanted nothing to do with us. Secretary of State Daniel Webster had laid out the justification for this it in 1851, when he asserted that the coal in the Japanese islands had been placed there “by the Creator of all things…for the benefit of the human family.” Commodore Matthew Perry was dispatched to explain this to the Japanese, who, upon seeing the guns of Perry’s ships, agreed that perhaps they were being unfair to us after all. They agreed to grant us re-coaling rights with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Then, a few years later in 1858, Perry convinced the Japanese Shogun to sign a “Treaty of Amity and Commerce,” establishing formal diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States. Once again, Perry’s mission of amity was greatly assisted by the warships he brought with him.
The Nationalist Mindset
There is no doubt in my mind but that Commodore Perry and his superiors believed that they were furthering a noble cause, and this in spite of the fact that they were acting coercively against a people who had done them no harm. Yes, I’m perfectly aware that they were also motivated by the potential for enhancing America’s wealth and prestige in Pacific ventures (in other words, pride and greed), but what must be understood here is that Washington’s brand of nationalism sees no difference between the expansion of American power and the success of American ideals.
Nationalism is, by definition, collectivism; and history demonstrates for us that two things always happen in a collective system: the will of the majority eclipses the rights of individuals, and the majority (or rather, its voice) always assumes the identity of the nation. This makes nationalism fundamentally incompatible with O’Sullivan’s “liberty and federated self-government” in the long term because governments are jealous gods; they will allow no others before them. Where national and regional or local interests collide, as they ultimately must, the former will insist that the latter yield in the name of “the greater good.” Regional and local interests will be dubbed “selfish,” “short-sighted,” and “obstructionist.” Whatever ideals are considered precious will be assumed by the nationalist element, which will tout its own success as equivalent to the success of those ideals, even if, in actuality, its agenda runs contrary to them (the terms “workers’ party” and “revolution of the proletariat” come to mind right away here). Again, the majority, or the voice that claims to represent it, becomes the nation.
This is precisely what happened in our history. An authoritarian, nationalist element eventually gained control of the central government, made its agenda equivalent to the preservation and advancement of “the great experiment of liberty and self-government,” and thereby assumed the moral authority to combat all contrary influences, ostensibly before those influences could destroy the nation itself.
I’m referring, of course, to Abraham Lincoln and his indispensable “war for the Union.”
The True Virginians
According to Lincoln, the Southern states that seceded from the Union weren’t simply trying to go their own way; they were actually trying to destroy America itself. Never mind the fact that secession was not unconstitutional, that it was fully consistent with the principles of self-determination that had led to the creation of the United States of America in the first place, and that the departure of the Southern states would have left the Union fully intact between the remaining states and the government at Washington fully functional. “You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government,” Lincoln informed the Confederacy in his first inaugural address, “while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it’.” The war he inaugurated was, in his terms, “essentially a people’s contest,” a “war for a great national idea, the Union,” a test to see whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure,” a struggle to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Note that, in spite of the fact that it was Lincoln who was trying to overthrow the expressed will of the Southern people, he nonetheless argued that it was he and his friends in Union blue who were fighting for “government of the people.” The Unionists were the real Americans, the true defenders of liberty and the Constitution. In one amazing instance, Lincoln went so far as to argue that those Virginians who supported secession weren’t even Virginians anymore. In an address to Congress on July 4, 1861, Lincoln remarked:
The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant insurrection to make its nest within her borders; and this Government has no choice left but to deal with it where it finds it. And it has less regret, as the loyal citizens have in due form claimed its protection. Those loyal citizens this Government is bound to recognize and protect as being Virginia.
Suffice it to say that the histories of wars are written by the victors. Lincoln and his fellow nationalists won, overthrowing the “confederated republic” of the Founders and the Constitution with its doctrines of delegated, separated, and reserved powers, in favor of “one nation, indivisible.” This new version of America became the ‘fulfillment’ of the Declaration of Independence (that old joint resolution of secession), a “new birth of freedom”: the realization of what the Founders had really wanted to achieve but were prevented from doing because of selfish, sectional feeling—or so we’re told.
Even commentators who criticize Lincoln for the cruelty of Northern war measures—especially in the last two years of the war—generally agree that things worked out for the best because of him. In his book Lincoln’s Little War, Webb Garrison demonstrates how Lincoln manipulated the events that led to the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter; however, he concludes that the United States could never have become a superpower “if fifty strong and separate states made all the significant decisions,” and that America “became one nation in the real sense of the term” as a result of the war. Writing in the Boston Herald on April 19, 1999, columnist Don Feder compared Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s tactics to those of Abraham Lincoln, but then brushed Lincoln’s atrocities aside with a statement that it all turned out for the best in the end. “Lincoln did what was necessary to preserve the Union,” Feder commented. “America, the greatest force for good in this century, would have been reduced to a basket case if the rebellion had succeeded.”
So forget the fact that Lincoln overthrew the country’s founding principles and waged a brutal war against innocent people; his victory made it possible for us to overthrow regimes that brutalize innocent people in other countries today, and that’s what counts. Such is the majority consensus, based largely in naiveté, I’m afraid. In opposing Southern secession, Lincoln “saved America,” and many would have us believe that America was saved so that it could, in turn, save the world. Thus the success of America’s ideals became inextricably tied to the power and prestige of the United States of America itself, which became, as Don Feder would say, a “force for good.” And who can argue with a force for good?
Indeed, many Americans came to view the country, not merely as a force for “good,” but as the very instrument of God on earth. Americans, in general, had always believed that they were blessed of God, both in their political system and the richness of their land, but Lincoln twisted the idea of God’s involvement with America to suit his own purposes.
The most enduring example of this comes to us in the form of comments he made during his second inaugural address, which was far more religious in tone than his first. In the address, Lincoln suggested that God had brought the war about in order to punish America for slavery, and that it would continue for as long as God saw fit, even though Lincoln himself had brought it about through his scheming and had the power to end it at any time simply by withdrawing his armies from Southern soil. “The Almighty has His own purposes,” Lincoln informed Americans. “As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Unfortunately, Lincoln’s hypocrisy stuck in the American mindset. The war ceased to be a political power struggle, or a matter of national pride, and instead became a crusade between good and evil, brought about by the providence of God Himself. And once that idea was accepted, it wasn’t much of a leap to assume that, because God had started the whole thing, it had all worked out just as He had planned. Lincoln and the North became God’s instrument of justice; thus their victory, and the nationalist ideals that drove it, had the divine seal of approval. Glory, glory, hallelujah.
And of course, it didn’t help anything that Lincoln died as an apparent martyr to his cause, which had the effect of virtually deifying him, and earned him the right to sit in that Temple of Zeus the taxpayers gratefully erected for him in Washington D.C. Even as a child, when I was caught up in the Lincoln mythos, the Lincoln Memorial struck me as somehow wrong. If you have never been there, you cannot entirely appreciate the scale of it. Lincoln sits—literally larger than life—on a great white throne in the midst of an enormous building that resembles a Greek or Roman temple. It’s a strange marriage of biblical and pagan imagery; a kingly, semi-divine construct that would have given George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson heartburn.
Following Lincoln’s (excuse me, God’s) war, American nationalism became a strange mixture of jingoism, ideological protectionism, and an old-fashioned desire for “more,” all combined with a messiah complex. It seems that we threw off the yoke of an empire, not in order to repudiate imperialism, but simply to establish one that was more to our liking. We took over the continent in order to provide room for the “great experiment of liberty and federated self-government,” subduing both treasonous secessionists and red-skinned savages in the process (for the collective good, naturally), policed the neighborhood so that no undesirable elements could move in, and in the process completely altered our mindset and became something those who fought in our revolution would not have recognized.
I take that back; they would indeed have recognized it—they had fought against it, after all.
The War for the American Mind
The empire we see today is a natural extension of Manifest Destiny, carried out on a global stage, driven by a sense of what the ancients referred to as noblesse oblige, a “noble obligation” to civilize the world—or so Washington tells us. Interestingly, our leaders seem to feel that our noble obligation lies along lines defined by natural resource wealth, particularly oil, and may be advanced by less than noble means, as anyone on the other side of the bombs, depleted uranium ammunition, drone strikes, assassinations, and torture can testify. But is this really so surprising? After all, we idolize men who brutalized segments of our own population into submission and then covered it all with the flag and pronounced it good. If we venerate men who did this to our own people, do foreigners really stand any chance of being treated better?
And, of course, we cannot tolerate dissent at home because this “weakens our resolve.” This mentality is summed up nicely in the words of former Attorney General John Ashcroft:
To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends.
Remember: nationalists assume the identity of the entire nation and all of the ideals that it supposedly holds dear, even when their agenda and methods obviously conflict with those ideals. In their minds, America is what they say it is, and they are the true Americans, just as Lincoln once proclaimed that those Virginians who supported the Union were the only true Virginians. Our “national unity” is unity on their terms. “Our resolve” is their resolve. If you are not for them, you are against them. Opposing them is “giving ammunition” to America’s enemies; and if you are arming America’s enemies, then, naturally, you yourself are an enemy.
In light of this, it is useless to talk of rolling back Washington’s empire without confronting the mindset that drives it. Empires are, first and foremost, constructs of the mind, and it is there that they must first be overthrown.
Robert Hawes is the author of One Nation Indivisible? A Study of Secession and the Constitution, in addition to numerous articles on subjects ranging from politics to theology. A native of Northern Virginia, he now lives in South Carolina and is married with three children.
Most people know that the NSA spies on Americans thanks to the revelations by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers. But the NSA is just the tip of the surveillance iceberg. State, local and federal agencies have joined together the create a massive surveillance-state using a vast array of intrusive technology.
Federal intelligence agencies, including the NSA, CIA and DEA, collect data without a warrant, analyze it to build profiles on its targets and encourages state and local law enforcement to violate our fundamental right to privacy.
Documents obtained by Reuters in 2013 discussed NSA data sharing with state and local law enforcement. The NSA, passes information through the DEA’s Special Operations Division and it’s not about national security as we are told. They are being used domestically for criminal investigations. In 2013, these are the Snowden leaks, The Washington Post reported the NSA is gathering 5 billion records a day on the locations of cellphones worldwide. This includes data on tens of millions of Americans each year- all without a warrant. In 2018, the Statistical Transparency Report Regarding Use of National Security Authorities showed that the government intercepted metadata from more than 500 million Americans in 2017; a 300 percent increase from 2016.
The three main authorities for surveillance are Section 215 PATRIOT, Section 702 FISA, and Executive Order 12333. Section 215 was passed after 9/11 and allows the NSA to gather “any tangible thing” from third parties relevant to foreign intelligence. This includes bulk data on Americans as well: phone calls, data and texts. Police were granted new, sweeping surveillance powers to “fight terrorism” following 09/11 events. Whatever the cause of the events, the result is a suspect society where you have to prove your innocence and the monitoring of everything we do in real-time.
Section 702 FISA was passed in 2008 to legalize GW Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program and deals with internet traffic data. EO12333 was issued in 1981 and serves as the primary authority for spying. It governs electronic surveillance that the NSA conducts overseas and allows bulk collection of Americans metadata. Keep in mind this is only what we know publically. There are likely many other spying tools we do not know about. For example, automatic license plate readers were in place years before it was public knowledge and in the case of Section 702 FISA that law legalized an already active wiretapping program.
A note on 215: in 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was using this authority to collect American’s phone records in bulk. In 2015, the Freedom Act replaced 215 so that the NSA can gather phone data on suspected terrorists. It’s not just phone calls that are being gathered. Section 702 allows the FBI and other agencies to use bulk data collected during surveillance of foreign targets in domestic cases. Section 702, under downstream surveillance U.S. intelligence agencies go to tech companies like google and force the companies to turn over data on identified selectors, which are very broad. In upstream surveillance, the NSA partners such as ATT tap into fiber optic cables and copy the internet traffic data.
STATE AND LOCAL AGENCIES: THE BACKBONE OF THE SURVEILLANCE STATE
The NSA gets most of the attention when it comes to government spying, but state and local agencies are the backbone of the U.S. surveillance state. They collect reams of data using spy-gear funded by the federal government and then share this information across the country. Reams of data ends up in federal databases thanks to the efforts of state and local police.
The feds set up and facilitate this massive surveillance network.
Through fusion centers, state and local law enforcement agencies act as information recipients from federal departments under the Information Sharing Environment (ISE). These include the Director of National Intelligence, which covers 17 other federal agencies, including NSA. In other words, this serves as a channel for the sharing of warrantless surveillance. This information is shared between federal, state and local law enforcement and includes social network spying and CCTV cameras. The Department of Homeland Security funds 79 fusion centers across the U.S. They were created to combat terrorism, but are being used for domestic spying with no limits or transparency whatsoever. Despite these issues, congress reauthorized FISA 702 for another six years. The lesson? We should not count on Congress to limit federal spying.
Fusion centers are partnerships between public and private entities, including local, state and federal law enforcement. They “anticipate, prevent and monitor criminal activity and other hazards, then distribute their findings.” These centers research threats to government and public order, terrorism of all kinds and any international incidents with potential local impact. These centers were largely created in the years prior to 9/11. In 2012, a white paper was submitted to the House of Representatives. “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission,” written by Michael Chertoff, detailed the DHS evolving mission away from fighting terrorism toward administering a domestic intelligence agency that would integrate local and state law enforcement into one unit. This paper discussed shifting the focus away from “foreign terrorism” to “specific homeward areas.” The paper also talks about building a DHS/police hybrid agency that can monitor Americans in any town and prevent threats. The goal of the fusion center is to detect and prevent criminal and terrorist activity. These centers assist law enforcement in the prevention and response to crime and terrorism.
ALPR
Automatic license plate readers establish patterns of behavior for profiling. By tracking where you visit, how often and with whom law enforcement can learn a lot about you. ALPR’s track your movements in real-time, using high-speed cameras with character recognition technologies capable of quickly scanning license plates. They can be set up on check your speed devices, in parking lots and on police cruisers. We know that data gathered by a local sheriff ends up in national databases accessible by state, local and federal law enforcement. The information is also shared downstream from the federal to the state and local levels. For example, the Omaha police department knows where I am driving thanks to license plate readers. Accurate profiles are generated and stored for law enforcement to use based on this technology. In the case of license plate readers, this was happening in secret years before the public discovered it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation released records from 200 agencies amounting to 2.5 billion license plate scans between 2016-17. 99.5% of the plates scanned had no suspicion of a crime but the data was being gathered. These agencies shared this with 160-800 other agencies.
STINGRAYS
These devices simulate cell phone towers, connecting to devices within range of a cell tower and intercepting the communications from it before sending it out to its recipient. Privacy rights advocates say that these can never be used in line with the 4th Amendment because the data from all devices in range are collected instead of targeted collection of single users. This gives law enforcement the perfect cover to sweep up our communications and track our location –without our knowledge and with no limits. The federal government funds the majority of surveillance programs, and stingrays are no exception. These technologies are funded federally and require the agencies using them to sign non-disclosure agreements. As the Baltimore Sun reported in 2015, a Baltimore detective refused to answer questions on the stand during a trial citing a non-disclosure agreement. This means that rather than reveal the methods of how intelligence was being gathered, prosecutors instructed the detective to drop the case. If they have nothing to fear, what do they have to hide? That is what we are told
PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION
Through parallel construction, police build cases based on illegally obtained, warrantless data collected by the NSA and other federal agencies. The feds share information gathered without a warrant and direct the police to make arrests. Investigators build the case along with normal police techniques, getting warrants for information they already have. This creates the appearance of a legitimate case and helps keep secret surveillance programs hidden. State and local law enforcement agencies regularly provide surveillance data to the federal government through the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) and fusion centers. They gather data from ALPR’s, stingrays, drones and facial recognition software. Through the ISE, the feds share and tap into vast amounts of information gathered at the state and local level. This allows for the storing, tracking and monitoring of many Americans. The feds gather phone calls, emails, web history and texts on millions of Americans every day. Did I mention that this happens without a warrant, probable cause and public knowledge.
Founder of IL Tenthers working on privacy rights protections in illinois
Advocating declarations not petitions. Its important to have allies, but more important to have actionable goals.
Place one foot in front of the other and never lose sight of your principles. Liberty is never given it is earned, please contact me with ideas or debate.
Every July 4, Americans throw themselves a party to celebrate our Independence Day. But while the date is heavy on flags, fireworks, and red, white and blue-themed BBQ, understanding the reasons why America’s founding is uniquely worthy of celebration often gets little attention. However, rather than bypassing the principles and ideals involved in order to move directly to celebrations, we would be well-served by giving June 12 a little more thought, as well. That was the day the Virginia Declaration of Rights, penned by George Mason, was ratified by the Fifth Virginia Convention in 1776. And it has pride of place as the first of several declarations of rights in the era — weeks before the Declaration of Independence and well before our Bill of Rights and the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Mason’s defense of individual rights as “the basis and foundation of government,” which the Marquis de Condorcet called “the first Bill of Rights to merit the name,” and an updated version of which is still in effect in Virginia, profoundly influenced both our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights — our rationale for liberty and the limitations on government designed to protect that liberty in practice — deserves more attention. Clinton Rossiter called it “among the world’s most memorable triumphs in applied political theory.” Charles Maynes wrote that, Mason’s revolutionary step was…reversing, in writing and in a supreme governmental document, the traditional relationship between citizen and state. Throughout history it had been the citizen who owed duties to the state, which in turn might bestow certain rights on the citizen…Mason argued that the state had to observe certain citizens’ rights that could not be violated under any circumstances. Mason thus set the United States apart from past constitutional practices.
From Declaration of Rights to Declaration of Independence It is clear that Thomas Jefferson had access to the Virginia Bill of Rights in drafting the Declaration of Independence. He was asked to write a draft on June 11, and probably didn’t begin writing until June 12, the day the Virginia Bill of Rights was approved. The draft text had also been published in different newspapers on June 6, 8, and 12. And then there are the close parallels between the two. One cannot read the central second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence without hearing echoes of Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights. That is why it is no wonder Jefferson, who called Mason “the wisest man of his generation,” wrote in an 1823 letter that, “I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before.” Consider the most striking examples.
Section 1: That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, or which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity, namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Section 2: That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.
Section 3: That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people…And that when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to those principles, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
Section 6: Men…cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected, not bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented.
Section 15: That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
From Declaration of Rights to Bill of Rights As clear as the connections of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights to the Declaration of Independence are, those connecting it to the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, are even stronger. As Raymond Polin wrote, “we may regard the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and especially Amendments XIII, XIV, XV, and XIX, as ‘necessary’ to implementation of the ideas stated in the Declaration.” Polin points out that the original articles of the Constitution dealing with separation of branches, republican government and regular elections to legislative and executive offices also reflect Mason’s earlier work. But even more important, as he put it, “provisions that are present in the First Ten Amendments are contained in the Virginia Bill of Rights as well, at times in the very same words,” including Amendments 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and
8. But the process of getting to that point was far from smooth.
Bills or declarations of rights became popular after the Declaration of Independence. They were adopted in some form by five colonies in 1776, and in every state by 1783. However, the Constitutional Convention did not adopt one. As a result, Mason was one of only three delegates to the Constitutional Convention who refused to sign the final document, most importantly because, “there is no Declaration of Rights, and the laws of the general government being paramount to the laws and constitution of the several states, the Declaration of Rights in the separate states are no security.” But his refusal to sign, the objections he offered, and his opposition to ratification without a bill of rights, while causing no small contention, were seminal in creating the Bill of Rights, which Raymond Polin called “the capstone of American constitutionalism,” in 1791.
Because of his recognition that rights did not originate from government, but that liberty instead requires tight constraints on government, George Mason deserves more attention. After all, according to Jeff Broadwater, to the founding generation, “only Washington ranked higher in public esteem.” In Robert Rutland’s words, “His ideas became permeating facts” at America’s founding. They need to again permeate Americans’ political thoughts if we are to revive the liberty he helped create. George Mason ideas and words were far more influential at America’s founding than in American’s minds today. He saw what government must avoid as more central than what it must do if it is to actually advance our welfare and tried his best to implement that vision, in full recognition of the dangers faced. As he put it, Happiness and prosperity are now within our reach; but to attain and preserve them must depend upon our own wisdom and virtue…Frequent interference with private property and contracts, retrospective laws destructive of all public faith, as well as confidence between man and man, and flagrant violations of the Constitution must disgust the best and wisest part of the community, occasion a general depravity of manners, bring the legislature into contempt, and finally produce anarchy and public convulsion.
Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. He is the author of The Apostle of Peace: The Radical Mind of Leonard Read.
NOTE: This article was originally published at Mises.org and is reposted here under a Creative Commons 4.0 license
Let us remember that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom!
Writing as Candidus in the Boston Gazette on Oct. 14, 1771, Samuel Adams recognized an important and timeless truth. Turning a blind eye to an attack on liberty only guarantees that more attacks will come in the future.
The same goes for violations of the Constitution, which the Founders often referred to as “usurpations,” or the exercise of “arbitrary power.”
“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” [emphasis added]
Here’s something that shouldn’t be surprising: Jefferson was right.
But turning things around from a government with tens of thousands of unconstitutional “laws,” regulations, rules and orders on the books isn’t going to happen in a single step either.
Let me be blunt. Anyone promising a silver bullet is lying to you. It’s going to take a lot of work and thousands of steps forward to make a stand for the Constitution and liberty.
While the odds are certainly against us at this stage, we can take comfort in the fact that we have a lot of amazing advice – successful advice – from the Founders and Old Revolutionaries.
Take this, for example, which you can find on most pages of our website, on official TAC membership cards, and more:
“Concordia res parvae crescunt.”
Written by John Dickinson in response to the Townshend Acts of 1767, it’s a Latin phrase which means “small things grow great by concord.” And it’s something we value immensely every single day here at the Tenth Amendment Center.
BACKGROUND
In May 1765, when most attention was being paid to the hated Stamp Act, King George III gave Royal Assent to the Quartering Act, which required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided and paid for by the colonies.
If those barracks were too small to house all the British soldiers, then the colonies or the specific localities in question were required to accommodate them in local “inns, livery stables, ale-houses, victualling-houses, and the houses of sellers of wine.”
And should there still be soldiers without accommodation after all these “publick houses” were filled, the colonies were then required to “take, hire and make fit” for these soldiers, “such and so many uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns or other buildings, as shall be necessary” to house the rest.
However, the New York colonial assembly didn’t like being commandeered to provide and pay to house British troops. So they refused to comply with the law.
More than two years later, the first of the Townshend Acts, the New York Restraining Act, suspended the assembly and governor of New York by prohibiting them from passing any new bills until they agreed to comply with the Quartering Act 1765.
In effect, this left all decision-making outside the colony.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The most influential response to the acts came from John Dickinson, widely known as “the Penman of the Revolution.” Opposing the new Acts, he wrote a series of twelve essays known as “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.”
In the first of his “Letters,” Dickinson spent time discussing the New York Restraining Act. He wrote:
“Whoever seriously considers the matter, must perceive that a dreadful stroke is aimed at the liberty of these colonies. I say, of these colonies; for the cause of one is the cause of all. If the parliament may lawfully deprive New York of any of her rights, it may deprive any, or all the other colonies of their rights; and nothing can possibly so much encourage such attempts, as a mutual inattention to the interests of each other. To divide, and thus to destroy, is the first political maxim in attacking those, who are powerful by their union.
He continued on to say that, in essence, the rightful response at that moment would have been for other colonial assemblies to at least pass non-binding resolutions informing Parliament that the act was a violation of rights and that it should be repealed.
Why? His answer came through clearly at the end of this first letter, where signed off with that Latin phrase mentioned above, Concordia res parvae crescunt.
Small things grow great by concord.
STEP BY STEP
In many ways, today’s federal government has suspended the legislative power of state assemblies by assuming control over powers never delegated to it in the Constitution.
Politicians in congress and the executive branch – and the lobbyists that benefit financially from their unconstitutional acts – are all too happy to utilize this wealth of power.
For far too long, people have stood idly by. They’ve put all their time, energy and money into “voting the bums out” with the hope that a new crop of federal politicians would ride in and save the day.
But, while new bums have come and gone – and come and gone, and come and gone – the day has yet to be saved.
Pushing off the yoke of the most powerful government in the history of the world is not something that’s going to happen in one fell swoop. This is something that Dickinson and many others recognized early on.
“Great Britain,” they say, “is too powerful to contend with; she is determined to oppress us; it is in vain to speak of right on one side, when there is power on the other; when we are strong enough to resist we shall attempt it; but now we are not strong enough, and therefore we had better be quiet; it signifies nothing to convince us that our rights are invaded when we cannot defend them; and if we should get into riots and tumults about the late act, it will only draw down heavier displeasure upon us.”
Today, just as in the pre-Revolutionary times, many people are afraid of upsetting the status quo. So they sit idly by – and urge others to the same
Dickinson’s response?
Are these men ignorant that usurpations, which might have been successfully opposed at first, acquire strength by continuance, and thus become irresistible?
He was far from alone.
Samuel Adams, for example, urged the same:
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.
If we stand by and do nothing we absolutely know what the result will be.
More importantly, no matter how much the odds appear to be against us, it’s our duty to do what’s right. For us at the Tenth Amendment Center, doing what’s right is pretty straightforward:
The Constitution. Every issue, every time. No exceptions, no excuses.
Step-by-step we’re working to stand for the Constitution and liberty.
Today in history, on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon slammed shut the “gold window” and eliminated the last vestige of the gold standard.
By executive order, Nixon uncoupled gold from its fixed $35 price and suspended the ability of foreign banks to directly exchange dollars for gold. Nixon promised the action would be temporary in order to “defend the dollar against the speculators,” but this turned out to be a lie. The president’s move permanently and completely severed the dollar from gold and turned it into a pure fiat currency.
Nixon’s order was the end of a path off the gold standard that started during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. June 5, 1933, marked the beginning of a slow death of the dollar when Congress enacted a joint resolution erasing the right of creditors in the United States to demand payment in gold. The move was the culmination of other actions taken by Roosevelt that year.
In March 1933, the president prohibited banks from paying out or exporting gold, and in April of that same year, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102. It was touted as a measure to stop hoarding, but was, in reality, a massive confiscation scheme. The order required private citizens, partnerships, associations and corporations to turn in all but small amounts of gold to the Federal Reserve at an exchange rate of $20.67 per ounce. In 1934, the government’s fixed price for gold was increased to $35 per ounce. This effectively increased the value of gold on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet by 69 percent.
The reason behind Roosevelt’s executive order and the congressional joint resolution was to remove constraints on inflating the money supply. The Federal Reserve Act required all Federal Reserve notes have 40 percent gold backing. But the Fed was low on gold and up against the limit. By increasing its gold stores through the confiscation of private gold holdings, and declaring a higher exchange rate, the Fed could circulate more notes.
While American citizens were legally prohibited from redeeming dollars for gold, foreign governments maintained that privilege. In the 1960s, the Federal Reserve initiated an inflationary monetary policy to help monetize massive government spending for the Vietnam War and Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” With the dollar losing value due to these inflationary policies, foreign governments began to redeem dollars for gold.
This is exactly how a gold standard is supposed to work. It puts limits on the amount the money supply can grow and constrains the government’s ability to spend. If the government “prints” too much money, other countries will begin to redeem the devaluing currency for gold. This is what was happening in the 1960s. As gold flowed out of the U.S. Treasury, concern grew that the country’s gold holdings could be completely depleted.
Instead of insisting on fiscal and monetary discipline, Nixon simply severed the dollar from its last ties to gold, allowing the central bank to inflate the money supply without restraint.
When he announced the closing of the gold window, Nixon said, “Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation,” and promised, “your dollar will be worth just as much as it is today.”
This was also a lie.
According to the Consumer Price Index data released by the Bureau Labor of Statistics, the dollar has lost more than 80 percent of its value since Nixon’s fateful decision. Meanwhile, the dollar value of gold has gone from $35 an ounce to about $1,500.
By every measure—including stagnating wages and rising costs—things have been going downhill for the American middle class since the early 1970s. August 15, 1971, to be exact. This is the date President Nixon killed the last remnants of the gold standard. Since then, the dollar has been a pure fiat currency. This allows the Fed to print as many dollars as it pleases. And—without the discipline imposed by some form of a gold standard—it does precisely that. The U.S money supply has exploded 2,106 percent higher since 1971. The rejection of sound money is the primary reason inflation has eaten up wage growth since the early 1970s—and the primary reason the cost of living has exploded.”
Practically speaking, this means that if you stashed an ounce of gold worth $35 alongside thirty-five one-dollar bills under your bed in 1971. Today, you would be sitting on gold that would buy you an expensive tailored suit. The $35 in cash couldn’t get you a pack of fancy boxer shorts.
In a 2017 article, financial guru Jim Grant explained the importance of a gold standard and how it restrains the power of government.
What was the gold standard, exactly — this thing that the professors dismiss so airily today? A self-respecting member of the community of gold-standard nations defined its money as a weight of bullion. It allowed gold to enter and leave the country freely. It exchanged bank notes to gold, and vice versa, at a fixed and inviolable rate. The people, not the authorities, decided which form of money was best.
“The gold standard was a hard task master, all right. You couldn’t devalue your way out of trouble. You couldn’t run up a big domestic budget deficit. The central bank of a gold-standard country (if there was a central bank) was charged with preserving the convertibility of the currency and, in a pinch, serving as lender of last resort to needy commercial banks. Growth, employment and price stability took their own course. And if, in a financial panic or a business-cycle downturn, gold fled the country, it was the duty of the central bank to establish a rate of interest that called the metal home. In the throes of a crisis, interest rates would likely go up, not down.”
Grant wrote that the reason the gold standard is so often demeaned by modern economists and politicians is because, “The modern sensibility quakes at the rigor of such a system.”
In effect, the gold standard replaced by another standard. Grant calls it the “Ph.D. standard,” a system run by politicians and central planners.
That system features monetary oversight by former university economics faculty — the Ph.D. standard, let’s call it. The ex-professors buy bonds with money they whistle into existence (“quantitative easing”), tinker with interest rates, and give speeches about their intentions to buy bonds and tinker with interest rates (“forward guidance”).
This is exactly what politicians like Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama and Trump wanted — the ability to spend without restraint and grow government with no limits. The result: massive national debt and devalued currency that buys the average person less and less every year.
Nixon yearned to be free of this restraint so he could spend dollars more freely, and not have to worry about their value in gold. Nixon’s move was, in short, the final and total politicization on money itself, and, as Grant notes, ‘The Ph.D. standard is … a political institution. It is the financial counterpart to the philosophy of statism.’
Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. .
The supremacy clause is one of the most misunderstood and abused provisions in the Constitution.
Nearly every American will tell you the supremacy clause means the federal government is absolutely supreme in all it does.
And every one of them is wrong.
The problem is they leave out the three most important words in the clause.
“In pursuance thereof…”
The federal government is only supreme when its actions are in pursuance of the Constitution. And since the Constitution delegates very few powers to the general government, it isn’t supreme very often.
In fact, the people of the states are supreme and sovereign in the American system. The people of the states created the federal government and delegated to it a few enumerated powers. Yes – the federal government enjoys supremacy within its sphere. But once it moves one inch outside of its sphere, it possesses no supremacy at all.
Alexander Hamilton explained this in Federalist #33.
“If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies and the individuals of whom they are composed….But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the large society which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such. Hence we perceive that the clause which declares the supremacy of the laws of the Union, like the one we have just before considered, only declares a truth, which flows immediately and necessarily from the institution of a federal government. It will not, I presume, have escaped observation, that it expressly confines this supremacy to laws made pursuant to the Constitution.”
The Constitution clearly limits federal supremacy to those objects falling within the general government’s delegated powers and not one iota beyond them. When the federal government takes an action outside of its delegate it is, as Hamilton said, “void.”
Revelations that the Detroit Police Department has implemented a facial recognition system with no public input or approval has sparked controversy in the Motor City. The mayor and other city officials have tried to cover up the extent of the program.
The debate in Detroit provides a look into the broader implications of the growing use of facial recognition across the United States and the ever-expanding surveillance state.
Politicians can be pretty clever when it comes to the way they use words. They can say one thing and mean the exact opposite. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan did just that as the debate over facial recognition technology heated up. The mayor implied that the Detroit Police Department isn’t using facial recognition technology. But if you parse his words carefully, you’ll find that’s not what he said at all.
The city spent more than $1 million on facial recognition technology back in 2017. But Duggan sent out what the Detroit Free Press called “a definitive sounding tweet” that seemed to assert that the police department was not and would not be using the technology.
“Let me be clear: there will be no facial recognition software used with live stream video by the (Detroit Police Department). That’s not what we’re doing, and that’s not ever what was intended.”
As the Detroit Free Press interpreted the tweet and a subsequent video, the mayor was attempting to “shut down any notion that the department was using facial recognition software, a technology which has been widely criticized for issues ranging from privacy overreach to high-error rates, specifically when used on black and brown individuals.”
Duggan was clearly trying to muddy the water and hoping to deflect criticism from a wildly controversial surveillance program. After all, why would a city spend $1 million on technology it wasn’t going to use?
It wouldn’t.
And it is using the technology.
So, was Duggan lying?
That remains unclear, but if you carefully read what he said, you will realize they he never claimed the police department wasn’t using facial recognition at all. He just said it wasn’t using it on “live stream video.”
In other words, police aren’t running facial recognition in real-time. But they are using the technology on still images plucked from reams of footage collected by cameras all around the city. As Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center senior policy analyst Daniel Lawrence told the Detriot Free Press, this is a difference without any real distinction.
“In all my experience with facial recognition, the way the process and programming works is that it takes a still image from the video. I’m not knowledgeable of any facial recognition software that’s taking real video. It’s taking a still from a video.”
Detroit has developed an extensive surveillance system known as Project Green Light utilizing a network of thousands of government and private cameras throughout the city. The cameras are installed at schools, parks, apartment buildings, immigration centers, gas stations, churches, hotels, fast-food restaurants, and even in places such as addiction treatment centers and abortion clinics.
The program was implemented in 2016 and was generally popular due to the promise that it would deter and help solve crime. As the New York Times pointed out, the system is anything but covert. A flashing green light marks the location of every camera linked into a network that feeds directly into the Detroit Police Department’s downtown headquarters.
Like virtually every government program, the surveillance network has expanded over time. Now, the revelation that police are using facial recognition with the camera system has sparked controversy. According to the NYT, the program matches images captured by the cameras against driver’s license photos and police mug shots held in a statewide police database. The DPD purchased its facial recognition system and put it into operation without approval from the elected Board of Police Commissioners that is supposed to provide oversight and accountability for the department. According to the Metro Times, the commission has evolved into “a virtual rubber stamp for Chief James Craig and Mayor Mike Duggan, who appoints some of the members and helped campaign for the commission chairman, Willie Bell.”
Beyond the broader privacy implications, the use of facial recognition technology is problematic due to its proven lack of accuracy in identifying people with dark skin pigmentation. “We live in a major black city. That’s a problem,” a software engineer told the Times.
As the New York Times noted, “There was also concern that the photograph of anyone who gets a Michigan state ID or driver’s license is searchable by state and local law enforcement agencies, and the F.B.I., likely without their knowledge.”
This is almost certainly happening. A recent report by the Washington Post revealed that the federal government has turned state drivers’ license photos into a giant facial recognition database, putting virtually every driver in America in a perpetual electronic police lineup. In fact, Detroit is just a microcosm of the broader facial recognition surveillance system evolving across the U.S.
The Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law released “The Perpetual Lineup,” a massive report on law enforcement use of facial recognition technology in the U.S. You can read the complete report at perpetuallineup.org. The organization conducted a year-long investigation and collected more than 15,000 pages of documents through more than 100 public records requests. The report paints a disturbing picture of intense cooperation between the federal government, and state and local law enforcement to develop a massive facial recognition database.
“Face recognition is a powerful technology that requires strict oversight. But those controls, by and large, don’t exist today,” report co-author Clare Garvie said. “With only a few exceptions, there are no laws governing police use of the technology, no standards ensuring its accuracy, and no systems checking for bias. It’s a wild west.”
George Orwell’s Big Brother would have drooled over the all-encompassing surveillance system quietly under construction in the United States. Facial recognition technology linked to federal, state and local databases can track your every move just by pointing a camera at your face. It effectively turns each of us into a suspect standing in a perpetual lineup.
In all likelihood, the federal government heavily involves itself in helping state and local agencies obtain this technology. The feds provide grant money to local law enforcement agencies for a vast array of surveillance gear, including ALPRs, stingray devices and drones. The federal government essentially encourages and funds a giant nationwide surveillance net and then taps into the information via fusion centers and the Information Sharing Environment (ISE).
Fusion centers were sold as a tool to combat terrorism, but that is not how they are being used. The ACLU pointed to a bipartisan congressional report to demonstrate the true nature of government fusion centers: “They haven’t contributed anything meaningful to counterterrorism efforts. Instead, they have largely served as police surveillance and information sharing nodes for law enforcement efforts targeting the frequent subjects of police attention: Black and brown people, immigrants, dissidents, and the poor.”
Fusion centers operate within the broader ISE. According to its website, the ISE “provides analysts, operators, and investigators with information needed to enhance national security. These analysts, operators, and investigators…have mission needs to collaborate and share information with each other and with private sector partners and our foreign allies.” In other words, ISE serves as a conduit for the sharing of information gathered without a warrant. Known ISE partners include the Office of Director of National Intelligence which oversees 17 federal agencies and organizations, including the NSA. ISE utilizes these partnerships to collect and share data on the millions of unwitting people they track.
In other words, facial recognition surveillance in cities like Detroit has national implications. And similar scenarios are playing out in cities across the country.
The state of Michigan could shut down Detroit’s invasive spy program. A bill introduced in the Michigan legislature would place a total ban on police use of facial recognition.
Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE
