Progressive Icon Noam Chomsky: Obama 'Determined To Demolish The Foundations Of Our Civil Liberties'
Chomsky: Obama ‘Determined To Demolish The Foundations Of
Our Civil Liberties’
10:43 AM 06/04/2014
By Scott Greer Associate Editor
Progressive hero Noam Chomsky is terrified of the
surveillance state that has developed during the tenure of President Barack
Obama, calling it a grave threat to our fundamental civil liberties.
In a column published Monday, Chomsky writes that the
documents revealed to the public by Edward Snowden show a system that is
flagrantly violating the principles of the Constitution.
“It is of no slight import that the project is being
executed in one of the freest countries in the world, and in radical violation
of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which protects citizens from
‘unreasonable searches and seizures,’ and guarantees the privacy of their
persons, houses, papers and effects,” Chomsky said.
“Much as government lawyers may try, there is no way to
reconcile these principles with the assault on the population revealed in the
Snowden documents.”
The scope and depth of the National Security Agency’s
surveillance program is what particularly troubles the retired MIT professor
and leads him to conclude that our current president is set on undermining the
foundations of our society.
“The documents unveil a remarkable project to expose to
state scrutiny vital information about every person who falls within the grasp
of the colossus — in principle, every person linked to the modern electronic
society,” Chomsky wrote. “As the colossus fulfills its visions, in principle
every keystroke might be sent to President Obama’s huge and expanding databases
in Utah .”
“In other ways too, the constitutional lawyer in the
White House seems determined to demolish the foundations of our civil
liberties. The principle of the presumption of innocence, which dates back to
Magna Carta 800 years ago, has long been dismissed to oblivion.”
All this adds up to a system that George Orwell would’ve
been incapable of envisioning as “Nothing so ambitious was imagined by the
dystopian prophets of grim totalitarian worlds ahead.”
And like the totalitarian government in “1984,” this
apparatus is designed — in Chomsky’s opinion — to defend state power from the
threat of an unruly domestic population and make transparency a one-way street
between the government and its private citizens.
“Throughout, the basic principle remains: Power must not
be exposed to the sunlight. Edward Snowden has become the most wanted criminal
in the world for failing to comprehend this essential maxim,” the professor
concludes. “In brief, there must be complete transparency for the population,
but none for the powers that must defend themselves from this fearsome internal
enemy.”
Comments
Post a Comment