By State Representative, Leon D. Young
Leon D. Young
Let’s not be naïve. Surveillance by the U.S. government against its own people is nothing new.
Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI was notorious for targeting American citizens.
Group targeted under the COINTEL PRO program included progressive students, anti-Vietnam activists, members of the National Association for the Advancement of Color People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Black nationalist groups and the National Lawyers Guild.
Hoover used this operation for illegal searches, hunting for information on those persons he considered a threat to the United States or harbored a personal grudge against and wanted to destroy politically: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and the Black Panther Party to enumerate just a few.
Because of Edward Snowden, the slippery slope of intelligence gathering and covert spying is once again front and center in terms of the national discourse.
For those who may not be familiar with Mr. Snowden, he is the former contractor for the National Security Agency and whistleblower who revealed to the world that the NSA is spying not only on America’s enemies but also on U.S. citizens.
A U.S. federal court charged Snowden with the crime of violating the interest of national security, as well as espionage for revealing secret programs whose purpose is to protect Americans from outside threats of terrorist activities.
Moreover, if Snowden were to reveal secret information to our enemies abroad, it could damage our nation’s security and pose a danger to covert operatives.
Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia.
America’s recent foray into the murky-arena of massive intelligence gathering can be traced directly back to George W. Bush and his ill-conceived Patriot Act following 9/11.
His administration conveniently used a national emergence as an opportunity to erode a number of the civil liberty protections that are afforded to us by law.
Under the guise of promoting national security, the NSA has run amok.
Snowden’s disclosures revealed that the NSA was collecting bulk records of all US phone calls in order to sift out potential terrorist targets.
To add insult to injury, the NSA has also engaged in a surreptitious campaign of eavesdropping in which the phone calls of world leaders were monitored. The outcry has been enormous, as Americans and world leaders have to come realize to what extent their privacy is being violated.
The Patriot Act turned 12 on October 26, and much has changed since those dark days following 9/11.
Most unfortunately, the NSA is spinning out of control with its bulk phone data collection. Edward Snowden blew the whistle on these clandestine NSA practices. Is he a patriot or a traitor, you make the call?