Why we must spy on everyone all the time

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced today the arrest of some Americans plotting to blow up the Sears Tower and other targets. He says that “these homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al-Qaeda.”

He didn’t add “so bend over, America,” but then again, he doesn’t really have to: the administration have no compunction about using police state tactics, and the revelation of a domestic terrorist plot, however much more “aspirational than operational,” as an FBI official said, is just the excuse they need to push the envelope some more.

Obligatory disclaimer: although it should go without saying, I will say that the arrested men seem like truly unsavory characters and I’m pleased they’ve been caught at the aspirational stage.

That said, the details so far suggest they were caught in a traditional sting operation without the use of any extraordinary measures such as wiretapping everyone in the country. If you listen closely, though, you can hear certain federal legislators thinking, “Sure, these guys are down for the count but what about the rest of the hordes? We don’t want the first sign of the next plot to be a smoking mushroom. Wholesale warrantless domestic surveillance? Sign me up.”

Digby wrote this morning about the attractiveness of a privacy initiative proposal advanced last week by Hillary Clinton, and in light of what’s sure to follow the news of the arrests announced by Gonzales, the issue seems more pressing than ever.

Hillary said in her speech the other day: “privacy is synonymous with liberty.” This is correct. We give it up far too thoughtlessly in our culture and its going to come back to bite us if we don’t wake to the fact that big powerful forces are poking into our lives in unprecedented ways and will use the information they get to force us into little boxes they design.

Democrats need to make some new arguments. They need to talk in terms that are relevant to today’s world. Progressives are about progress; we cannot only be concerned about maintaining what we’ve got. We must forge on. If we believe in the common good, which I do, it must be tempered with a healthy respect for individual privacy. Without that we will not have the freedom or the ability to come together to create a better world. We’ll all be too busy furtively looking over our shoulders to pay attention to the road ahead.

The Bush administration have taken Nixonism to heights that would have scared even Nixon. The threat of domestic terrorism — not the White Supremacist kind so thoroughly explored by David Neiwert, but the scary brown-skinned kind — will without a doubt be used to advance the administration’s cause. We’ll probably see incrementally Draconian legislation proposed within a few weeks, if not days, in response to the arrests, and it’s a certainty that the Gonzales justice department has already authored legal opinions justifying whatever additional excesses the administration have in mind.

The opinions will have been classified so no one can see them, but don’t worry, they’re done up all legal-like.