History Lessons
What do two presidents whose terms are separated by nearly forty years have in common, besides calling Texas their home?
by Lee H Goldberg

During my amateurish attempts to find out what activities a colleague might have been referring to in a recent Editorial, I stumbled onto the records of an old Senate subcommittee hearing entitled "CIA Intelligence Collection About Americans: CHAOS And The Office Of Security." The report details the exploits of no less than three domestic intelligence programs conducted by the CIA during the Johnson and Nixon administrations to spy on American citizens who were organizing peaceful opposition to the Vietnam War. Despite the CIA's charter, which expressly forbids it from performing such duties, political pressures subverted the agency to act in ways that were chillingly similar to the KGB, our then-archenemy Russia's internal security apparatus. When their activities were brought to light by the Senate hearings, the CIA was reprimanded and a series of precautions was put into place that, in theory, would prevent such things from ever happening again. Unfortunately, 30 years later, the stage seems to be set for history to repeat itself, and this time the stakes could be higher.

Looking back from 2005 the parallels between the events of 1967-1972 described in the report are eerily familiar. We see a president (who, incidentally, also hailed from Texas) whose popularity was rapidly declining, in great part due to a war which was coming under heavy criticism from a growing number of citizens. Under the auspices of "national security" the rules were bent to allow CIA operatives to monitor, infiltrate, and in some cases actually disrupt lawful antiwar groups and other organizations who challenged government policies.

Back then the tools employed were relatively simple, so the wiretaps, stake-outs, and other intrusions on law-abiding citizens were somewhat limited by the amount of human power the agency was willing to throw at the project. Nowadays, technical advances and a bunch of loopholes in the Constitution that were pried open by the so-called "Patriot Act" now enable a similar number of people to perform much more thorough and efficient surveillance of a much larger chunk of the population. This confluence of powerful technology and misguided legislation now allows law enforcement officials to engage in activities such as wholesale seizure of nearly any kind of record from a business, school, or church, and continuous monitoring of all your on-line activities and e-mails without many of the normal checks and balances such as a judicial warrant.

These problems could be further compounded by new legislation that's pending which would force IP telephony services to provide the same "lawful intercept" capabilities as normal phone carriers to allow law enforcement personnel to easily listen in on an individual's conversations -- even before a judicial warrant was issued. If passed, this bill, and others, could further tighten the noose around our already-imperiled rights to free speech, free expression, and open political discourse.

While some level of domestic intelligence may be required for legitimate, and very real, security purposes, the monitoring of our own citizens must be approached with a great degree of care lest it revert to a tool used by those in power to monitor and harass their political opponents and other legitimate dissenters. Both President Johnson's abuse of the CIA and Nixon's "dirty tricks" team and notorious "enemies list" are grim reminders of how easily a highly-placed individual can use their position to stifle the political dialogue that's been the lifeblood of our living democracy. Without appropriate oversight in place, it's almost guaranteed that some of the most valuable voices of dissent from the right, left, and center will once again be conveniently branded as "subversive elements" and experience McCarthy-era-style surveillance, blacklisting, or worse.

As technologists, we are the creators of the technology that can amplify the efforts of law enforcement to either protect or oppress. Our deeper understanding of the power these technologies wield makes it especially important that we make sure that the carefully-crafted Constitutional checks and balances remain in place to ensure our rights. Whether you simply need more information, or want to actually get involved, two excellent places to start are the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.

It's imperative we remember the lessons we learned back in 1975 lest we be fated to painfully re-learn them. Remember, the democracy you save may be your own.

Comments? Questions? New surveillance technologies? Write me at LHG at EN-Genius dot net.