Dr Frederick H. Miller
Subject = Privacy and Freedom
The Biggest Police State in the World!

I was shocked by a television documentary I watched the other day while on a recent visit to Frankfort, Germany. “America has become the biggest police state in the history of the world,” according to the program.
I was shocked! I was shocked because this was not a case of me talking about the USA, nor of anyone writing for any of the so-called underground or avant-garde publications. No, this was German network television at its best.
Those of you who have read my writings and ramblings on these pages know that I have been prone to make such a pronouncement, as did the German television station. So have other people who write on the subjects of freedom, privacy, and matters offshore. We’re considered crackpots by the mainstream press, so that makes this pronouncement by the German television network even more astounding. This is indicative of how America is now viewed by many Europeans: a police state.
How the did home of the free and the land of the brave get to be, in the opinion of some (yours truly included), the biggest police state in the history of the world? Well, before September 11th, we know that there were a lot of changes in the USA. Most of them have been chronicled on these very pages.
As America came out of the Great Depression of the 1930’s, one of the more startling discoveries that was made by the modern day politicians was the extent to which a war time footing for the country could not only fire up the passions of the people a la Pearl Harbour, but it could fire up the economy, too.
Americans weren’t too motivated to get into World War II until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. Then, it was “Katie bar the door!” We all now know that the White House knew the Japanese attack was imminent, but did nothing, in order eliminate the isolationists in Congress who didn’t want to enter into the war in Europe.
Attack the Japanese in the Pacific, defend England against the Nazis and take the rest of Europe and North Africa away from Adolph and Benito. This motivation required a tremendous mobilization of men and materiel supported by money. Money which was lent by the wealthy of the world. And, it turned America into a debtor state in that it owed far more than it made.

The longer the war raged on in the Pacific theatre and in Europe/North Africa, the better and healthier became the American economy. And, the better the health of the economy, the better it is for the tycoons who manipulate the political process. After World War II, there was a brief period of tranquillity and euphoria because the war was over and because the Americans had played such a significant and deciding role in it.
Then, wartime footing no longer in force, recession began to rear its ugly head. In the meantime, there had been some division and insurrection in South Korea, there was threat of a Northern invasion. Late on the night of August 10, 1945, the U.S. made the decision to annex and occupy south Korea. Interestingly, this decision was taken to keep the Soviet Union from annexing the entire country, even though the soviets had only joined the fight in Korea during the preceding week. The U.S. made the decision to partition the country at the 38th parallel, in order to keep Seoul in the south. Even more interestingly, the soviets did not contest any of this and acquiesced graciously.
By the end of 1946, both regimes were pretty much solidly in place, and the two de facto governments were formally recognized in 1948 by the U.N. The soviets withdrew their troops at the end of 1948 concurrently, more or less, with the U.N. recognition. There was considerable factionalism in Korea because of the conflict of “left” and “right” ideologies which conflicted primarily over land reform. The U.S. participated to the extent that it suppressed the left-wing faction and supported Syngman Rhee as the de facto south Korean leader. Rhee had lived for many years in the U.S. and was an avowed anti-communist.
In support of Rhee, the U.S. sent some 500 “advisors” to South Korea to advise on the suppression of the leftist movement.
U.S. participation escalated. According to U.S. military records, most of the skirmishes and incursions were by the U.S. support south, not by the north. However, by October 1950 and backed by the Chinese government, the north invaded the south. By 1950, America was looking for another means of jacking up the economy, and, lo and behold, the Chinese and Kim Il Sung (north Korean leader) gave them just what they were looking for in Korea. An opportunity for a police action in Korea which lasted three years and many more soldiers, many more dead.
Then, following eight years of the Eisenhower administration, new blood and new outlooks entered the American White House.
John Kennedy was approached about sending “advisors” to Viet Nam (as had so recently been done in south Korea) and declined. John Kennedy did not want a war, did not see war as the solution to economic problems. His disinclination to send advisors to Viet Nam and his strong support for change in social policy, in part, as economic stimulus, really offended those in the so-called military industrial establishment (and may even have resulted in his death).
When Lyndon Johnson was approached, even during his term as vice-president, he was a hawk in favor of sending the advisors. When Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson promised the generals and the corporate honchos of the companies that supported the military that they could have their war, so long as it didn’t interfere with his programs on social policy. In the social responsibility sense, Johnson was with Kennedy, but opposed his dovish stance on military activities. Hence, the Johnson era slogan “Guns and butter”.
As in Korea, the war in Viet Nam, although giving the economy a boost for a time, proved too costly in the light of the expensive list of social programs that Johnson wanted and, in fact, implemented. The economy faltered terribly. And, the terrible emotional depression suffered by the American people as a result of the Kennedy assassination was exacerbated by the riots and demonstrations against Johnson’s war in Viet Nam. The moral fibre and emotional stability of the country was irreparably damaged.
All through the ‘70’s the economy was mostly stagnant with occasional flashes of life from the equities markets. OPEC created huge gas lines at petrol stations around the world, but especially in America which depended so much on foreign oil. Inflation became a prime topic of conversation on everyone’s lips. Inflation fuelled by high oil prices.
It wasn’t until the Justice Department convinced President Reagan that a war on drugs was necessary that America’s economy once again began to be revitalized. In the aftermath of Viet Nam, Americans were not receptive to a “military” war. Still, in order to stop drug traffickers from selling drugs to their children on the school grounds, a “war on drugs” was widely supported by most Americans.
Little did we know then what the war on drugs would bring.
First, it brought more drugs. That sure spruced up the economy. Increased the budget for a new law enforcement agency, the DEA. Then, someone got the bright idea of nailing the drug lords for unpaid income taxes on their ill-gotten gains. This last proved to be the key to a treasure trove, and it was followed by legislation permitting confiscation of assets without due process and a monumental effort to find all the bad boys’ money. That got us money laundering legislation. How to track financial transactions? Where it the money? Who owns it? How do we get it when it’s offshore? Money laundering legislation led to more and more erosion of individual freedoms as the privacy of the individual became subordinate to the quest for more and more dollars generated by more and more traffickers in a war on drugs which was less and less effective.

Doing drugs became a crime. The longest most outrageous sentencing in the world for even nominal drug use is a fact of life in the U.S. There are more users in jail in the U.S. than there are drug traffickers, by and large, with longer sentences.
Importing and selling drugs became a crime. Kids were urged to “grass” on their grass- using parents. All the flower children and baby boomers who were using so-called recreational drugs or who had used them became paranoid all the time, not just when they were smoking.
Then, someone got the bright idea of using the same technique that put Al Capone in jail to fight the drug traffickers, i.e., to go after them for unpaid taxes on their ill-gotten gains.
This led, in turn, to the war on money laundering, the war on tax avoidance, the war on offshore banking havens, all the other invasions of privacy we so often write about on these pages.
However, for the most part, other than for specific drug interdiction escapades by the American military in the jungles of south America, none of this latter activity had much of a positive economic impact on the military-industrial establishment nor on the American economy.
In the aftermath of September 11th, however, we have experienced a resurgence of war time footing, first with the initial marshalling of resources to defend against further terrorist attacks, the passage of the Patriot Act (tipping laws in Big Brother’s favor in more than 350 different subject areas involving more than 40 separate federal agencies), arbitrary detention without due cause of aliens with foreign sounding names, and, finally, the conquest of Afghanistan.
The Patriot Act alone is one of the biggest chops taken out of the Freedom Tree in the history of the United States. The Act allows “black bag” searches of all your personal financial, computer, telephone and medical records, even your history at the public library. Top Secret warrants are issued under the Foreign Surveillance Act to target foreign powers, but these warrants can be issued and the surveillance carried out against American citizens. “Probable cause” in the legal sense no longer applies. The American government has imposed many changes in the legal rights of American citizens as part of its fight against terrorism, just as the erosion of freedom began under the guise of the war against drugs. But, now, the balance between freedom and security seems to have swung away from freedom.
Now, the government has the authority to imprison AMERICANS indefinitely, without charges or defense lawyers, and the government’s ability to investigate, arrest, detain and try anyone has been substantially expanded. Law enforcement now has far easier access to your personal lives while operating in total secrecy. And, you can forget about the concept that law-abiding citizens can freely associate with other law-abiding citizens without the threat of government surveillance.

Where once the U.S. government used “possible drug trafficking” as a means to investigate money laundering, as it has used “possible money laundering” to investigate tax evasion, tax avoidance and other so-called crimes, it now uses “anti-terrorism” as its excuse for violating what used to be your rights.
The Bush administration has gone so far as to impose other “legal” changes without congressional consent, such as allowing federal agents to monitor attorney-client conversations in federal prisons and prodding federal bureaucrats to refuse to provide access to documents under the Freedom of Information Act. FBI can now monitor political and religious meetings inside the U.S., even where there is no reason to believe that a crime has been committed. They haven’t done that kind of thing for years, not since the days of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
Since September 11th, untold thousands of men and women of middle eastern origins have been arrested and detained by the United States government without probable cause, without charges being rendered against them, without benefit of a legal defense or even access to a lawyer. Some have been questioned and deported after immigration hearings which are no longer held in the public eye. Some were just questioned and detained and are still in detention.
The administration refuses to reveal the names of these people and is refusing to adhere to a court order of a federal judge to reveal the names, claiming that Mr. Bush’s war on terrorism can’t be challenged by the judiciary and that civilian courts have no jurisdiction over the detention of these thousands of people. Any foreigner now entering the United States must allow him/herself to be subjected to fingerprinting by the American authorities.
Countries around the world have been told that “either you are with us, or you are terrorists, too”, in order to get them to comply with the provisions on the Patriot Act and other quasi-legal investigatory activities in which the Americans want to engage in that foreign country.
In a recent revelation, it was revealed to me by a fairly high official of a middle eastern country that, when his country refused to allow an American task force of IRS agents and FBI agents to come into his country to investigate all the banking transactions of the past five years (ostensibly to find the money links to terrorism), the Bush administration froze all of that country’s assets in the USA, as well as all of the assets of its ruling leaders which were in American financial institutions.
The particular country in question is without doubt NOT a supporter of Osama Bin Laden and had been, before the high-handed actions of the Bush administration, a staunch supporter of the U.S. policy in the middle east and elsewhere and certainly in the war against terrorism. But, this country is an “offshore banking haven” and therefore a target of American curiosity with respect to its banking clientele. Apparently, from what I can gather from my sources, this is not an isolated incident.

The IRS anti-offshore forces were in full operations mode this past week when they went to court seeking MasterCard records the years 1999, 2000, and 2001 in more than 30 “offshore” jurisdictions, including Switzerland, Bermuda, Liechtenstein, and Belize. Not just MasterCard records for Americans, but all MasterCards.
These continuing activities of IRS are primarily directed at Americans who dare to think that they can exercise their freedoms by using offshore banking institutions to privatize their financial transactions on credit card. Previously, IRS has gone after records for earlier years in such places as the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. Earlier this year, access to VISA card records for the same 30 plus countries was authorized by a U.S. federal district court in San Francisco.
This whole issue of the IRS chasing off after credit card records in non-USA jurisdictions is illegal. It is clearly unconstitutional. Worse yet, like so many other invasions of privacy since the beginning of the so-called “war on drugs” and now the “war on terrorism”, it’s just a big fishing trip.
IRS says between one million and two million Americans have overseas ban accounts with credit and/or debit cards and that the majority of those individuals are tax evaders.
They have no evidence to support those numbers, they have offered no proof, and, in fact, they have not even supported a case for “probable cause”. IRS has always been “full of it”, but they are really showing their collective employee backside with this latest venture.
There is a cycle underway right now which is, in part, perpetrated by IRS and DEA called let’s capture the drug traffickers and tax evaders laundered money side by side with another cycle which indicates that terrorist attacks are automatically followed by government curtailment of civil liberties, and these two cycles are getting to be more and more pronounced, more and more protracted.
Of course, these are not the only transgressions against individual freedom and personal privacy.
The biggest and most frightening of these is the fact Bush has proposed that laws which bar American military personnel from being actively involved in law enforcement on U.S. territory. Giving the U.S. military the right to act on U.S. soil is truly a first step toward the dictatorship which it appears Mr. Bush would really like to implement. Specifically, Bush has called on Congress to eliminate the ban on American military forces from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activities on U.S. soil, pursuant to the Posse Comitatus Act. Bush’s proposal for TIPS (since soundly shot down) called for a network of Americans to spy on Americans. They used to have a similar system in East Germany. The east Germans called it the Stasi.

New federal standards for state-issued driving licenses has been proposed, too, which would determine who gets a license, how they are issued and what information is listed on it. Basically, it would appear to be a thinly disguised intra-country U.S. passport or national identity card.
Imposition of smart borders has been proposed by the Bushies. These would require biometric identification, from optical to fingerprints and, one assumes ultimately, DNA. Future visitors to the U.S., beginning in 2004, will be required to have microchips in their passports, i.e., biometric data and identifiers built into the document itself. Bush also plans to end some sunshine laws which give the public access to information about critical facilities and programs, such as dangerous chemical programs on U.S. territory. He would set up a system to track the perfectly legal purchase of prescription drugs, antibiotics, aerosol generators, and fermenting equipment With the support of the Bush White House, Congress has passed a computer crime bill which expands police ability to conduct internet or telephone eavesdropping without first obtaining a court order. Bush has asked Congress to pass a Cyber Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) as a way of responding to electronic intrusions and any threat of cyber-terrorism. As it is now written, the law, which has yet to pass the senate, calls for life sentences for computer hackers.
Any 14 year old with good computer skills who sees it as fun and a prank to hack into a government computer could receive a life sentence for foolishness. Further to this, CSEA also would specify a ban on advertising any product or device which is used primarily for surreptitious electronic surveillance. There goes your home video security system.
Currently, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is awarding contracts for the design and implementation of a Total Information Awareness (TIA) system. This system won’t operate with megabytes or gigabytes of data, it will operate with petabytes of raw data, all under the control of a single agency with limited public accountability. This would truly be a data-veillance program without equal. Are you ready?
New airline procedures, tighter controls on immigration, better security for cargo containers, research on vaccines and antidotes to biological and chemical attacks, better sensors to detect nuclear weapons, and shaper analyses by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, greater security at nuclear labs and facilities, protection of water supplies, greater airport security: all these things are desirable and practical things to do to protect against terrorist attack.
The other freedom destroying things which are being implemented by Mr. Bush in the name of the war on terrorism are frightening.

First among those, unfortunately, is the fact that the conquest of Afghanistan proved to be too short lived and too easy, the previous problems of the Russians in doing so notwithstanding. It was all too easy. So, now, we find the Bush administration threatening war against Iraq, even against the better judgement of Republican members of Congress, among others.
U. S. rhetoric from the Bush White House has reached a point where it defies belief and will making backing down almost impossible. Bush has placed a chip on America’s shoulder and pushed it right to the edge. Even Saddam Hussein will not need to stand on tiptoe to knock it off.
In addition, the U.S. has sent troops to Russia to assist the Russians in dealing with the dissidents, to the Philippines to help suppress anti-government and anti-democracy advocates, and it has increased its troop strength in Afghanistan to more than 60,000 as the mobilization continues. With talk now of an imminent invasion of Iraq, it appears the war will widen (coincidentally, just what Osama Bin Laden has said he wanted). Osama wants a wider war which borders on world war fought between Islam and the infidels. Bush wants a war to save his economy. Mr. Oil Baron Bush apparently, in my opinion, also covets the oil reserves in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia and in Russia, among others.
He’s doing all he can to make those reserves accessible and appears to be ready to whatever it takes to make sure that he, and only he, is in a position to control those assets and reserves.
Americans, as did the rest of the world, wanted the U.S. to strike back at the terrorists after September 11th, all Americans supported Mr. Bush when he promised to wipe out evil-doers everywhere in the world. When innocent Afghans died in the bombing, the governments line was, “well, there will always be collateral damage”.
When security was enhanced at airports, it created enormous inconvenience for travellers everywhere, but it was understood to be for the public good. When habeus corpus was suspended, the position was that the rights under the Bill of Rights don’t accrue to terrorists.
Speaking of the Bill of Rights, when there was one in the United States, it assured any individual from anywhere that he/she had the right to competent counsel, that the individual had the right to confront his/her accusers and to know the charges against him/her, and a right to a speedy trial before a jury of one’s peers. Under the current suspensions of freedom in the United States, YOU may be detained in secret, not allowed to speak with an attorney, and you might not even receive a public trial. Can executions in secret be far behind?

Most Americans seem to have forgotten the days when one didn’t need to show a government issued identification document in order to travel by airline. Remember? It was just 10 years ago.
Now, in addition to the thought crime police as proposed under the TIPS arrangement, Republicans in the House want to create a whole new class of “attempted” crimes, i.e., a provision which would make any attempt to break a federal law a federal crime and a punishable act.
The broadness of the language in the bill pending submission permits it to apply to everything from attempted murder or terrorism to mislabelling baby food or snack foods. What’s more, the crime of “attempted crime” would carry the same penalties as “actual crimes”. Every federal law would be complemented with a corresponding “attempted crime” provision.
There is a delicate balance between individual liberty and national security. The American government has pushed civil liberties protections to their limits. Clearly, the American courts have pushed back, stopping just short of support of Mr. Bush’s tactics or of supporting the rationales he has offered for justifying them.
In all of American history, there have always been battles over the reach of government. The worst of those battles have always been over issues of a government trying too hard, going too far, and infringing on civil liberties during a time of war.
There have already been too many comparisons to the behaviour of the Bush administration to that of Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, albeit with some merit,but please permit just this one small digression.
Orwell’s world did exist in a state of permanent war. The propaganda ministry was called the ministry of truth. The leader was omni-present and all-powerful and infallible.
Big Brother was always watching, and the thought police were everywhere. It would take very little at this point to upset the delicate balance between national security and freedom of the individual and erode the freedoms which all of us hold dear to the point that life imitates Orwell.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Viet Dinh was recently quoted as saying that, “I think security exists for liberty to flourish and liberty cannot exist without order and security”. I would submit to you that perhaps, just perhaps, as a famous Asian human rights activist recently said, “…I am now convinced that American democracy requires the repression of democracy in the rest of the world” and elimination of all privacy and freedom of action at home.
Hence, the actions of the Bush administration at home and abroad begin to make some sense.

But I ask you: Have I not described the biggest police state in the history of the world?
History will judge, both my opinion and the actions of the Bush White House during the years of the War on Terrorism.

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