Help Wanted: CIA Using Radio to Recruit Citizen Snoopers
January 8, 2009 at 1:26 pm
by: Allison Bricker
On New Year’s Eve, while Kelly was at work, our youngest son and myself, spent the evening in his bedroom building the Lego Star Wars ship he received from his Grandparents as a Christmas gift. Our youngest, being the complete Chicago Bears fan that he is, had his little alarm clock radio tuned to 780 AM WBBM, which is the station that broadcasts all the games, etcetera.
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During a commercial break, we heard a help wanted advertisement from the CIA, attempting to recruit Americans to apply for a position in “The National Clandestine Service”. The commercial contains buzz words like “patriotism”, “adventure”, “ambiguity”, and reeks of a Federal Government out of control.
A few question immediately sprang to my mind after hearing the CIA recruitment bulletin. Does a free nation really need a national snoop patrol? Is this in any way connected to President-Elect Obama’s previous remarks at a “Civilian National Security Force”? And what has become of our Republic? Fellow readers our country is indeed changing. As we sit mapping out sushi restaurants on our iPhones, the sacrifice of the Founding Generation is being wholly disposed of carte blanche in favor of “protecting the Homeland” and other ludicrous fear mongering one-liners.
Then again, it is obvious that the government’s definition of patriotism or perhaps more appropriately, neo-patriotism differs starkly from mine. Living under a constant surveillance apparatus coupled along with neighborhood snitches and the NSA’s “Black Widow” FISA approved, random email/phone-call eavesdropping computer program is the furthest thing from patriotic. Quite frankly, you do not defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic by side-stepping its enshrined restrictions against government abuse.
However, many may recall that shortly after September 11th, then Secretary of Defense and torture advocate, Donald Rumsfeld, along with his trigger-happy associate, Paul Wolfowitz pushing the idea of hot line for citizens to report “suspicious activities”.
“counter-surveillance of U.S. civilians is a perfectly understandable thing. In short,it’s no big deal.”
Donald Rumsfeld National Press Club Speech 2006
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January 8th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Awful habit, to quote oneself, but today in one of my classes I said: ”We need laws to protect fundamental rights and well being. We need liberty to protect genius.” Rather brilliant, if I say so myself. The death of liberty in our nation is also the death of our genius as American people. Everything good we’ve given the world, from rock’n'roll to jeans to Lenny Bruce, has symbolized liberty. If we cannot collectively curb our irrational fears, all we’ll have left are the symbols, no liberty, no individual genius–just a finely tuned security system–a Panopticon culture–As author William S. Burroughs once put it: “A functioning police state needs no police.”
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January 11th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Would we expect anything less from these people. They don’t fear “Terror”, in fact without terror they are nothing themselves and being nothing is something that they fear. I on the other hand, fear a government that would openly or even covertly recruit friends and family to spy on me.
I watched a movie the other night that was somewhat worrisome, “Eagle Eye”. My guess is that we are all being primed to the fact that we are being watched everyday everywhere.
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