We Are the 98 Percent!

The number of U.S. government employees and contractors holding security clearances jumped to 4.86 million last year from 4.7 million the year prior, according to the 2011 Report on Security Clearance Determinations. This would include 1.4 million top secret clearances. When the Verizon data issue first broke there was a perceptible difference in the way members of Congress reacted as opposed to the chairmen and ranking members on the intelligence committees. Those privy to the program were quite proud of the part they played in stripping away the constitutional rights of everyday Americans while the remaining members reacted with disbelief, anger, outrage, acceptance, and befuddlement.
Putting aside Obama, who, parenthetically couldn't pass a simple FBI background check mandated for many construction workers who work near rivers and lakes and whose privacy has been defended at considerable expense to the taxpayers to see to it that his college records remain sealed, one begins to see an eerie divide between those with security clearance and their friend and the outsiders. Almost 2 percent of the population is in the business of keeping secrets from the rest of the country. If we would break this down to a percentage of the workforce engaged in this skulduggery it would look much worse.
Inasmuch as the CIA, NSA, and the Pentagon are all located in the general Washington area one would expect the percentage of those holding secure paper to be considerably higher to the point that it permeates Washington social life. This Potomac fever, if left untreated, could be fatal for democracy.
I don't give a good goddam what started under Bush, what started Obama, and what started under Truman it has to stop. To those who say, "I don't do anything wrong so I don't worry", I answer it's not about you, you ignorant, conceited, dumb ass. It's about the country that is dividing insiders against the majority. It's about future congressmen, governors, and judges whose careers can snuffed aborning by an intelligence establishment that will brook no threat to its power. It's not that it will vet every aspiring office holder; it will vet only those it distrusts. Those who would bring about reform will find themselves victims of leaked embarrassments.
Suppose a man in his mid-twenties for a period of 2 years paid for a hotel room in the same city in which he resided every Tuesday with a credit card. Suppose his home phone showed a series of calls to a prominent divorce lawyer. Suppose the man and his wife worked through their problems and 10 years later he decided to run for congress and suddenly his past sins are brought to light in a most unflattering way. There will be no statute of limitations on moral failings when data is stored forever. Nor will there be for substance abuse treatment, nor membership in organizations that have fallen from public favor. For those willing to take on the intelligence establishment privacy will be destroyed.
Suppose an very important decision is pending before the Supreme Court (whose Verizon Blackberry records are already held by NSA). A phone call to a pivotal justice reminding him that he had made a series of calls to a medical center and to a neurologist who specialized in the treatment of Alzheimer's might swing his vote.
Personally, I would like to buy Edward Snowden a drink but concentrating on the single issue of purloined phone logs is secondary to the compelling need to dismantle much of the bloated intelligence bureaucracy.