With all of the nonsensical chatter surrounding Edward Snowden’s leaks of classified U.S. surveillance programs it’s easy to lose sight of the real significance of the thing. Amidst the legal ramifications and the speculation of his whereabouts, a much scarier issue lurks.
While Snowden nervously awaits to hear if he’s been granted asylum anywhere in the world, the media has been busy making a demagogue of him. Whether this is appropriate or not I do not know; I’ve never met the man. However, there is one thing that I am certain is truth.
The truth is that terrorism is not a prominent threat to Americans. (Hold your gasps, please.)
I am certain to be vilified for having written it; it feels strange to actually type it out. Understand, I was a fourth grader when the towers fell. At such an early time in my life I whole heartedly believed that the United States of America was indeed the freest, most shining example of what a country should be. Hell, that’s what I was taught. Why would my parents, teachers, and the television lie to me?
But then there were the realizations. Little things that seemed out of place began to build on one another and the history of American coercion became undeniable. More and more I realized that my set of values was not in line with the behavior of my government.
So how did that glorious beacon of liberty I saw as a child transform before my eyes? In short, how did they hijack the land of liberty and conceal the ugly, imperialistic side of the U.S. from us all?
The key thing to understand is that ‘terror’ is the central pillar, which is why you hear the word so God damn always. It is the idea that terrorists can attack and kill Americans on a whim that is essential to this process. This produces a fully justified and understandable climate of fear, which is the perfect condition for the federal government to encroach on Americans’ civil liberties and expand interventionist policies in the Middle East.
For example, the Patriot Act and the amended version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act not only served to help the U.S. government propagate the well documented atrocities in Iraq, but also to set up the vast system of surveillance that the Snowden documents divulged. Despite FISA provisions to the contrary, the documents have shown that Americans’ communications have been absorbed not only by the NSA system (Prism), but more thoroughly by the U.K’s GCHQ (Tempora). Further, National Security Director James Clapper testified in March that no American data of any kind was being tracked.
But what if the fears that allowed these sorts of things to happen were not so justified?
Again it feels odd to actually write, but the data doesn’t lie. The Global Terrorism Database (GTD), reportedly funded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and based out of the University of Maryland, compiled a comprehensive list of foreign terrorist attacks and fatalities from 1970 to 2011. This is perfectly conducive to our purposes because those who defend Prism and Tempora claim that these programs protect us from extra-national threats. Since it began collecting data, the GTD found that there were 3467 American deaths related to foreign terrorist activity. That’s an average of 85 people a year if you round up and don’t consider that 3003 of those deaths occurred in 2001, mostly on September 11th.
In 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007 the GTD reported no American deaths as a result of terrorism. In fact, since 9/11 the GTD has reported only 34 deaths of U.S. citizens in connection with terrorist attacks. 10 deaths were reported by the State Department in 2012, which was not included in the GTD’s dataset.
Now, I have not forgotten the obvious argument that NSA and GCHQ surveillance programs may have been responsible for those low numbers either. So let’s take a trip back in time and see the numbers prior to these programs’ existences:
Starting from 1999: 4 deaths, 1998 saw 3, in 1997 2 died. In 1996, 3, 1995, 4, 1994, 8, 1993, 2, 1992, 2, 1991, 4, 1990, 3, and so on.
I’m not trying to make light of or quantify American deaths. Terrorism is as abhorrent to me as invading or bombing a nation in the name of “freedom.” I’m simply questioning why, as a nation, terrorism should persuade us to give up our dearest civil liberties.
Why be so petrified of terrorism that we allow the government to set up sweeping surveillance of our communications in the name of safety?
Why be so afraid of it when Americans consistently die of obesity-related illness at a much more shocking rate? By that logic, we should immediately institute a Department of Healthy Eating Habits and National Dietary Agency to monitor Americans’ intake of foods deemed unhealthy by the U.S. federal government.
Instead the focus is on Snowden and his apparently self evident guilt of espionage and treason. I don’t know if the man is a hero or not, but I do know that the information he has holds the potential to dispel some of the misunderstandings these recent administrations have been successful in generating and sustaining.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Ben Franklin
“You can’t have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a government,” Obama said.
You heard the president, the choice is the government’s.
Selah.
The article below was originally written the week of June 23 and does not reflect the recent extensions of asylum from Bolivian and Venezuelan governments, nor does it acknowledge the possible extension of asylum by the Nicaraguan government.
Adam Uzialko