Shame on the UK

The latest twist in the saga of the US government's illegal warrantless wiretapping program is that the government of the United Kingdom arrested a journalist for 9 hours trying to prevent the release of more proof of governmental wrongdoing. Brasilian journalist David Miranda - partner to Glenn Greenwald - was detained by terrorist thugs at Heathrow airport in the name of "preventing terrorism".

While all of these occurrences were predictable, they are despicable. But the reason it makes today's PtF post is because of the pass given by Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister of the UK and chief of the up-and-coming Liberal Democrat party. The Liberal Democrat is truly a big tent party whose politics simultaneously support serious government reform, civil liberties, human rights laws, progressive taxation. and green values. The Liberal Democrats have been the minority party in a coalition government with the Conservatives, at least indicating the party's tendency toward pragmatism, which in general can be a good thing.

The Independent says that Clegg backed his government's decision - which really was a Conservative party decision - to send Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood to urge the Guardian to destroy its copies of information on the illegal, inhumane, and anti-liberty wiretapping programs still being conducted by the governments of the US and the UK. While the decision may help keep the Liberal Democrats in power, it will do a lot to discourage their electoral base from voting the next time around, meaning that the Conservatives and the Labour Party can be expected to carve up the pork in the old-fashioned way the next time the UK has an election. It's a massive setback for meaningful progress in the UK.

In addition to the direct ramifications for the political parties in the UK, Clegg's backing also reflects negatively on how little the party of civil liberties and human rights is willing to defend civil liberty and human rights with regard to the unlawful detention of Miranda. The excuse given by government officials is that Miranda was in possession of complete knowledge of the Matrix (aka PRISM) and the structure of the illegal wiretapping program that has been conducted since at least the days of George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

The problem with wiretapping is that it does not work. Sure, a few idiots are caught in the process; but I can tell you from my own experiences with the black market in the US that those who want to get around the wiretapping do so with ease and impunity. Just look at the proliferation of illegal firearms in the United States, not to mention drugs like marijuana and crystal meth. All that warrantless wiretapping does is deny good, honest people "[t]he right... to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects...." That's the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, but as has been made clear before by pleadingthef1rst, the text of the Bill of Rights does not in and of itself grant rights to people. It makes it clear that these rights belong to people outside of government structure, and that as such no government ever has any right to obstruct those rights.

There's also the matter of the US (and probably UK) government brainwashing prisoners and turning them into terrorists. Before the "war on terror", this was a routine tactic used primarily in the drug war. "Hey, want to get back at the 'Jews' who put you here? Then convert to the Nation of Islam and by the way, here's a fully functioning bomb for you." Then when the brainwashed, government-created terrorist gets out of jaim and actually goes to deploy his weapon, the FBI swoops in and arrests him again.

Rather than preventing terrorism, a program like PRISM actually makes it easier for the government to recruit its brainwashing targets. The reason the Tsarnayevs of Boston Marathon bombing notoriety failed to show up on the government's radar wasn't so much because they didn't want another brainwashed terrorist incident to help scare us into voting away our freedoms, but rather because their precious PRISM program is not designed to catch homegrown terrorists.

While the officers of government, and certainly my Senator Charles Schumer, are under the conservative impression that Snowden's leaking is a rogue act which can only be fixed by the heavy hand of the law; many Americans are actually of the opinion that PRISM is a far greater threat to the American way of life than any terrorist's bomb. What should be a bigger concern from the viewpoint of the conservative traditionalists - like Schumer, President Obama, PM David Cameron, and sadly Nick Clegg - is that the current state of global affairs is undermining a thousand years of legal progress beginning with the Magna Carta and pulling humanity back into a primitive reality where freedom is a joke. The blood of thousands of soldiers once stained the shores of Normandy so that we could all live in freedom and peace, but wiretapping every citizen and videotaping her in every street and detaining in an airport for 9 hours those freedom fighters who still value liberty as much their ancestors 1,000 years ago stains the very thing our forebears fought and died to protect.

Shame on the UK.