A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State by John W. Whitehead Page A
Authors: John W. Whitehead
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Title.
JC599U5W5245 2013
323.4'90973-dc23
2013006480
Cover art and illustrations by Christopher Combs
Interior book design and production by Janice Benight
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 987654321
For Nisha Whitehead, my inspiration
"A nation of sheep will "beget
a government of wolves."
– EDWARD R. MURROW
CBS BROADCAST JOURNALIST
1908-1965
Introduction
By Nat Hentoff
I f James Madison or Thomas Jefferson were brought back to life, they would not recognize this country.
We have been through some troubling times before in our nation's history. There were the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 when newspaper editors, civilians–who criticized the government–were placed in jail. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. He even arrested members of the Maryland legislature and all kinds of people around the country who objected to his policies.
We had the Red Raids in the early 1920s that started off J. Edgar Hoover's career in which hundreds of people were arrested, some of them deported without any due process at all. During the First World War, Woodrow Wilson not only practically suspended but also discarded the First Amendment. Then there were the Japanese internment camps of World War II, followed by Senator Joseph McCarthy's reign of terror, which was ended by fellow senators who realized that he had gone too far.
What we have now may be more insidious. Indeed, I believe we are in a worse state now than ever before in this country. With the surveillance state closing in on us, we are fighting to keep our country free from our own government.
Whereas we once operated under the Constitution, we are now, for example, under the USA Patriot Act, among other government dragnets, that permits pervasive electronic surveillance with minimal judicial review. The government listens in on our phone calls. It reads our mail. You have to be careful about what you do and say, and that is more dangerous than what was happening with McCarthy, since the technology the government now possesses is so much more insidious. We have no idea how much the government knows about average citizens. This is not the way the government born under the Declaration of Independence is supposed to operate.
Under the USA Patriot Act, FBI agents with a court order from a secret court, can enter people's homes and offices when they are not present, look around and take what they like. They can examine a hard drive and install in your computer the magic lantern, known less metaphorically as the keystroke jogger, which means they can record while you are not there everything you have typed on your computer, including stuff you have never sent. Then, under the USA Patriot Act, they can come back when you are not at home and download whatever information of yours they so desire. With advances in technology, they can even accomplish their clandestine objectives from a remote location.
All of this makes a prophet out of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who, during the first wiretapping case back in 1928 [Olmstead v. U.S.] , said in his dissent: "Ways may some day be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home."
Government officials like to claim that everything they are doing is for security, to keep America safe in the so-called war against terrorism. What they are really effectuating is a weakening of why we are Americans. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans today have a very limited idea as to why they are Americans, let alone why we have a First Amendment or a Bill of Rights. People are becoming accustomed or conditioned to what's going on now with the raping of the Fourth Amendment, for example. One of the things that is taught so badly in our schools, from elementary and middle school through graduate school, including journalism schools, is
JC599U5W5245 2013
323.4'90973-dc23
2013006480
Cover art and illustrations by Christopher Combs
Interior book design and production by Janice Benight
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 987654321
For Nisha Whitehead, my inspiration
"A nation of sheep will "beget
a government of wolves."
– EDWARD R. MURROW
CBS BROADCAST JOURNALIST
1908-1965
Introduction
By Nat Hentoff
I f James Madison or Thomas Jefferson were brought back to life, they would not recognize this country.
We have been through some troubling times before in our nation's history. There were the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 when newspaper editors, civilians–who criticized the government–were placed in jail. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. He even arrested members of the Maryland legislature and all kinds of people around the country who objected to his policies.
We had the Red Raids in the early 1920s that started off J. Edgar Hoover's career in which hundreds of people were arrested, some of them deported without any due process at all. During the First World War, Woodrow Wilson not only practically suspended but also discarded the First Amendment. Then there were the Japanese internment camps of World War II, followed by Senator Joseph McCarthy's reign of terror, which was ended by fellow senators who realized that he had gone too far.
What we have now may be more insidious. Indeed, I believe we are in a worse state now than ever before in this country. With the surveillance state closing in on us, we are fighting to keep our country free from our own government.
Whereas we once operated under the Constitution, we are now, for example, under the USA Patriot Act, among other government dragnets, that permits pervasive electronic surveillance with minimal judicial review. The government listens in on our phone calls. It reads our mail. You have to be careful about what you do and say, and that is more dangerous than what was happening with McCarthy, since the technology the government now possesses is so much more insidious. We have no idea how much the government knows about average citizens. This is not the way the government born under the Declaration of Independence is supposed to operate.
Under the USA Patriot Act, FBI agents with a court order from a secret court, can enter people's homes and offices when they are not present, look around and take what they like. They can examine a hard drive and install in your computer the magic lantern, known less metaphorically as the keystroke jogger, which means they can record while you are not there everything you have typed on your computer, including stuff you have never sent. Then, under the USA Patriot Act, they can come back when you are not at home and download whatever information of yours they so desire. With advances in technology, they can even accomplish their clandestine objectives from a remote location.
All of this makes a prophet out of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who, during the first wiretapping case back in 1928 [Olmstead v. U.S.] , said in his dissent: "Ways may some day be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home."
Government officials like to claim that everything they are doing is for security, to keep America safe in the so-called war against terrorism. What they are really effectuating is a weakening of why we are Americans. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans today have a very limited idea as to why they are Americans, let alone why we have a First Amendment or a Bill of Rights. People are becoming accustomed or conditioned to what's going on now with the raping of the Fourth Amendment, for example. One of the things that is taught so badly in our schools, from elementary and middle school through graduate school, including journalism schools, is
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