Markman's Musings: The hypocrisy of surveillance

By: Joe Markman

Posted: 10/2/07

10/02/07 - More than 90 million people tuned in last February to watch the Steelers beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, the largest turnout since 1996, when 94.1 million people watched the Cowboy dynasty's last triumph.

And this season, the NFL's 88th, America's richest and most popular sports league began a concerted effort to control what its millions of fans see, read and hear about its players and teams.

The league has implemented new restrictions on access to team personnel and facilities for non-affiliated news organizations. It is also pushing fans and advertisers toward its own cable channel and Web site. In order to get richer, it seems, the NFL is looking to clean up its rocky off-the-field image by censoring information for fans.

It appears the NFL is simply on the leading edge of a popular phenomenon. The trend of controlling what people see, read and hear is a national one. And while the NFL has no reason to institute increased surveillance of its fan base, the federal government is, at the same time, restricting access to information and beefing up surveillance efforts.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit last week claiming that the U.S. government violated the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens in denying someone a political forum. The government revoked the visa of Adam Habib, a well-known South African scholar, after his outspoken criticism of the war in Iraq and the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. In the wake of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia University, it is laughable to think that our government officials would refuse a political scholar access to the country so that he might add to our well of political thought.

While the government of our free and democratic nation continues to find ways to punish those with opposing viewpoints, the Transportation Security Administration is ratcheting up its already burdensome security at airports. Last week, USA Today reported that new TSA security measures, if broadened, could lead to a future like "Blade Runner," where cameras and body scanners monitor voice, movement, speech, gait, pulse, perspiration and body odor to spot suspicious people.

Recently at Dulles Airport in Washington, a man was searched and questioned by a TSA behavior officer for showing more complex emotions than the normal cattle-line of waiting passengers. Surprisingly, the Department of Homeland Security downplays the effectiveness of such clumsy methods.

Larry Willis, who works for the department, calls research for the policy, "immature." No wonder, considering that out of 43,000 passengers taken aside for additional questioning, only 278 were arrested, none on terror charges, and only one stop led to information of interest to the intelligence community.

There appears to be a lot of spirit in Washington for keeping a close eye on thousands of innocent Americans. My professor related to me last week that the U.S. government keeps close tabs on citizens who leave the country on vacation. The next time you're on vacation in Europe don't bother looking over your shoulder for U.S. intelligence, the spy is your credit card.

If you sit down and read the newspaper for about 30 minutes, you'll be amazed at how many of these hypocritical surveillance topics can be found in headlines and within the body of news stories.

Even within the government itself there are those who are allowed to see and those who aren't. The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman, complained publicly last week that the State Department is barring its officials from discussing with Congress the corruption in Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government. At a time when the future of Iraq's democracy is precarious at best, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her aides are limiting access to information that our government needs to help make Iraq a free and self-governing democracy.

The next step, for extreme social conservatives, is to simply make everyone in the country wear earrings. If you're straight, male or female, you wear an earring in your left ear. If you're gay, you wear one in your right ear. And bisexuals and anyone else similarly confused must wear an earring in both ears. That way we can cut down on the time it takes to investigate hate crimes and the government can keep track of everyone's sexual preference for the sake of national security.

So when the NFL starts putting emotional lie detectors in stadium seats to see if you really like the sport or if you're merely there for beer and friends, you can bet the federal government has already wired your home and office with the most advanced surveillance equipment. And if that weren't enough, while the NFL is giving you watered-down coverage of its stars, the public officials who run our country along with multinational corporations will surely be further extending their right to keep secrets from us.