"Surveillance is the new democracy"

Author Naomi Klein explains how the videoing of protesters at the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit has dire implications for democracy hamstrung by "the security state as infotainment":

If videotaping activists meets the legal requirement that dissenting citizens have the right to be seen and heard, what else might fit the bill? How about all the other security cameras that patrolled the summit--the ones filming demonstrators as they got on and off buses and peacefully walked down the street? What about the cellphone calls that were intercepted, the meetings that were infiltrated, the e-mails that were read? According to the new rules set out in Montebello, all of these actions may soon be recast not as infringements on civil liberties but the opposite: proof of our leaders' commitment to direct, unmediated consultation.

In the run-up to the SPP summit, a spate of surveillance scandals helped paint a fuller picture. First, Congress not only failed to curtail the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping but opened the door to snooping into bank records, phone call patterns and even physical searches--all without any onus to prove the subject is a threat. Next, the Boston Globe reported on plans to link thousands of CCTV cameras on streets, subways, apartment buildings and businesses into networks capable of tracking suspects in real time. And on August 15, confirmation came that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency--the arm of the US military that runs spy planes and satellites over enemy territory--would be fully integrated into the infrastructure of domestic intelligence gathering and local policing, becoming what the agency calls the "eyes" to the NSA's "ears."

The Orwellian parallels--hackneyed as they are--persist.