And so ill at least achieve the former. [laughter] so i was looking at the book today. I was toying to think if there was something that caps losed exactly what i wanted to say, and that means its going to be a couple of paragraphs and going to be saying what i want to say. Here it is. Today, if you are a pilot, hamme radio operator, doctor, veterinarian, nurse, medic, emergency anything, blanks driver, firefighter, police officer, constable, deputy, park ranger, demolitions expert, aid worker, life guarder, heavy equipment operator, utility lineman, trucker, bus driver, merchant, important operator, apodemologist, biologist, hydrologist, undertaker, community planner, civil engineer, mechanic, information technician, hacker, cyber geek, linguist, fish and wild life specialist, dispatcher, security guard, technical climber, search and rescue expert, dog handler, dog lover, or dog there is a place for you in Homeland Security. [laughter] and on virtually every inch of the political spectrum we demand this. We demand preparedness and security today so government bureaucrats and federal agents and Homeland Security officials and military commanders forge these triggertaught relationships with cities, states, counties, tribes, and local governments. Everyone marching to the National Security beat, you tillties, fell communication, the information, hospitals, the transportation sector, theyre all deputized in to Government Public Private Partnership worst case protocol or fed to corporations, universities fraternal associations, nonprofit and faithbased organizations. Tens of millions are signed up credentialed fitted out. Networks of listeners, watchers, and snifferrers are in employed all recording, saving, and panning for gold. Area of dispatch aread, area of press regulation. Are in i are an official speech is made without the new national lexicon. Information sharing, unified command, unity of effort, whole of government, whole of community, whole of society. Is anyone left who is just a civilian today . So that pretty much says it all. When i think about the gulf that exists between washington and this new enlisted conglomeration of Homeland Security, Law Enforcement, intelligence, military government and try to put some meaning to it i came up with this idea of marshall life. That we live under a state of marshall life. Its not theres some uniformed guardian who has taken over the government. Its a con come ration of Homeland Security, intelligence, the Law Enforcement world, of the military, the National Security community, the government, the emergency responders, and it makes National Security more than anything else the most important subject so even like last week when we watched the shut down of the federal government, who was exempt . The Intelligence Community, the Homeland Security apparatus, the military. And transforms the private sector in Civil Society in to a kind of National Security mess. Which is to say that if youre rather than utility so you to comply with federal laws that mostly have to do with things like keeping the utility strong an safe, which, of course, are defined in very military and National Security terms. So i talked to a friend of mine who lives in the state of vermont, and hes a top level planner and i said does anybody care about this . He said, you know, actually in the state of vermont, at lough emergency planners are worried about the electrical grid. Its one area where we are concerned, and i said so what do you doing to make it stronger . It just totally halted him. Because i had said were just preparing for the day it goes down. Were doing nothing to make it sphropg stronger. Nothing. And thats adjust little microcause m of understanding what happens when everything is about National Security. The weight moves over to a kind of preparedness for stayser, for war as opposed to creating a more resill resilient, Civil Society. I call that reality. American coup. So today i went online because i always want to check when i say more National Security and military people are doing better economically. So just let me give you some numbers that are in this book that youre going buy. First, seven of the richest 15 counties in america are in the washington, d. C. , metropolitan area, and about 60 of all the job openings in america are in washington, d. C. , metro metropolitan area today. 60 . Thats by going to monster. Com and a couple of other job boards. And youll be glad to know that everybody that the most invaluable commodity is having a top secret security clearance. Its like commodity. Thats what you sell yourself on the base is on you have one of these things. So next week im speaking at aclu vermont conference and i thought, well, ill look up how many people how many jobs there are open right now in vermont looking for people with top secret clearances. Im happy to report that the top out of search out of the top ten jobs open in vermont now, when you do a search of vermont at secret or victorias secrets. We havent been quite destroyed yet. [laughter] no, though, i want to share with you Something Else about vice vermont and the world we live in. So i get a knock on the door at my home in south [inaudible] and the guy says, you dont know me but i live in the north area, and i wanted to come by for quite some time, you know, im sorry i havent read your books. Lots of intro. Im wondering 9 11 truth committee. [laughter] but he says, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Im being very nice. Its hard for me. He says i spoke to the store manager and he said go on over there and tell him what you know. And he said, so i was driving by your house one day and i saw these duosurveillance vehicles in front of it, and, you know, i know you do something in the National Security field, and i dont want to be conspiracy nut, and i dont want to i just it didnt even strike me as, like, i thought, oh, yeah. Bill arkin lives there. Maybe theyre there for a reason. There are blackened windows. And i thought, okay, i have a cell phone. Im going take a picture. So he took a picture of the surveillance vehicles. He said later on in the day i went down and they were parked on the wood stock green transmitting. And he said, i had to kind of lost the pictures on the phone then i talked to chuck about it. He said, you know, thats kind of interesting. You should tell bill about it. And so i printed you out these pictures. Here they are. Im going buy your book. You know, whatever youre doing. Its good. [laughter] i didnt have the heart to tell the guy that this was Television Cameras that came to interview me that day. [laughter] and satellite truck. [laughter] but i found it really interesting that is what he felt thats where he went. And this kind of two qualities to that exchange that, to me, exempt the situation in america today. One is, were fortune enough to live in vermont, in small town america. Something that is disappearing virtually everywhere else. And part of it is what is the value of the local community . You have to kind of make this argument, if you will, both in social terms and political signs term. What is the value of the local community . Because if were not trying to forge some kind of a society, then what is our mission internally . And i think when the Founding Fathers thought about a federation of states, they thought about the value of the local community. Everything about it all the structure of the institution and the government is to give powers to the people and to the states. And to take powers away from the federal government. Thats actual what the constitution does. It restricts the federal government while giving inalienable rights to the people and to the states. Inalienable things that cant be taken away. So when you live in a local community where you park your car in your driveway and id leave the keys in the car. But you dont lock up. I do leave in the keys in the car. It you want to steal my car, please do. I get more from insurance than i would if i had to sell it. [laughter] but i kind of expect people to look out after me. Thats the value of the local community. So this guy coming, even though he was just completely wrong, you know, made me feel like there was real added value to my living here. Thats why i live here. And yet on the other hand the message he was conveying, you know, that somehow he not politically just accepted the notion that the federal government or some government could be there watching, listening, and thats infected us all. Because here i am preparing for my talk in month peel area and here tonight. Im on the internet doing research on the big punchline of my talk next week. How the government justifies the huge surveillance net created in america. And in a way, i want to urge you all to forget physicality. Okay. The government wants to watch me, all they need to do is getten the internet. Theyll learn more than if they sit outside my house where they get bored to death. But the physical world has increasingly disappeared, and the world that is important is the information world. Its important to remember and so here i am working on my talk for next week. One of the things i wanted to bring it back to was make people understand, especially aclu types and people are concerned with civil liberty somehow that all of this on a sort of grand scale, snowden and syria all the ss effects us affects us in vermont. And so in vermont, theres a federal organization that just happens to be in vermont because it happens to be in vermont. Its just 150 people or so who sit at computers and they process every police query nationwide of a potential illegal alien. That is their job. Its part of i. C. E. Which is part of the department of Homeland Security. But inside that building is also a group called b. R. A. G. The guy bioterrorism something, something group. They process all the applications that have to do with people seeking jobs with what are called type one or type two bayou agents. Theres a law. Called the patriot act act, which in in detail says you cant work in the bioterrorism biological or chemical type one or two field untiles you are cleared. If youre not not cleared, you actually gate tight. You are called a restricted person. So i started to do some research because i wanted to know how many restricted people are there . Thats a good question. I emailed the fbi Public Affairs office, i e mailed people i know. I went online, and whey found was an interesting speech done by a highlevel pentagon official at the conference of Fertilizer Companies. He was urging the Fertilizer Companies to come together in the elimination of the sale calcium Ammonium Nitrate. It turns out it is responsible for, like, 90 of all the provised explosive devices,ied that explode in afghanistan. The government and putting the good cap on says, okay, lets eliminate the use of this and lets eliminate the export of it and the trade in it, and were going solve the problem. Theyre not going and make bombs out of the Something Else. So i thought okay. Big data bases, people, problems in afghanistan. It all comes back to vermont who sells calcium Ammonium Nitrate in vermont. Im on the internet, who sells it. Twenty minutes in im thinking to myself somebody knows what im doing research on. Because part of their protocols are if somebody spending 20 minutes online looking for 50 pound or more of calcium Ammonium Nitrate, which i am. Then they must be suspicious. Theres one company in vermont that sells it. Theyre in milton. Its a seed company. And in fact the top 100 hits on google if you type in calcium Ammonium Nitrate purchase, are www. Allibabba. Com. Im not kidding, okay, because its sold in the middle east. Oh and china. You go amazon and guy from a chinese company. Only 6. 95 for 50 pounds to be shifted to the u. S. Okay. Get. Its just a tiny little part of the world. Okay. How many restricted people are there . 296. Of 45,000 people who have applied to Jobs Associated with type one or type two biological or chemical agents, 296 since 9 11 have been found to be restricted persons. 296. And of those 296 people, 1200 of them were disqualified because they had felony convictions of one year or more, and 20 of them were disqualified because they had used an illegal substance. Okay. No one was disqualified because they were associated with a Terrorism Organization or foreign government. No one. Nobody. So then im thinking, okay, this is 45,000. The center told me they pro1. 1 million queries a year, and the fbi tells me that they have 75 million fingerprints now in their data bases, and the Biometrics Task force in West Virginia tells me they have 25 million biometric identities that have been collected since 9 11. Its the territory that is our freedom gets mauler and smaller. Im not concerned about evil people doing something. Im not concerned about conspiracies. Im not concerned about them running around amuck. Its the the Obama Administration six years in. This is our government, and they are increasingly make smaller and smaller the territory of freedom. There are 25 million americans today who have biometrically enabled credentials. Transportation workers, government workers, military workers, contractors, first responders, police forces, et. Cetera. Its just the start. And when you take those 25 million and add their families and then you add those volunteers, dogs included. The number reaches 60 million. Thats 60 Million People who are engaged in National Security and Homeland Security. That was one sixth of the population of the united. So if you happen not to be in that group, then you are one of the needles in the hay stack. Whether you going to be scrutinized by brag, some stop and frisk program, some secure community, by some license plate reader, by some Police Person just doing their job. Thats the world we actually live in you dont have to make it up. You continue dont have to imagine a conspiracy because thats the nation that weve created in the decade since 9 11. And when i are top secret america and we worked for three years on that investigate for the washington post, we tried to quantify what had happened to america since 9 11. When i wrote american ciewp coup i tried to understand not the what but the why. Why did nothing change after obama became president and the National Security realm . Why did the Drone Program even accelerate . Somehow it that our government can say, which it does, that it will be the executioner and the court of even american citizens. As it has done on numerous occasions now in killing american citizens abroad who were identified as terrorists. Not even terrorists, in some cases just terrorism gurus response were not talking about, like, some killing someone was their finger on the button. Were talking about someone who could have been indicted and captured. It they werent, so what . But more important, theyre americans. So weve been hearing a lot recently because of mr. Snowedden about the nsa and surveillance, and the international community, whatever that might be, is up in arms about the american domination of the internet. So remember i said its not physicality anymore. Everything that is done is done online. It is all about collecting informing, processing that information, moving that information, analyzing that information, and making use of that information. Thats the whole reason why we spend a half trillion dollars a year now in National Security. To go after i dont know how many people were trying to go after. But lets just take the National Watch list of known and suspected terrorists nap would be a good place to start. All right. Theres another data base, its maintained in mcclain, virginia, the data base of known and suspected terrorists ksts. There are 132,000 people on that in that data base. 132,000. So its hard to find 132,000 people who dont want to be found. And were going to, what, kill them one of the time and think that the math is going to decline and not constantly replenish itself . Thats where we live right now. And part that have that i find fascinating, i find interesting in terms of understanding the huge effort that goes in to all of this is how much the people involved in it themselves dont understand this. They dont understand the totality in any way. The guy that works on biorestricted persons in that Small Program has no idea what these bigger things are. Has no sense of how it is encroached upon our territory of freedom. Its getting smaller all the time. And snowden has provoked this outcry. I have a prediction. I dont think nothing will happen. But i think what will happen will be known in the future as the information prohibition. There was prohibition instituted america on a National Level in 1919. And it lasted until the mid 30s. And then it went away. I think probably sometime in the next few years, were going have some kind of huge surveillance prohibition, its going to be sern going say we dont want the nsa looking at everything. Its going to be a kind of well, its going to be just like prohibition. Theyll do it anyhow, and theyll be people who move information illegally and they will become the enemy. This will happen for awhile, then it will go away. Im not saying it doesnt mean what snowden hasnt done is incredibly important. It is. Because he did something that most journalists in washington and in the new york washington bubble dont want to do. Which is not play by the rules. And so he named names, and he said uncomfortable things and stole documents and its having a real effect. But when the german change already say chancellor says tonight im shocked that the americans are listening in on my phone calls, or whatever. The brazilian president of the u. N. Or youve got say, okay, its a little bit of, you know, im shocked theres gambling going on in the casino. They are doing the same thing. But it doesnt mean its the answer. It doesnt quite mean its the answer, and i think what were seeing is sort of the edge of a kind of societal uncomfortableness with this movement of information and transparency and watch listing of everything and data basing of everything. Were watching something going on here. Los 132,000 people or whatever list of people they are looking for. And they are going to do it as well as they can do it given as much money as we give them. I do think at the same time that they have no incentive to stop or change, none. They have no incentive, and that is what i talk about in the book. It has become so did viciously self perpetuating, this whole notion that now, because no one is the enemy, everyone is potentially the enemy. So we have to keep a constant eye not on people because of their politics, not on people because of their religion, not on people because of their ethnic background, we have to keep an eye on people, insiders and outsiders because the insiders are just as dangerous, not even having security clearance kind of ads all of you from and i being kept on you as ed snowden will fantastically revealed because of those 1. 4 million americans who have topsecret clearances like ed snowden, they are going to be the most sedate people in america because every keystroke on a computer and every log on and every place that they are is going to now be more secure. That builds the infrastructure of what looks at the rest of us. And i dont even mean the rest of us because because there are people, there might be people who insist on drinking on unpasteurized milk. There might be people who utilize illegal substances. The patriot that actually lays out what are the reasons for disqualification to become a suspect person. Mental defective, mental defect ofs, although 45,000, i am thinking, and that sent me out for another hour to the internet to find out what the governments definition of a mental defective is and sure enough there is the database of people who have been institutionalized, and some states still refuse to share their information with the federal government, but at the center, in atlanta that tracks mental defective for security clearance purposes, for the bio terror brag program, for whatever, wants to have access to all that data. American coup 11, that is what i pollen and the hopi but the , what i pollen and the hopi but t because cspan is here and did you have a questionook because did you have a question please use the ecause cspan is here a you have a question please use the microphone. Quick mental defective. Of all these billionsquick m. Of all these billions of names on the databases would gain to been made by the government in interception of terrorist activities this was justified because we caught x number of terrorists is a stupid argument on the part of the government so let me explain why the government makes stupid arguments. It is important to know. They dont want to say what they are really doing. If the news media and the zeitgeist, the american aesthetic become that the nsa is a surveiling everyone, for the government to say no we are not is sort of like a little lame because they are not surveying everyone, they are collecting all information, they dont know what to do with that information yet, they pulled enthrall sorts of different algorithms to try to data mining it and do link analysis and social Network Analysis and have programs like brag and security clearance programs in which they utilize the information and there are these 132,000 known and suspected terrorists that get special treatment and there are people who come from special countries that would be like all 60 million iranians and people like that, when they are done with that, they hardly have time to look at the rest of what they have collected so they built this 2. 5 billion facility in utah and they are going to store it all and they dont really know how much they are going to be able to store their or for how long because every day i am stunned. Everyday, as an example, 300 million Text Messages are sent around the world. I know our kids are responsible for a huge number of those, but can you get a sense of the quantity we are talking about . No wonder they feel they have to collect everything, but it is about collection. It is not about surveillance. Take away from your head a nixons enemies list or Something Like that. There is an enemies list, there are many. I can show your diagrams that overlap and overlap of all sorts of programs of vetting and credential inga and clearing but there is no one list of a political nature anymore, so when the government says we have achieved x goal through this program, they are trying their best. They cant explain what they are doing because to explain what they are doing, we are collecting everything on everyone, we are not really collecting it, we adjust intercepting it. There is no truck in front of the house, we going to the cables and take everything. We dont need to do it anywhere physically any more. It is all virtual, and we dont even need to listen in on conversations in the middle east in the middle east anymore and the Largest Center of listening in on conversations in the middle east is in augusta, ga. The largest in the world. The largest one that looks at everything that goes on in latin america or in the Spanish Language is in san antonio. Largest one that looks at everything that goes on in asia and in the pacific is in hawaii. Hardly anyone needs to go forward anymore in to the bad world. We are just busy collecting. Why didnt you mention bush cheney but only Obama Administration . I did mention cheney. First of all, obama is president so it is kind of silly to ignore. The Second Administration what has or hasnt changed. Whether one is prone to believe why bush and cheney are responsible for what has been created here, after 12 years i got to say we are responsible. It comes down to us. Government has taken too much control, we have two elections. And and when you look at the Drone Program and the killing of Osama Bin Laden and other things obama has done, positive and negative. They are things that obama as president and constitutional lawyer has agreed to, has said i want done. I would say to you i like to believe that i have a view of the world that is not just do and gloom. Maybe i will write that book some day, and in the last three or four months a couple things have happened that made me feel like maybe something is changing. One of them is ed snowden and what is happening in reaction to it. Another one is the fact that we didnt bomb syria which i think on balance is essentials the an act of maturationly an act of maturation of obamas spared. He got the intelligence and everything was working. He got the intelligence and everything was workingpart. He got the intelligence and everything was working. He got the intelligence and everything was working like clockwork until this president asked and then what . He was uncomfortable with the answers and said go back to the drawing board and when they went back to the drawing board the russians got involved and others got involved and bombing was averted. Another thing happened this week only that i find interesting which is the department of Homeland Security has a new secretary. You probably couldnt tell me who the old secretary was. The old secretary was the governor of arizona and an idiot and a buffoon. The new secretary is a really interesting civil libertarian who used to be on the board of human rights watch. From manage anything . They manage themselves. What you need is a leader and i am saying it represents to me something that says may be the second term obama is getting smarter. Maybe. May be. I dont know. If i could see the future i wouldnt be here. But i see signs that indicate to me change and those signs are good and maybe you have a question. Okay. A couple comments and the question. I am not sure how we could be responsible when a lot of the times we dont know because of the massive secrecy that is going non. I find it a little disconcerting as well that even when we do find out the amount of surveillance that is going on an awful lot of people dont seem to mind. If it stops another boston it didnt stop boston. How is it going to stop another boston . How do you fix it . They have all the money. Our money. How do you stop it . It is secret. How do you back it down . Great question. This is my lifes work. Is there too much secrecy. I want to make that point because it is endemic to institutions so it will only make sense that the institutions we created that at the National Institutions that are most secretive and these days secrecy is as much about preserving their freedoms. There are some things ed snowden has revealed, i say as an expert, experts are not supposed to say this, that i have learned from. Most experts already knew all this stuff. There are interesting things. I want to understand the capabilities associated with those interesting thing is. And the president perce. The same capabilities our resident within doing those things. Ed snowden revealed we havent listened in on the president of north korea, we all say finally they are doing something useful with our money. But he didnt. So secrecy is a bit of a game. I have spent my entire life in this world. I worked for the government, worked in the Intelligence Community, consulted for the government, and revealed secrets into such a degree i have been threatened to go to jail numerous times and yet when my neighbor came and told me there were two black cars in the driveway, i knew that there was a reason and even if i didnt know that there was a reason there is a reason. So i guess it is the demystifying of the reason for the secrecy that is itself the best defense and offense against secrecy which is to say if you dont believe those secrets are really about anything, they have to prove why something should be secret, not that there is a presumption that it is secret, we are on the first step to being more educated consumers. I dont want to stand here and say i lament government secrecy. I can find out anything. Anything. I am not an nsa specialist. So there are things that have come from ed snowden that surprised me or that i learned the in the field where i am the specialist i can find out anything. I am not afraid of the government and that is part of being an american. So i got to put the responsibility back on my own shoulders instead of saying a 5 want to change the way things are it is my responsibility because i cant expect that they are going to wake up one morning and say we want to change the way things are especially not now when such a large number of people who work in the National Security field work for private companies who are creating profits and they are never going to wake up one morning and say dont give us another contract, we are safe enough, they are never going to do that. You do have a question. You are dancing around something. The problem is not government power but we lost presumption of innocence first in the drug war and since 9 11 and we are all suspects. I am not dancing around it. I wrote a book about it. In the intelligence world they call it a predicate. I think that is a legal term. You have to have a predicate to investigate someone. That is the rule within the fbi and after 9 11 they did away with that. First they did away with it in the patriot act and then they did it in a whole series of other rules and regulations that we as a country have essentials the accepted. There was a point in our history when i was in a very uncomfortable position personally because i was arguing, i think it is important that we identify who in america we actually do think the enemy is, and so that got me thinking i will put people from the middle east to a higher category than i am going to put people from italy. I started to examine my own conscience and examine my own thinking to understand what was i saying to myself . American citizens who happen to be muslims or happen to be from the middle east that there should be a greater presumption that they are a danger to this society than other people and then major hassan, an Army Major Killed 40 people in fort hood, texas, and the army chief of staff went to congress the next day or two days later and said how can this happen, and he said we dont look at anybody on the basis of religion or race, that is not american. Yes at that time in november of 2008, if you were gay, you couldnt be in the military but if you were a muslim terrorist you could be. I thought there was something wrong with that. Because we were also perfectly willing to look at gay peoples life styles and backgrounds and personal lives, so that is the conundrum of this whole question of presumed innocent and presumed guilty and the way the constitution is structured and the way the country is structured and we need to preserve it and that is what i found to be my own answer as i went down this path. Was that our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom of association, our unalienable rights, so it is true what the army chief of staff said. The constitution is not a really good document to create security in the age of terrorism but it is a damn good document to keep everyone equal. I like the fact that i live in a country in which we dont look at muslims just because they are muslims. I dislike the fact that i live in a country where we look at muslims anyhow and just do it in secret. And that is the bigger problem, because i am less worried about the promiscuous presumption of guilt than i am about the systemic presumption of guilt and there are all sorts of specific secret programs within the Intelligence Community that
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