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| Trevor Paglen, They Watch the Moon, 2010. |
Turnkey Tyranny,
Surveillance and the Terror State
By Trevor Paglen
By exposing NSA
programs like PRISM and Boundless Informant, Edward Snowden has revealed that
we are not moving toward a surveillance state: we live in the heart of one. The
30-year-old whistleblower told The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald that the NSA’s
data collection created the possibility of a “turnkey tyranny,” whereby a
malevolent future government could create an authoritarian state with the flick
of a switch. The truth is actually worse. Within the context of current
economic, political and environmental trends, the existence of a surveillance
state doesn’t just create a theoretical possibility of tyranny with the turn of
a key—it virtually guarantees it.
For more than a
decade, we’ve seen the rise of what we might call a “Terror State,” of which
the NSA’s surveillance capabilities represent just one part. Its rise occurs at
a historical moment when state agencies and programs designed to enable social
mobility, provide economic security and enhance civic life have been targeted
for significant cuts. The last three decades, in fact, have seen serious and
consistent attacks on social security, food assistance programs, unemployment
benefits and education and health programs. As the social safety net has
shrunk, the prison system has grown. The United States now imprisons its own
citizens at a higher rate than any other country in the world.
While civic parts of
the state have been in retreat, institutions of the Terror State have grown
dramatically. In the name of an amorphous and never-ending “war on terror,” the
Department of Homeland Security was created, while institutions such as the
CIA, FBI and NSA, and darker parts of the military like the Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC) have expanded considerably in size and political
influence. The world has become a battlefield—a stage for extralegal
renditions, indefinite detentions without trial, drone assassination programs
and cyberwarfare. We have entered an era of secret laws, classified
interpretations of laws and the retroactive “legalization” of classified
programs that were clearly illegal when they began. Funding for the secret
parts of the state comes from a “black budget” hidden from Congress—not to
mention the people—that now tops $100 billion annually. Finally, to ensure that
only government-approved “leaks” appear in the media, the Terror State has
waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, leakers and journalists. All of
these state programs and capacities would have been considered aberrant only a
short time ago. Now, they are the norm.
