{"id":5648,"date":"2013-06-11T09:45:33","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T13:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=5648"},"modified":"2013-06-11T09:45:33","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T13:45:33","slug":"federal-surveillances-threat-to-american-security-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/11\/federal-surveillances-threat-to-american-security-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Surveillance’s Threat to Security (2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"

My piece from the Foundation for Economic Education<\/a>‘s Freeman<\/a>, January 2004<\/h4>\n

\u00a0“The more information government gathers on people, the more power it will have over them. The more power it has to monitor their peaceful activities, the more intimidated Americans will become.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Federal Surveillance: The Threat to Americans’ Security<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

More Information Equals More Power<\/strong><\/p>\n

JANUARY 2004 by\u00a0JAMES BOVARD<\/a><\/h5>\n

Since the terrorist attacks on 9\/11 the Bush administration has launched many new surveillance programs in the name of homeland security. When critics raised questions about the potential abuses of the new powers, some administration supporters insisted that Bush\u2019s new surveillance policies were benign because there was no evidence the programs were being abused.<\/p>\n

But the key to understanding new government intrusions is that horror stories do not surface in the first 72 hours after a new power is granted. The machinery of government takes time to deploy and expand. It takes time for the impact of precedents to expand, for the agents all along the line to get the message that they are not entitled to go much further than before. We must look to history to see what is likely to happen once the government is unleashed.<\/p>\n

In May 2002, after revelations that the FBI missed many warning signs before 9\/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that he was effectively abolishing restrictions on FBI surveillance of Americans\u2019 everyday life. Those restrictions were first imposed in 1976 after pervasive FBI abuses were revealed. At that time, Attorney General Edward Levi announced guidelines to curtail FBI agents\u2019 intrusions into the lives of Americans who were not criminal suspects.<\/p>\n

At his May 30 announcement Ashcroft declared that, after 9\/11, \u201cwe in the leadership of the FBI and the Department of Justice began a concerted effort to free the field agents\u2014the brave men and women on the front lines\u2014from the bureaucratic, organizational, and operational restrictions and structures that hindered them from doing their jobs effectively.\u201d1<\/a>\u00a0He complained that in the past FBI agents were required \u201cto blind themselves to information that everyone else [was] free to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, as the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington non-profit organization, noted, \u201cThe FBI was never prohibited in the past from going to mosques, political rallies and other public places, to observe and record what was said, but in the past it had to be guided by the criminal nexus\u2014in deciding what mosques to go to and what political meetings to record, it had to have some reason to believe that terrorism might be discussed.\u201d2<\/a>\u00a0A\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>editorial warned that the new guidelines \u201ccould mean that F.B.I. agents will show up at the doors of people who order politically unpopular books on Amazon.com or make phone calls to organizations critical of the government.\u201d3<\/a><\/p>\n

Ashcroft\u2019s announcement concluded with the mandatory invocation of freedom consecrating each Bush power grab: \u201cThese guidelines will also be a resource to inform the American public and demonstrate that we seek to protect life and liberty from terrorism and other criminal violence with a scrupulous respect for civil rights and personal freedoms. The campaign against terrorism is a campaign to affirm the values of freedom and human dignity. . . . Called to the service of our nation, we are called to the defense of liberty for all men and women.\u201d When Bush was asked about the new FBI guidelines at a photo opportunity that same day, he declared, \u201cthe initiative that the attorney general will be outlining today will guarantee our Constitution.\u201d4<\/a><\/p>\n

Ashcroft talked as if the old guidelines on FBI surveillance were simply the result of a long-ago outbreak of temporary insanity among liberals. Ashcroft declared: \u201cIn its 94-year history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been . . . the tireless protector of civil rights and civil liberties for all Americans.\u201d5<\/a><\/p>\n

The 1976 guidelines were put in place in response to a report by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations that detailed many FBI abuses over the preceding decades. For 15 years, from 1956 to 1971, the FBI ran COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Programs) to actively subvert groups and people that the FBI considered threats to national security or to the established political and social order. Over 2,300 separate operations were carried out to incite street warfare between violent groups, to wreck marriages, to get people fired, to smear innocent people by portraying them as government informants, to sic the IRS on people, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, or other organizations.6<\/a>\u00a0The FBI let no corner of American life escape its vigilance; it even worked to expose and discredit \u201ccommunists who are secretly operating in legitimate organizations and employments, such as the Young Men\u2019s Christian Association and Boy Scouts.\u201d7<\/a><\/p>\n

Burglary Exposes Scandal<\/h4>\n

Throughout the COINTELPRO period, presidents, congressmen, and other high-ranking federal officials assured Americans that the federal government was obeying the law and upholding the Constitution. It took a burglary of an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, to break the biggest scandal in the history of federal law enforcement. After hundreds of pages of confidential records were commandeered, the \u201cCitizen\u2019s Commission to Investigate the FBI\u201d began passing out the incriminating documents to the media.8<\/a>\u00a0The shocking material sparked congressional and news investigations that eventually (temporarily) shattered the FBI\u2019s legendary ability to control its own image.<\/p>\n

The 1976 Senate report noted that COINTELPRO\u2019s origins \u201care rooted in the Bureau\u2019s jurisdiction to investigate hostile foreign intelligence activities on American soil\u201d and that the FBI used the \u201ctechniques of wartime.\u201d William Sullivan, former assistant to the FBI director, declared, \u201cNo holds were barred. . . . We have used [these techniques] against Soviet agents. . . . [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate.\u201d9<\/a><\/p>\n

The FBI sought to subvert many black civil-rights organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Deacons for Defense and Justice, and Congress of Racial Equality. FBI headquarters ordered field offices to, as the Senate report noted, \u201cexploit conflicts within and between groups; to use news media contacts to disrupt, ridicule, or discredit groups; to preclude \u2018violence-prone\u2019 or \u2018rabble rouser\u2019 leaders of these groups from spreading their philosophy publicly; and to gather information on the \u2018unsavory backgrounds\u2019\u2014immorality, subversive activity, and criminal activity\u2014of group members.\u201d FBI agents were also ordered to develop specific tactics to \u201cprevent these groups from recruiting young people.\u201d10<\/a><\/p>\n

Almost any black organization could be targeted for wiretaps. One black leader was monitored largely because he had \u201crecommended the possession of firearms by members for their self-protection.\u201d11<\/a>\u00a0At that time, some southern police departments and sheriffs were notorious for attacking blacks who stood up for their civil rights.12<\/a><\/p>\n

The FBI office in San Diego instigated violence between the local Black Panthers and a rival black organization, US (United Slaves Inc.).13<\/a>\u00a0Agents sent forged letters making accusations and threats to the groups purportedly from their rivals, along with crude cartoons and drawings meant to enrage the recipients. Three Black Panthers and one member of the rival group were killed during the time the FBI was fanning the flames. A few days after shootings in which two Panthers were wounded and one was killed, and in which the U.S. headquarters was bombed, the FBI office reported to headquarters: \u201cEfforts are being made to determine how this situation can be capitalized upon for the benefit of the Counterintelligence Program.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI office bragged shortly thereafter: \u201cShootings, beatings, and a high degree of unrest continues to prevail in the ghetto area of southeast San Diego. Although no specific counterintelligence action can be credited with contributing to this overall situation, it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this program.\u201d14<\/a><\/p>\n

The FBI set up a Ghetto Informant Program that continued after COINTELPRO and that had 7,402 informants, including proprietors of candy stores and barbershops, as of September 1972. The informants served as \u201clistening posts\u201d \u201cto identify extremists passing through or locating in the ghetto area, to identify purveyors of extremist literature,\u201d and to keep an eye on \u201cAfro-American type bookstores\u201d (including obtaining the names of the bookstores\u2019 \u201cclientele\u201d). The informants\u2019 reports were stockpiled in the FBI\u2019s Racial Intelligence Unit.15<\/a><\/p>\n

King Targeted<\/h4>\n

For most of the last five years of his life Martin Luther King was \u201cthe target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to \u2018neutralize\u2019 him as an effective civil rights leader,\u201d the Senate report noted. King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech in Washington in August 1963 was described by the FBI\u2019s Domestic Intelligence Division as evidence that King had become \u201cthe most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.\u201d King\u2019s home and office were wiretapped and, on 16 occasions, the FBI placed wiretaps in King\u2019s motel rooms, seeking information on the \u201cprivate activities of King and his advisers\u201d to use to \u201ccompletely discredit\u201d them.<\/p>\n

The FBI sent a copy of one tape recording directly to King along with a note \u201cwhich Dr. King and his advisers interpreted as a threat to release the tape recording unless Dr. King committed suicide,\u201d the Senate report noted. The FBI offered to play tapes from the hotel rooms for \u201cfriendly\u201d reporters. It also sought to block the publication of articles that praised King. An FBI agent intervened with Francis Cardinal Spellman to seek to block a meeting between King and the pope.16<\/a><\/p>\n

FBI informants also \u201cset up a Klan organization intended to attract membership away from the United Klans of America. The Bureau paid the informants\u2019 personal expenses in setting up the new organization, which had, at its height, 250 members.\u201d During the six years Gary Rowe spent as an FBI informant with the Klan, he, along with other Klansmen, had \u201cbeaten people severely, had boarded buses and kicked people off; had went [sic] in restaurants and beaten them with blackjacks, chains, pistols.\u201d Rowe testified how he and other Klansmen used \u201cbaseball bats, clubs, chains, and pistols\u201d to attack Freedom Riders.17<\/a><\/p>\n

The FBI continually expanded its racial-surveillance investigations, eventually targeting white people who were \u201cknown to sponsor demonstrations against integration and against the busing of Negro students to white schools.\u201d The FBI also created a national \u201cRabble Rouser\u201d Index, a \u201cmajor intelligence program . . . to identify \u2018demagogues.\u2019\u201d18<\/a><\/p>\n

From 1967 to 1972 the FBI paid Howard Berry Godfrey to be an informant with a right-wing paramilitary group in the San Diego area known as the Secret Army. The Senate committee discovered that Godfrey or the Secret Army was involved in \u201cfirebombing, smashing windows . . . propelling lug nuts through windows with sling shots, and breaking and entering.\u201d Godfrey took a Secret Army colleague with him to conduct surveillance of the home of a left-wing San Diego State University professor; the colleague fired several shots into the home, badly wounding a woman inside. The Senate report noted \u201ceven this shooting incident did not immediately terminate Godfrey as an [FBI] informant.\u201d Godfrey subsequently sold explosive material to a subordinate in the Secret Army who bombed the Guild Theater in San Diego in 1972.19<\/a><\/p>\n

One FBI informant infiltrated an antiwar group and helped it break into the Camden, New Jersey, Draft Board in 1970. The informant later testified: \u201cEverything they learned about breaking into a building or climbing a wall or cutting glass or destroying lockers, I taught them. I taught them how to cut the glass, how to drill holes in the glass so you cannot hear it and stuff like that, and the FBI supplied me with the equipment needed. The stuff I did not have, the [FBI] got off their own agents.\u201d20<\/a>\u00a0That sting led to a press conference in which J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General John Mitchell proudly announced the indictment of 20 people on an array of charges. After learning of the FBI\u2019s role in the crime, a jury refused to convict any of the defendants.<\/p>\n

Some COINTELPRO operations targeted the spouses of political activists, sending them letters asserting that their mates were unfaithful. \u201cAnonymous letters were sent to, among others, a Klansman\u2019s wife, informing her that her husband had \u2018taken the flesh of another unto himself,\u2019 the other person being a woman named Ruby, with her \u2018lust filled eyes and smart aleck figure\u2019; and to a \u2018Black Nationalist\u2019s\u2019 wife saying that her husband \u2018been maken it here\u2019 with other women in his organization \u2018and that he gives us this jive bout their better in bed then you.\u2019\u201d21<\/a><\/p>\n

One FBI field office bragged that one such letter to a black activist\u2019s wife produced the \u201ctangible result\u201d and \u201ccertainly contributed very strongly\u201d to the marriage\u2019s demise. The FBI targeted the women\u2019s liberation movement, resulting in \u201cintensive reporting on the identities and opinions of women who attended\u201d women\u2019s lib meetings. One FBI informant reported to headquarters of a meeting in New York: \u201cEach woman at this meeting stated why she had come to the meeting and how she felt oppressed, sexually or otherwise. . . . They are mostly against marriage, children, and other states of oppression caused by men.\u201d Women\u2019s lib informants were instructed to \u201cgo to meetings, write up reports . . . to try to identify the background of every person there . . . [and] who they were sleeping with.\u201d The Senate report noted that \u201cthe intensive FBI investigation of the Women\u2019s Liberation Movement was predicated on the theory that the activities of women in that Movement might lead to demonstrations and violence.\u201d22<\/a><\/p>\n

The Senate report also described the \u201csnitch jacket\u201d technique\u2014neutralizing a target by labeling him a \u201csnitch\u201d or informant so that he would no longer be trusted\u2014which was used in all COINTELPRO operations. The methods ranged from having an authentic informant start a rumor about the target member, to anonymous letters or phone calls, to faked informants\u2019 reports. . . . The \u201csnitch jacket\u201d is a particularly nasty technique even when used in peaceful groups. It gains an added dimension of danger when it is used\u2014as, indeed, it was\u2014in groups known to have murdered informers.23<\/a><\/p>\n

Shotgun Approach<\/h4>\n

The FBI took a shotgun approach toward protesters partly because of its \u201cbelief that dissident speech and association should be prevented because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate commission of an act which might be criminal.\u201d Some FBI agents may have viewed dissident speech or protests as a \u201cgateway drug\u201d to blowing up the Washington Monument. The Senate report noted:<\/p>\n

The clearest examples of actions directly aimed at the exercise of constitutional rights are those targeting speakers, teachers, writers or publications, and meetings or peaceful demonstrations. Approximately 18 percent of all approved COINTELPRO proposals fell into these categories. The cases include attempts (sometimes successful) to get university and high school teachers fired; to prevent targets from speaking on campus; to stop chapters of target groups from being formed; to prevent the distribution of books, newspapers, or periodicals; to disrupt news conferences; to disrupt peaceful demonstrations, including the SCLC\u2019s Washington Spring Project and Poor People\u2019s Campaign, and most of the large antiwar marches; and to deny facilities for meetings or conferences.24<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An FBI memo warned that \u201cthe anarchist activities of a few can paralyze institutions of learning, [conscription] induction centers, cripple traffic, and tie the arms of law enforcement officials, all to the detriment of our society.\u201d The FBI declared: \u201cThe New Left has on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director [J. Edgar Hoover] and the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it and to drive us off the college campuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI ordered field offices in 1968 to gather information illustrating the \u201cscurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits, and living conditions representative of New Left adherents.\u201d25<\/a>\u00a0The headquarters directive informed FBI agents across the land: \u201cEvery avenue of possible embarrassment must be vigorously and enthusiastically explored. It cannot be expected that information of this type will be easily obtained, and an imaginative approach by your personnel is imperative to its success.\u201d One FBI internal newsletter encouraged FBI agents to conduct more interviews with antiwar activists \u201cfor plenty of reasons, chief of which are it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.\u201d26<\/a><\/p>\n

A major goal of the COINTELPRO against the New Left operations was to \u201ccounter the widespread charges of police brutality that invariably arise following student-police encounters.\u201d27<\/a>\u00a0The FBI was especially incensed at criticisms that Chicago policemen used excessive force when they attacked demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The FBI thus launched an illegal program to smear people the FBI believed had made false assertions of police misconduct. As COINTELPRO continued, the FBI targeted more and more groups and used increasingly vicious tactics. The Senate report noted:<\/p>\n

The White Hate COINTELPRO [that focused primarily on the Klan] used comparatively few techniques which carried a risk of serious physical, emotional, or economic damage to the targets, while the Black Nationalist COINTELPRO used such techniques extensively. The New Left COINTELPRO, on the other hand, had the highest proportion of proposals aimed at preventing the exercise of free speech. Like the progression in targeting, the use of dangerous, degrading, or blatantly unconstitutional techniques also appears to have become less restrained with each subsequent program.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The FBI continually discovered new enemies. Nixon aide Tom Charles Huston testified of the program\u2019s tendency \u201cto move from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.28<\/a><\/p>\n

Other federal agencies also trampled citizens\u2019 privacy, rights, and lives during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The IRS used COINTELPRO leads to launch audits against thousands of suspected political enemies of the Nixon administration. The U.S. Army set up its own surveillance program, creating files on 100,000 Americans and targeting domestic organizations such as the Young Americans for Freedom, the John Birch Society, and the Anti-Defamation League of B\u2019Nai B\u2019rith.29<\/a><\/p>\n

The Senate report on COINTELPRO concluded: \u201cThe American people need to be assured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order. Only a combination of legislative prohibition and Departmental control can guarantee that COINTELPRO will not happen again.\u201d30<\/a><\/p>\n

The Ford administration derailed legislative reforms in 1976 by promising an administrative fix. Now, 26 years later, Attorney General Ashcroft has thrown the restraints out the window, pretending there was never a valid reason to rein in the FBI.<\/p>\n

The more information government gathers on people, the more power it will have over them. The more power it has to monitor their peaceful activities, the more intimidated Americans will become<\/strong>. Regardless of the Bush administration\u2019s intentions in its war on terrorism, the new federal powers threaten the rights and personal security of American citizens.<\/p>\n

s<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. <\/a>Remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft,\u201d Justice Department Office of Public Affairs, May 30, 2002.<\/li>\n
  2. <\/a>Jerry Berman and James X. Dempsey, \u201cCDT\u2019s Guide to the FBI Guidelines: Impact on Civil Liberties and Security\u2014The Need for Congressional Oversight,\u201d Center for Democracy and Technology, June 26, 2002.<\/li>\n
  3. <\/a>Editorial, \u201cAn Erosion of Civil Liberties,\u201d\u00a0New York Times,\u00a0<\/em>May 31, 2002.<\/li>\n
  4. <\/a>Remarks By President George W. Bush during Photo Opportunity at Cabinet Meeting,\u201d Federal News Service, May 30, 2002.<\/li>\n
  5. <\/a>Remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft,\u201d Justice Department Office of Public Affairs, May 30, 2002.<\/li>\n
  6. <\/a>Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans,\u201d Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, April 14, 1976.<\/li>\n
  7. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  8. <\/a>Mark Wagenveld, \u201c25 Years Ago, before Watergate, a Burglary Changed History,\u201d\u00a0Philadelphia Inquirer,\u00a0<\/em>March 10, 1996.<\/li>\n
  9. <\/a>\u201cCOINTELPRO: The FBI\u2019s Covert Action Programs against American Citizens,\u201d Final Report of the Senate Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, April 23, 1976.<\/li>\n
  10. <\/a>Both quotes taken from ibid.<\/li>\n
  11. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  12. <\/a>Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, \u201cThe Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration,\u201d\u00a0Georgetown Law Journal,\u00a0<\/em>December 1991, p. 309.<\/li>\n
  13. <\/a>\u201cThe FBI\u2019s Covert Action Program to Destroy the Black Panther Party,\u201d Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities United States Senate, Book III, April 23, 1976.<\/li>\n
  14. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  15. <\/a>All quotes taken from \u201cThe Use of Informants in FBI Domestic Intelligence Investigations\u201d\u2014Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans\u2014Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, April 23, 1976.<\/li>\n
  16. <\/a>All quotes from \u201cIntelligence Activities and the Rights Of Americans: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Case Study,\u201d Book III of the \u201cFinal Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities United States Senate,\u201d April 23, 1976.<\/li>\n
  17. <\/a>All quotes taken from \u201cThe Use of Informants.\u201d<\/li>\n
  18. <\/a>All quotes taken from ibid.<\/li>\n
  19. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  20. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  21. <\/a>\u201cIntelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans.\u201d<\/li>\n
  22. <\/a>\u201cCOINTELPRO.\u201d<\/li>\n
  23. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  24. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  25. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  26. <\/a>Wagenveld.<\/li>\n
  27. <\/a>\u201cCOINTELPRO.\u201d<\/li>\n
  28. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  29. <\/a>\u201cIntelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans.\u201d<\/li>\n
  30. <\/a>Ibid.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Read more:\u00a0http:\/\/www.fee.org\/the_freeman\/detail\/federal-surveillance-the-threat-to-americans-security#ixzz2VumgkSue<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My piece from the Foundation for Economic Education‘s Freeman, January 2004 \u00a0“The more information government gathers on people, the more power it will have over them. The more power it has to monitor their peaceful activities, the more intimidated Americans will become.” \u00a0Federal Surveillance: The Threat to Americans’ Security More Information Equals More Power JANUARY […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[253,184,47,674,673,137,164,14,30,665,26,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-5648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"tag-cointelpro","8":"tag-elective-dictatorship-2","9":"tag-fbi","11":"tag-freedom","12":"tag-george-w-bush","13":"tag-leviathan","14":"tag-rule-of-law","15":"tag-surveillance","17":"tag-terrorism","18":"tag-wiretapping"},"yoast_head":"\nFederal Surveillance's Threat to Security (2004) - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/11\/federal-surveillances-threat-to-american-security-2004\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Federal Surveillance's Threat to Security (2004) - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My piece from the Foundation for Economic Education‘s Freeman, January 2004 \u00a0“The more information government gathers on people, the more power it will have over them. 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