‘War on Terror’ — Part II: Mass Red Movement Can Defeat Rulers’ High-Tech Tyranny

Part I  reviewed the ways U.S. rulers make their laws at will to suit their purposes, and use “illegal” methods to punish their opponents. Now they have new technologies to pursue their profit-making goods.

Many of the techniques being used here have come to light since the Arab Spring. Protesters released records showing that Western — usually U.S. — companies had been marketing to the dictators a wide array of technology for snooping on people without the latter knowing it. There are “surveillance industry conferences” all around the world (Prague, Dubai, Brasilia, Washington DC, Kuala Lumpur).
At the recent D.C. event, firms were selling products to enable a computer to snap a picture of who is using it and send the image to police; track hundreds of cell phones at once; read e-mails by the tens of thousands; use phony updates for iTunes to infiltrate phones/tablets/computers. When questioned, the firms’ response has been: we only sell to governments, and most of our customers are law enforcement agencies in the U.S.
Journalists’ probes discovered that the firms have been pushing sales to smaller and smaller police departments; what was once done only by the Feds is becoming universal. Moreover, the firms are now actively selling to private detectives. Some of the worst techniques are legal for private eyes to use. They started with contested divorce cases, but now firms are buying the technology to keep tabs on workers.
The main technique is to force internet service providers (ISP) and cell phone carriers to do the cops’ dirty work. An example: Egyptian rebels had been using Skype since they thought that wiretapping Skype is next to impossible. What they did not realize was that the secret police had required the ISP to let the cops install remote “keystroke-capture” software which let the cops learn the rebels’ passwords. The cops then listened in on every Skype conversation.
‘Stingrays’ and Mobile Phones
For the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military developed devices that are now in use in the U.S. The FBI has gone to great lengths to hide its widespread use of “stingrays” which locate a mobile phone even when it is not being used to make a call.
The stingray is placed in a van which drives along mimicking a cell phone tower. Cell phones are constantly on the alert for the nearest cell phone tower, so when the phone detects the stingray, it connects just as it would to a tower. The stingray then measures how the strength of the signal changes as the van drives along, thereby pinpointing the phone’s location much more precisely than is possible with the records from the cell phone company.
The FBI claims it gets (sealed) court orders to use stingrays, but it appears that cops in Minnesota, Arizona, Miami and Durham, NC use them.
Twenty years ago, the British secretly developed very sophisticated license-plate readers to track the movement of IRA rebels. Their work at night, in the rain, for cars travelling at high speed, across four lanes of traffic. Then it quickly matches up the license plate with the car’s owner. Type in a license plate, and the system pulls up where that car has been.
This system was developed for the “war on terror” but is now used routinely. The Washington Post reports that the 73 cameras in D.C. gather more than a million license-plate readings a month (in a city of 600,000 people), but they hope to greatly increase that by incorporating the hundreds of traffic-monitoring cameras into the system. As the Post put it, “there are no laws governing how or when the Washington area policy can use the tag reader technology.” License-plate readers are just one example of cameras being spread in public places under the guise of the “war on terror.”
Communist Revolution Will Defeat Capitalist Technology
Workers should not be fooled by “legalities.” Historically, ruling classes have made, changed or eliminated laws when it suits their purpose of maintaining their class dictatorship. The question of “legality” is merely the window-dressing of “democracy” that they use to hide that dictatorship. During crises, this window dressing comes down and the fascist core at the center of capitalism can clearly be seen.
However, the news is not all bad. Each time the ruling class changes the rules or uses new technology to put down dissent, the working class fights back. Clever workers are developing ways to defeat each of the rulers’ new technologies, or even to turn it against the cops. We can be confident that the working class’s creativity is at work! However, the main way to defeat the cops’ snooping is to create such a large communist movement that the cops can’t follow us all. There is safety in numbers — yet another reason to redouble our efforts.
Masses of workers in action, especially communist-led, have overcome the enemy in the past and will do so again.