Highbrow Magazine - terrorists https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/terrorists en Betty Ong – The Angel of September 11 https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/8442-betty-ong-angel-september <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 09/10/2017 - 14:26</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2911anniversary_0.jpg?itok=mk9bg4DM"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2911anniversary_0.jpg?itok=mk9bg4DM" width="480" height="316" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>“I think we might have lost her.”</p> <p> </p> <p>With that heartbreaking statement, spoken by a North Carolina-based American Airlines employee, one of the greatest tragedies in modern U.S. history began 16 years ago.</p> <p> </p> <p>It was 7:59 on a radiant September morning when American Airlines Flight 11 lifted off from Boston’s Logan Airport, bound for L.A. On board were 81 passengers, two pilots and a cabin crew of nine. Sitting in Business Class were Mohammed Atta and four fellow terrorists. Less than an hour after take-off, Atta deliberately flew the Boeing 767 into the World Trade Center’s North Tower.</p> <p> </p> <p>The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks killed 3,000 people in New York and Washington, D.C. It was the most shocking American catastrophe of modern times.</p> <p> </p> <p>But for San Francisco’s Ong family, that tragedy was dreadfully personal. The “her” referred to by American Airlines employee Nydia Gonzalez was flight attendant Betty Ann Ong—their beloved sister and daughter.</p> <p> </p> <p>Ong was a victim of the terrorists. But she was also the first hero of that fateful day.</p> <p> </p> <p>Many people have heard of Todd Beamer’s courage (“Let’s roll”). But relatively few know about Betty Ong’s.</p> <p> </p> <p>Within minutes of the hijacking, and despite the murderous mayhem on board, Ong bravely grabbed a crew phone to call colleagues on the ground.</p> <p> </p> <p>For the next 23 minutes, she gave authorities a very detailed account of what was happening. Ong calmly told ground staff there were possibly four hijackers of Middle Eastern extraction on board.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2betty.jpg" style="height:439px; width:585px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Ong also reported on the carnage taking place—the First Class galley attendant, stabbed; the purser, stabbed. The terrorists also slashed the throat of a passenger, who was bleeding profusely. The hijackers locked themselves in the cockpit.</p> <p> </p> <p>Amid the mid-air horror, Ong remained cool. She identified the exact seats the terrorists had occupied, thus enabling the FBI to learn the hijackers’ passport details.</p> <p> </p> <p>Fifteen minutes after Ong first alerted the world to what was happening, the big Boeing suddenly lurched, tilting wildly. She said the pilots were probably no longer flying the airplane. The 767 approached Manhattan, flying ever lower.</p> <p> </p> <p>Still on the line, Ong said in a composed voice: “Pray for us. Pray for us.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Seconds later the line went dead.</p> <p> </p> <p>Her ground contact asked: “What’s going on, Betty? Betty, talk to me. Are you there? Betty?”</p> <p> </p> <p>Born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Betty Ong enjoyed an idyllic childhood. The youngest sibling, she was doted on by elder brother Harry and sisters Cathie and Gloria. Their parents, Harry Snr, and Yee-gum Oy, owned a small grocery store where they worked long hours.</p> <p> </p> <p>As a teenager, Ong grew to be a tall, attractive girl. Though self-conscious about her willowy 5’ 9” height, it helped her excel in basketball and volleyball.</p> <p> </p> <p>“Everyone who knew Betty really loved her,” says her brother Harry, a pharmacist in San Francisco.</p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3betty.jpg" style="height:469px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Sister Cathie agrees: “Bee made everybody feel like they knew her right away.”</p> <p> </p> <p>“When we spoke to colleagues who had flown with Betty, they told us that on late-night cross-country flights, many flight attendants relax after serving dinner,” Harry says. “But Betty always strolled the cabin, especially mindful of older passengers, and always checked to see if there was anything they needed, an extra blanket, a glass of water — a cup of tea.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Even on her last day, Betty Ong took time to look after an elderly person. In an email to Ong’s family, Joyce Toto wrote: “I never knew Betty. However, my dad did. He worked for American Airlines in Boston as a gate guard -- a gate which Betty passed to go to work every day. On that awful day, Betty had kissed my 78-year-old dad on the cheek, said goodbye and asked him to wish her luck. I can’t tell you the joy she brought to this man’s life every day with her smile. You see, my mum had just passed away, and Betty cheered him up daily.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Ten days after the Sept. 11 attacks, 200 mourners gathered in a San Francisco park to honor Ong. Mayor Willie Brown proclaimed Sept. 21 “Betty Ong Day,” saying, “When 180,000 San Franciscans say their prayers, they can say the angel, Betty Ong, by name.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Ong’s family always felt she was their hero. But it wasn’t till months after the attacks that they also found she was the nation’s — when a tape of Ong’s urgent message to Ground Control was played before the 9/11 Commission. Hearing her poised voice relating vital information about the hijacking, commission chairman Thomas Kean declared: “Betty Ong is a true American hero.”</p> <p> </p> <p>For Ong’s family, despite the passing of time, there will always be immense pain. Harry often found his father quietly weeping. At the thought of that, his voice, too, cracks. “It’s not easy.” Today Betty’s name is engraved in the bronze parapets surrounding the twin pools at the September 11th Memorial in lower Manhattan.</p> <p> </p> <p>For the entire Ong Family, the pain will always be there, but the family can be genuinely proud that their beloved daughter, and sister, was that rare person who embodied both exceptional courage and uncommon kindness.</p> <p> </p> <p>She literally made the world a better place simply by being in it.                 </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>An acclaimed writer and editor who has written for both national and international publications, Steven Knipp also contributes articles to </em>Highbrow Magazine.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/betty-ong" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">betty ong</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/911" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">9/11</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/twin-towers" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">twin towers</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/terrorists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">terrorists</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ong-family" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ong family</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/world-trade-center" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">world trade center</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Steven Knipp</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Harry Ong; Steven Knipp; Google Images</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 10 Sep 2017 18:26:02 +0000 tara 7706 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/8442-betty-ong-angel-september#comments Who Are Nigeria’s Boko Haram? https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/3975-who-are-nigeria-s-boko-haram <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 05/12/2014 - 10:32</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bokoharam.jpg?itok=W3R_aFhY"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bokoharam.jpg?itok=W3R_aFhY" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://www.newamericamedia.org/">New America Media</a>:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p> <br /> <strong>Editor’s Note: </strong><em>Professor Michael Watts teaches geography at UC Berkeley and is the author of many books, including “Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria” and “Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta.” He spoke to NAM editor Andrew Lam about the recent kidnappings of more than 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria by the radical group known as Boko Haram, and the apparent inability of the Nigerian government to either prevent or respond to their crimes. At the time of this writing, 276 of the girls that were kidnapped three weeks ago remain in captivity while 53 have escaped. On Tuesday, Nigerian officials reported that the group had struck again, abducting 11 more schoolgirls in the country’s northeast region.</em><br /> <br /> <strong>Who are the Boko Haram and what should we know about them?</strong><br /> <br /> First of all, those individuals who are identified with Boko Haram do not refer to themselves as Boko Haram. Boko Haram, in the local Hausa language, means something along the line of, “Western education is forbidden.” It’s a term applied to them by residents in the communities in which the movement arose in the early 2000s, in the northeast of Nigeria. They refer to themselves differently, as <em>Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati Wal-Jihad</em> (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad). I'm raising all of this because I think it's very important that Boko Haram is not [a name] they deployed, and it's not something that describes what they're movement is about.<br /> <br /> They made it clear in the past that they have no objection to women being educated in Islamic schools, the madrassas. One of their leaders, Shakau, has said that they are clearly opposed to Muslim women being educated in Western schools, or more importantly, [schools that are] not Islamic. [But] in the last couple weeks there have been other attacks that were not on schools – they have been on public places in the capital city (Abuja) -- that are designed to send a very different political message. And if you look at the escalating violence since 2009 [it has been directed] primarily at police or security forces, and on prisons that have been holding their members. There have been attacks and assassinations on politicians and traditional rulers. And last but not least on Muslim clerics who have, in their view, said unworthy and critical things about their movement. <br /> <br /> All of which is to say that education is indeed a part of what concerns Boko Haram. But the types of activities they have been engaged in point to larger issues – firstly, the extent to which they [believe] that Sharia law, which was adopted in the 10 states of northern Nigeria (a largely Muslim region)… has been corrupted. Secondly, they are extraordinarily critical of state violence and state corruption, which they feel has contaminated the Muslim community in the north [and been] hostile to the Muslim community as a whole. Thirdly… they want the reconstruction of communities that have been destroyed by the Nigerian security forces, and the release of many individuals that have been picked up and are currently in prison. That last issue is clearly about what they see to be human rights violations perpetrated by what we know to be extremely violent and often undisciplined Nigerian security forces.<br /> <br /> <strong>Only now, with mounting international pressure, does there seem to be any movement on the part of the Nigerian government. Why have they been so unresponsive to the kidnappings?</strong><br /> <br /> This movement -- as offensive as we might consider it in light of the types of things that have been perpetrated -- has to be put on a much larger and deeper historical landscape [with many other] popular Islamic movements in northern Nigeria that have largely appeared in the last couple centuries.<br /> <br /> This one has a particular form because it was shaped by two important forces: We now know that this group has connections with global jihadist movements – [including] the <em>Shabaab</em> in Somalia and Mali -- and this has all sorts of implications for the military capability of this particular group. Which is to say, they've been trained. They're capable of providing explosive devices for car bombs and so on. The second is that this group emerged and established itself in the northeast and was essentially a small and arguably insignificant movement until 2003 when politicians began to use the group for political thuggery. They (candidates) promised them all sorts of things if they were elected, vis-à-vis the implementation of Sharia law. And indeed there is evidence that politicians armed this group, then, after they were elected, broke a whole bunch of promises [which] produced tension between the government and the movement. <br /> <br /> As to why they have not done anything, one reason is that historically there have been close connections between people in the Nigerian state and this movement. There are some suspicions, in fact, that in certain parts of the country at least, they have influential supporters. [An investigation] would potentially have exposed the connections… between the Nigerian state and this movement. The second reason is that the north is a majority Sunni Muslim area. The ruling elites in particular don't want to… be seen publicly [associating] the communities in the Muslim north [with] terrorists. The president (Goodluck Jonathan) is not from the north, and is not a Muslim. I think it's very tricky… to prosecute a series of military actions against Boko Haram, because the military themselves have a long track record of being extraordinarily violent and making matters worse. They’ve attacked Boko Haram and many civilians [have been] killed collaterally. Some individual members of Boko Haram have been imprisoned, tortured, or killed extra-judicially. The military forces are sufficiently corrupted and violent, so you can imagine why a president or a security council might be a little sensitive about unleashing the full force of the military on this group. <br /> <br /> If you look at the American invasion of Iraq, prosecuting insurgency groups is incredibly difficult. They operate in parts of the country where they know the terrain incredibly well. They're indistinguishable often from civilian communities. They've clearly been trained militarily. And they're clearly capable of conducting a guerilla war, which is going to be very difficult to prosecute by the military. </p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/gooduckljonathan.jpg" style="height:417px; width:625px" /><br />  </p> <p>So for all of these reasons, over the last four to six years, whoever is in power in government has typically not had a clear strategy. Sometimes they let the military go [at it] and there has been conflict. The groups are driven out to neighboring countries, to Cameroon and Chad, then they reorganize and come back more powerful and more angry than before. Particularly now -- we're in the run up to the presidential election in February 2015 -- I think Goodluck Jonathan does not want to do anything to rock the boat. His opposition will say, "See what's happening? They're sending military [to] disrupt the election and prevent people in the north from voting for their opposition candidates."<br /> <br /> <strong>The U.S. is offering to come in and help with the rescue efforts. Could U.S. military involvement help, or would that simply escalate the crisis?</strong><br /> <br /> I think it's very unlikely that you're going to see greater American [military] involvement. The U.S. government has been offering and providing various types of military support -- which means military training to the Nigerian security forces for counter insurgency. But the U.S. has never had a serious military presence in the country. I would think it's unlikely that Obama would want to get drawn into a nightmare of this sort, particularly in a majority Muslim part of the world. It would be madness and they know that full well. <br /> <br /> More importantly, Nigeria is a strongly nationalist country. The Nigerian leadership is fully aware of how inflammatory it would be -- not only to the Muslim community, but other communities -- to have an expanded American presence on the ground. In the past 20 to 30 years, whenever there's been a political crisis, the Nigerian government has always rebuffed U.S. military support. They'll buy arms, of course, but that's a very different issue.<br /> <br /> <strong>What is the likelihood that these kidnapped girls will be recovered?</strong><br /> <br /> A video released by Abubakar Shekau, one of the leaders [of Boko Haram], is polemical in the sense that he wanted to make a big splash in the international press, to highlight [the group’s] struggle as they see it. When he referred to selling these young women as slaves, I really am not sure what he is referring to there… What I do think is that [the young women] have been broken up into smaller groups and sent to other countries, into Chad and Cameroon. So it'll be extraordinary tricky to track these people down, even with U.S. military surveillance. <br /> <br /> My suspicion is that some type of deal will be cut. Whether that will take some form of negotiation with Boko Haram, I can't really say. But my suspicion is that some type of conversation is already happening, and as a result of that there'll be some type of release of these young women. <br /> <br /> <strong>Has kidnapping young women and girls become a strategy for radical groups to get international media coverage? </strong><br /> <br /> Sure. There are lots of ways of to get international coverage. Whether we're talking about Nigeria or other insurgent movements around the world. We saw this in the Nigerian Delta over oil. Back in the early 1990s to early 2000s, the leaders of these militant groups made it absolutely clear that the reason why they started kidnapping oil workers was that no one in the foreign press gave a crap about their concerns. But as soon as a white person gets picked up, or held hostage, then they can guarantee it's going to be on the front page of the <em>New York Times</em>, on the front page of the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>. My suspicion is that Boko Haram are just as savvy about the media as any insurgent group, and they caught on [to the fact] that something of this sort (kidnapping young women) will get on the front pages.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://www.newamericamedia.org/">New America Media</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/boko-haram" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">boko haram</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/nigeria" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nigeria</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/nigera-kidnappings" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nigera kidnappings</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/goodluck-jonathan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">goodluck jonathan</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/africa" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">africa</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/radical-islam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">radical islam</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/islamic-fundamentalists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Islamic fundamentalists</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/muslims" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Muslims</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/terrorists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">terrorists</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 12 May 2014 14:32:22 +0000 tara 4698 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/3975-who-are-nigeria-s-boko-haram#comments From ‘Homeland’ to ‘Zero Dark Thirty’: A Look at Women Who Hunt Terrorists https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2171-homeland-zero-dark-thirty-look-women-who-hunt-terrorists <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/film-tv" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Film &amp; TV</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Thu, 02/21/2013 - 09:17</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2mediumzerodarkthirty.jpg?itok=MWUKs8Ns"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2mediumzerodarkthirty.jpg?itok=MWUKs8Ns" width="480" height="321" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> While strong female protagonists have been all but invisible in conventional war genre films (<em>Jarhead, Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down, Restrepo</em>), a new sub-genre has cropped up that puts women at the center of military defense politics. From <em>Alias </em>and <em>Salt </em>to <em>Homeland </em>and the Oscar-nominated <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em>, we have witnessed the emergence of a contemporary screen obsession with watching ass-kicking female CIA agents hunting the world’s most elusive political terrorists.</p> <p>  </p> <p> With the public crisis of conscience precipitated by news coverage of waterboarding, drone strikes, and other brutal interrogation tactics, it is no wonder that patriotic dramas have enlisted strong, fair-haired female protagonists to make America's “War on Terror” look sexy again—and not just sexy, but <em>human</em>. The idea of a “war on terror”—a sovereign nation that literally takes up arms in defense against the circulation of an affect—already signals a troubling confusion between the politics of state violence and the global governance of human emotion. <em>Homeland</em> and <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em>, each in very different ways, respond to these paralyzing confusions between political sovereignty and ethical humanity, but then milk them for all that they are worth.</p> <p>  </p> <p> If Carrie Mathison’s (Claire Danes) complicated love life helps “enhance” her interrogation tactics in <em>Homeland</em>, Maya’s (Jessica Chastain) overt lack of personal or emotional development in <em>Zero Dark Thirty </em>often feels like a cover for her character’s implication in CIA brutality. While Bigelow’s film abstains from taking a decisive position about the politics of “enhanced interrogation,” its silence speaks volumes.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Protagonist Maya’s big lead on Bin Laden’s courier Ibrahim Sayeed (using the alias “Abu Ahmed”) materializes from repeated and humiliating sessions of CIA torture. In contrast, the one really disastrous item of intelligence that the CIA receives (which leads to the death of Maya’s close friend and female co-worker in Afghanistan) does not come from force or coercion but from an unsolicited videotape that turns out to be part of a fatal Qaeda ploy. After Jessica (Jennifer Ehle) announces that she is baking a cake to thank her Qaeda-insider informant for his intelligence right before their arranged meeting at Camp Chapman, no one in the theater seemed too astonished when her would-be stoolie blows her to bits with a car bomb.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumhomeland.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 338px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Despite the delightful novelty of seeing stereotypical “lady issues” represented in a CIA spy thriller with a violent combat climax, unlike in <em>Homeland</em>, the relations between love and politics in <em>Zero Dark Thirty </em>seem more hostile than incestuous. For example, in one scene, Maya and Jessica meet at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad for dinner and drinks; Jessica probes Maya for information about her love life—a topic frequently suggested but never fleshed out during the film. Just as Maya, otherwise reserved and inscrutable, seems on the cusp of revealing some trace of romantic sentiment, a bomb explodes and the two women must duck for cover and quickly scramble for a fire exit.</p> <p>  </p> <p> One of very few female directors to produce popular narrative feature films about state violence, perhaps Bigelow felt responsible for making women more visible in an otherwise deeply patriarchal and often misogynist genre. Yet, Bigelow does not seem completely comfortable negotiating between women who like to bake cakes, drink rosé wine, and talk about boyfriends, and men who like to walk naked Muslim terrorists around on a dog leash in revenge for their possible implication in insurgent terrorist plots.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Briefly put, bombs interrupt love, while the suggestion of love makes the “enhanced” spy methods incited by bombs seem less sinister. The ends do not necessarily justify the means—but that is because a bomb probably erupted right before the film could really articulate its own “ends” (i.e., its politics and their confusing entanglement with the narrative’s “human” trajectory). However, the ends do soften and mystify our memories of outrage about the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/opinion/05sun1.html?_r=1&amp;">brutal means</a> that this film all but legitimizes.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumzerodarkthirty.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 310px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> The differences between <em>Zero Dark Thirty </em>and <em>Homeland </em>are like night and day. The latter’s interweaving between protagonist Carrie Mathison’s tumultuous love life and her unorthodox spy work basically provides the central conflict of the series. A U.S. Marine, Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), returns from eight years of captivity and torture in Iraq. Through interwoven flashbacks to his imprisonment amid snippets of his painful attempts to readjust to civilian life, we learn that at some point Brody had been “turned,” after which point his days shifted from physical torture to jihadist indoctrination. Carrie’s attempts to bring Brody back to his senses hinge upon her powers of seduction. This is further complicated by the fact that Carrie is herself developing real feelings for Brody—as well as by the surveillant presence of all of her CIA co-workers while she repeatedly sleeps with a confessed terrorist.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Secretly medicated under-the-table for bipolar disorder by her doctor sister, Carrie struggles to stay ever one step ahead of her incipient mania. Her hunches are both unimpeachable and explicitly driven by either (or both) romantic confusion or clinical psychosis. Call it “feminine intuition,” but Carrie seems to understand a lot more about the psychology and strategy of international terrorism than anyone else at the CIA or in the Oval Office.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2mediumhomeland.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 338px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> As for the show’s troubling confusion between Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, let’s just write that one off as collateral damage. If Carrie can live-feed sex recordings to her co-workers as spy work, then we can overlook the implausibility of the CIA hunting down fictional Al Qaeda leader Abu Nazir (David Negahban) in the streets of <a href="http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/10/homeland-lawsuit-lebanon/">Beirut, Lebanon</a>.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Whereas <em>Homeland </em>displaces haunting memories of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison">Gitmo’s</a> and <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444">Abu Ghraib’s</a></p> <p> indefinite detainee abuses onto the dubious politics of inter-CIA-terrorist romance, <em>Zero Dark Thirty </em>abstains from going into too much detail about either of these entities. They are like carrots dangling at the end of a stick, just out of our reach. We see prisoners being tortured, but the film manages not to dirty its hands too much with these images. At several points, useful information is extracted (despite the litany of evidence that torture makes for bad intelligence), and we sympathize deeply with the positions of the torturers without gaining much insight into the plights of their victims. We are not necessarily persuaded to advocate torture, but we are induced to imagine entertaining such arguments at some point in the future.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Similarly, we admire Maya’s single-minded determination to catch Osama bin Laden, even though we relish the scraps of romantic distraction that we are fed as spectators. Maya’s absence of romance—or even much opportunity for character development in a role that often feels too thin—corroborates the film’s erasure of the political evidence that we remember all too well. We are willing to gloss over these recent histories of state atrocities in order to see Maya achieve an objective that we are used to finding elsewhere in the narrative (e.g., in the successful outcome of a romantic coupling).</p> <p>  </p> <p> When the Navy SEALs deliver Bin Laden in a body bag, Maya slowly unzips the front to ID its cadaver. Shortly afterward, she boards a private military plane, and in a rare display of emotion, Maya gently cries into the camera, nearly addressing the spectator head-on.</p> <p>  </p> <p> These final scenes summarize rather than resolve an entanglement between the film’s human and political narratives, both of which are always just on the cusp of articulation. CIA women bake cakes and talk about boys, which again is something of a novelty for the genre, but these gendered tidbits always seem to get cut off by a bomb explosion.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Maggie Hennefeld is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/zero-dark-thirty" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">zero dark thirty</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/jessica-chastain" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">jessica chastain</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/homeland" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">homeland</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/claire-danes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">claire danes</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/showtime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">showtime</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/terrorists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">terrorists</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/osama-bin-laden" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Osama bin Laden</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/cia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">cia</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fbi" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">FBI</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/spies" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">spies</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/killing-terrorists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">killing terrorists</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/damien-lewis" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">damien lewis</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Maggie Hennefeld</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:17:05 +0000 tara 2400 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2171-homeland-zero-dark-thirty-look-women-who-hunt-terrorists#comments Surveillance, Domestic Spying and Invasion of Privacy in Post-Sept. 11 America https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1289-surveillance-domestic-spying-and-invasion-privacy-post-sept-11-america <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 07/15/2012 - 17:07</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediuminvasionofprivacy.jpg?itok=4714JD5B"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediuminvasionofprivacy.jpg?itok=4714JD5B" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> In the past few months, a mounting number of small but substantial protests have taken place within the United States. They have emerged in opposition to various legislative and governmental efforts to obtain ex-post facto permissions to engage in expansive domestic spying and employ unfettered authority of detention, search, and extraordinary rendition against U.S. citizens. </p> <p>  </p> <p> In particular, political dissidents, activists, whistleblowers, and otherwise “threatening” entities have been the focus of these initiatives, as well as the loudest voices of protest against these punitive forces. Three recent legislative initiatives have bolstered widening public objections; namely, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), and the Cyber Internet Security Protection Act (CISPA). The combination of these three efforts represents a brazen attempt at the full-on assault of civil liberties and amounts to the greatest movement towards an authoritarian, oppressive state within this country in modern times.</p> <p>  </p> <p> President Barack Obama signed the legislative specter known as the National Defense Authorization Act into law in late 2011, though he issued a rather dodgy “signing statement,” claiming that he would not employ the newly legalized powers of extraordinary rendition and indefinite detention of U.S. citizens provided for by the bill during<em> his</em> presidency.</p> <p>  </p> <p> This is the type of maneuver one is immediately inclined to balk at; ignoring the odor of suspicion which inevitably emanates, anyone devoting  any thought to the issue knows they need only wait until the administration <em>does </em>feel comfortable exercising this power for its effects to be wrought. But this had probably been a farce in the first place, as the administration had actually been given the opportunity to exempt U.S. citizens from the constitutional violations enabled by the bill's provisions and refused.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The NDAA would create a veritable leviathan of military-governmental authority, with its provisions enabling the military to jail indefinitely any person worldwide considered to be a terrorism suspect, without issuing charges, without trial, and without legal representation.  The military would also be afforded the power of extraordinary rendition of any so-called “covered persons” to any country in the world. It would create a reality where one can and should expect government agents and military personnel to snatch people off the street, whenever and wherever they please, within or without the United States and deliver them to military prisons or to foreign countries where legal protections pose no obstacle and such persons can swiftly disappear and be treated according to the discretion of their captors.</p> <p>            </p> <p> Following the passage of this bill, a group of journalists, activists, and academics,  including veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges, filed suit against the Obama administration in response to the passage of the NDAA. Hedges explained his decision to sue in an interview on Pacifica's <em>Democracy Now!, </em>saying that the act was “clearly unconstitutional... a huge and egregious assault against our democracy,” and that “It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing."</p> <p>  </p> <p>  In a column for TruthDig, Hedges explained in more detail his fears regarding the legislation:</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Section 1031 of the bill defines a “covered person”—one subject to detention—as “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2mediuminvasionofprivacy.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 829px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Hedges, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist who has interviewed members of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in person, posits himself as particularly endangered by the nebulous phraseology of the NDAA.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “I met regularly with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. I used to visit Palestine Liberation Organization leaders, including Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, in Tunis when they were branded international terrorists. I have spent time with the Revolutionary Guard in Iran and was in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. All these entities were or are labeled as terrorist organizations by the U.S. Government.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> He argued, along with others, that his prior and ongoing work as a journalist would endanger him under the terms of the bill, and, furthermore, that it would be broadly applicable to those who had, even unwittingly, donated money to charities or provided medical supplies to organizations associated with groups declared by the U.S.  to be <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_im_suing_barack_obama_20120116">“terrorists.”</a></p> <p>  </p> <p> The initial proceedings in May unfolded such that the judge even told representation of the Department of Justice that the case could be thrown out immediately, provided they stipulate that “covered persons” was not intended to apply to journalists exercising freedom of speech and association rights, but they flatly refused this opportunity.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Following this, Judge Katherine Forrest enjoined the law and declared it a violation of the First and Fifth amendments. Weeks later, the Obama Administration requested that she reverse the ruling, but Forrest defied their request, furthering what had been a preliminary injunction into a broadly applicable dismissal of the bill's legitimacy, except in case of a higher court ruling or congressional action. This small victory against an increasing effort by the power structures of this country still stands as firm and incontrovertible evidence that the current state of affairs within the military, government, and security apparatus is to extend its powers such that its authority could be used to squelch the first amendment rights of legitimate journalists, and even, given the ambiguous nature of the terminology, individuals who were not even aware of giving the alleged support.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Importantly, “covered persons” could be mere suspects, and the evidence against these individuals could be flimsy to nonexistent, given their exemption from due process and lack of access to civil trial. Most disturbingly, the NDAA was clearly aimed at turning these additional legal powers inward on the citizenry, since the main expansion of power it attempted to create was to  extend  additional legal permissions to U.S. citizens specifically.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its counterpart senate bill, Protect IP Act (PIPA),  introduced in 2011, constituted preliminary attempts to tackle some of the same authority-- sealing efforts introduced by the NDAA, but from a different angle-- namely, the tech angle. SOPA, supported primarily by major media companies, sought to prevent illegal piracy of copyrighted materials via the Internet. But the bill also contained censorship measures preventing websites like Google and Wikipedia from linking to piracy sites abroad, as well as requirements to block DNS servers from abroad or from sites guilty of copyright infringement. </p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2mediumpolice%20%28ThomasHawkCreativeCommons%29.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 413px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> Enactment of this bill would have opened the floodgates for censorship by empowering authorities to decide Internet content. Its passage was thwarted, however, due to a collection of Web-based black-out and protest initiatives enacted by sites ranging from Wikipedia to Reddit to a collective of smaller sites, resulting in both the Senate and the House bills being <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/248298/sopa_and_pipa_just_the_facts.html">“shelved”</a> for an undefined period of time.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Recent months have introduced a mutated, super-powered censorship monstrosity known as the Cyber-Intelligence Security Act (CISPA), raising the stakes in the battle for Internet freedom, and basically attempting to legalize the release of any and all private data possessed by private companies to a vast number of government and military entities, while nullifying prior contractual privacy protections for users of sites like Google, Facebook, and Internet service providers such as Time Warner and Verizon.</p> <p>  </p> <p> CISPA, though passing quickly through the House in late April of this year, is currently still in debate within the senate, and faces competition from other competing cybersecurity Senate bills currently being discussed.  If passed, CISPA would mean that ordinary people could no longer have any real legal recourse against invasion of their most private information, and would finally solidify the complete dominance of the surveillance apparatus within the technological sphere. Though President Obama has stated that he intends to veto CISPA should it pass through the Senate, this promise echoes those he made with respect to the NDAA, and may just as likely serve as another such empty obfuscation.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p> <p> New York City is in many ways a perfect prism through which to view the battleground on which the nascent war between forces of power and the masses. Following the terrorism attack on September 11, 2001, New York City was extensively equipped with a vast network of security cameras, anti-terrorism task forces, and advanced artificial intelligence tools, all of which could be readily employed towards any such effort which might strike the NYPD's fancy.</p> <p>  </p> <p> More recently, the advent of security surveillance towers, oddly reminiscent of the Scout Walkers famously featured in Star Wars, as well as the increasing employment of paramilitary weaponry by city police forces, has cast an even more ominous,  threatening cloud over the cityscape, with each towering apparatus and lurking camera serving as a kind of signpost, a reminder to the people that<em> someone is watching</em>.</p> <p>  </p> <p> There are currently thousands of NYPD security cameras within the city obtaining continuous live footage of day-to-day activities, all feeding back to a single <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/06/wall-streets-secret-spy-center-run-for-the-1-by-nypd/">“counter-terrorism” hub</a> in downtown Manhattan, as revealed by a CBS' “60 Minutes” exclusive from September 2011. Further revelations on the matter have detailed the hub's location at 55 Wall Street and exposed the unit's joint operation by a combination of the NYPD and the largest Wall Street firms, including JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs,  which have all been outfitted with specialized observation desks and are granted access to the footage and artificial intelligence capabilities possessed by the hub.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumhomelandsecurity.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 600px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> The current surveillance problem is in every respect a national disaster. The  overlord of domestic spying, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/06/13/did-any-good-come-of-watergate/since-watergate-government-surveillance-is-more-sophisticated">National Security Agency</a>, came under some media scrutiny earlier this spring after the publication of <a href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/house-passes-cispa">James Bamford's article</a> in <em>Wired </em>magazine, which revealed the agency's plans to construct a one-million square-foot data center in the remote region of Bluffdale, Utah. The center would be equipped with virtually unlimited data storage and data  analysis capacities. Designed to process the unimaginably huge amount of emails, phone calls, Web search/history information, financial information, and other personal data the NSA has amassed over the years since the expansive surveillance began following September 11, with enough room to store even more vast collections obtained in the future. The Bluffdale center serves essentially as a hub for a sophisticated information-gathering network.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Not only does the agency refuse to disclose the extent or amount of their surveillance, it issues highly secret “security letters,” which justify the collection of data on individuals without informing them, and, when necessary, obtains secret warrants signed by judges enabling them to act with stealth around targeted individuals' lives. </p> <p>  </p> <p> The agency has long relied upon a friendly  relationship of mutual cooperation with major cell phone, cable, and Internet companies. And, with the impending passage of CISPA, the NSA is now on a fast track to obtaining ex-post facto legal permission to exchange freely with these companies --  which it has been implementing secretly on a massive scale for a decade.  </p> <p>  </p> <p> Provisions of CISPA also grant huge incentives to the private companies which store citizens’ data, as they no longer face legal threats for turning over private data. Simultaneously, the bill renders the people totally unaware of these actions by their Internet service providers, nullifying all previously existing privacy agreements between the companies and their customers. This essentially removes the obstacle of the required court order which would have previously protected their information, at least to some extent.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The introduction of these measures paints a grim picture of what “freedom” will mean in  America's near future. This will be a country in which unelected governmental and military agencies, armed with an unlimited storage capacity and a vast surveillance network, will soon be able to obtain any and all of the data they please from private companies, including personal Web searches, communications, credit card transactions, and phone calls, without either the particular agency or the company requirement to even notify the persons whose private lives they've just invaded. Once in the hands of government entities, a person's data may be appropriated for whatever use is seen as necessary and can be shared between any number of separate federal and state entities. </p> <p>  </p> <p> In April of this year, the news that the use of spy drones by police departments in several U.S. cities, the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Control, and many other federal entities, including many not subject to democratic selection via election, had been legally approved and was already in action seemed only to confirm suspicions to this effect. But this new development seems to be par for the course.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The country's ironclad investment in maintaining a state of perpetual and expanding war seems to exacerbate the advent of increasingly intrusive, technically advanced, and even weapons-grade equipment within domestic contexts. And it is not difficult to make the obvious connection between the growing civil unrest worldwide and the recent machinations of the U.S. government and its associated institutions, which seem to give every indication of  gearing up for suppression of growing civil disorder. </p> <p>  </p> <p> Full-fledged military suppression isn't such a farfetched notion, especially when one considers the grim fact that America's masses are plummeting further and further into poverty, and are therefore ever more likely to ally themselves with protesting parties, to revolt against the conditions which are being so audaciously imposed upon them, especially in the midst of a total financial collapse. One has merely to imagine situations in Greece and the Middle East to bring this image to life.</p> <p>            </p> <p> The NDAA (while struck down at least for now, in combination with the looming threat of the CISPA  initiative), the other cybersecurity bills moving through Congress, and the completely unchecked surveillance machine known as the NSA,  pose an enormous, disturbing threat to the survival of civil liberties and freedoms we have come to believe we possess. Rarely do controversial and blatantly unconstitutional initiatives present themselves so nakedly.</p> <p>  </p> <p> How these initiatives managed to gain any clout, how the populous managed to passively accept a state of perpetual surveillance and swiftly diminishing civil liberties, and how the excessive wielding of illegal governmental and military powers affect society and the people living in the cities and streets which surround us, must ultimately be understood. We have witnessed with indifference the emergence of more and more signposts along the road to oligarchy and sham democracy.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Parsing out a few of the meta-psychological phenomena which bind our society tenuously together despite these outlandish offenses, a few key dynamics can be observed which enable the increased militarization and authoritarianism to flourish. Financial unrest throughout history has caused people to be driven towards political extremes and frequently rendered them highly vulnerable to fear-mongering efforts, nationalism, sectarianism, and other forms of extremism. </p> <p>  </p> <p> But it can also have the opposite effect of creating disillusionment, whereby alienation from the political process, from elections which largely amount to mere farce and from a government which time and again fails to function on behalf of the people, causes passivity on a massive scale. This passivity is heavily bolstered by the consolidated mass media and public relations campaigns, all of which employ a kind of outlandishly deceptive strategy for packaging controversial measures such as the bills previously discussed in a manner friendly enough for consumption by the American people.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In the case of the NDAA, the media outlets sold it as a mere extension of counter-terrorism laws passed in the previous decade and couched the bill in terms implying its exclusive relevance to “terrorists,”  almost completely ignoring the crux of the bill and its effects on U.S. citizenry. The framework with which the consolidated media and governmental figures discuss and depict their agendas is readily accepted and entirely unquestioned by many.</p> <p>  </p> <p> When one considers the camera-ridden streets of Manhattan, for example, it is clear that time opens the door for more audacious intrusions to be implemented. Meanwhile, the culture of vast and ever-advancing, tech-flashy consumerism lies at the center of most people's world. These wonderful inventions and everyday toys virtually guarantee the people's compliance and willing participation in the maintenance of the status quo. In fact, people can be coaxed by the inherent appeal of social networking into assembling virtual files on themselves, readily available to market researchers, companies, and all manner of law enforcement.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Samantha Laura Kelley is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <em><strong>Photos: Fotopedia (Creative Commons); Thomas Hawk (Flickr). </strong></em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/government-surveillance" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">government surveillance</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/cybersecurity" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">cybersecurity</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/invasion-privacy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">invasion of privacy</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/cispa" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">CISPA</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/terrorists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">terrorists</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/terrorism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">terrorism</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/sopa" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">SOPA</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ndaa" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">NDAA</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/google" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Google</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/reddit" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Reddit</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/wikipedia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Wikipedia</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/congress" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">congress</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iinternet-black-out-day" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">iInternet black out day</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/counter-terrorism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">counter terrorism</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/homeland-security" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Homeland Security</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/president-obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">President Obama</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/george-w-bush" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">George W. Bush</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/new-york-city" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">New York City</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Samantha Laura Kelley </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Fotopedia</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 15 Jul 2012 21:07:32 +0000 tara 1250 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1289-surveillance-domestic-spying-and-invasion-privacy-post-sept-11-america#comments