The latest McCarthyite innovation of the U.S. government is a series of directives to its employees telling the how to be on the look-out for present or future whistle-blowers. Administration officials want government workers trained to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors – like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel – of co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do “harm to the United States.”
Security investigations can be launched when government employees showing “indicators of insider threat behavior” are reported by co-workers, according to previously undisclosed administration documents obtained by McClatchy. (//www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/09/196211/linchpin-for-obamas-plan-to-predict.html#.Uel7ehY9DR3#storylink=cpy) Investigations also can be triggered when “suspicious user behavior” is detected by computer network monitoring and reported to “insider threat personnel.”
Earlier this week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed that the PRISM program that allows all kinds of spying on American citizens as they go about their daily lives is nothing like the infamous STASI of the former East Germany. She’s right: the STASI didn’t have anything like the sophisticated tools Obama has.
And just as the STASI couldn’t prevent the Communist regime from eventually crumbling, America’s version of ‘you are your brother’s keeper’ hasn’t stopped Al Qaeda from being in a position to soon announce the creation of an Islamist state in Northern Syria.
Or the initiatives being taken by Syria’s Kurds that could eventually upset the status quo in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran and Turkey, allowing this Iranian people of 30 million to finally have its own state, wreccking havoc in the four states where they have been minorities.
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