50 More Reasons To Advance The Total Surveillance State?Gary Gibson Thats not exactly what General Keith Alexander said to the American public before a largely friendly House committee, but it is certainly what he meant. The General, who heads the NSA, claims that the total surveillance spy program had prevented potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11 and that at least ten of those thwarted plots involved targets right here in the fatherland, including a plot to attack the New York City subway system. Because the NSA was listening in on every single phone call and reading every email and text, deputy director of the FBI, Sean Joyce, claims that a Kansas mans plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange was thwarted. Of course, its always a bunch of stuff with an unverifiable amount of danger that the government manages to disrupt, or things they initiated themselves by radicalizing some patsy and then very publicly arresting him. Things like the attempted shoebomber are stopped by private citizens acting in their own naked self-interest for self-preservation. And things like the Boston Bombing manage to happen anyway. The excuse is always the same: it would be even worse if it werent for the government. But its government large-scale terrorism that induces small-scale reprisals in the first case most of the time. Its very hard to tell which acts of small-scale terrorism (as opposed to the large-scale government terrorism with drones and F18s) are false flags designed to advance the surveillance police state or line the pockets of the military-industrial complex and which are genuine. Sometimes these attacks kill both birds with a single stone, as when the attempted underwear bomber conveniently resulted in Homeland Insecuritys, Michael Chertoffs naked body scanners ending up in US airport terminals. There is a certain brilliance to General Alexander low-balling the number to 50 plots stopped over a decade or so. It seems a lot more plausible than the dozens per day figure spat out by a border thug in a heated exchange. People are inclined to believe it. And such attempts at plausibility seem to be working based on the polls that show roughly half of Americans think the government still hasnt gone far enough in destroying privacy to catch the terrorists its often responsible for creating in the first place. While every government is inherently immoral, not every government is nearly as far down the road of imperial police state as the US. In fact, there are plenty of fairly mild governments who dont bother their citizens much. They actually let them keep most or all of their incomeand they dont listen in on all their phone calls or read all their emails! Crazy, I know, but those are the kinds of places that TDV Passports can help you become a citizen of (click here to learn more). And if youre looking for a place to live where the government not only isnt spying on you but where they also mostly let the free market raise standards of living and where you can be surrounded by folks who agree that life is better when the government isnt listening in on all your communications then you should definitely check out Galts Gulch, Chile. US skies will be filled with drones with cameras that can record every physical event taking place in an area the size of a city. The air will be filled with drones as small as insects that can infiltrate all your personal spaces to record you. The government is capturing, storing and poring through every electronic communication in the country. And you really think that wall the Senate is voting on is to keep Mexicans out? Gary Gibson, The Dollar Vigilantes Editor, cut his teeth writing for liberty and profit as the managing editor of the now-defunct Whiskey Gunpowder financial newsletter. He now writes for and edits The Dollar Vigilante. In his capacity as managing editor of TDVs monthly subscription letter TDV Homegrown, Gary insists on playing Russian Roulette by basing himself in the USSA heartland so he can round up information on how the TDV readers stuck in the USSA can best survive and profit in the increasingly turbulent times in the morally and financially bankrupt empire. linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 