CHRIS HEDGES: Welcome to The Real News Network.
I'm Chris Hedges. And this is part two of
my interview with the author Robert Scheer,
who wrote They Know Everything about You,
his brilliant study of the security and surveillance
apparatus and how we got there.
In this book, Bob, you begin, at least from
my reading of it, by positing that the security
and surveillance apparatus really began as
a commercial enterprise, primarily, and that
government then came in, then saw what was
going on, saw its usefulness in terms of the
data collecting, and came in later. Would
that be--?
ROBERT SCHEER: Yeah. At first it was really
a boondoggle of the Defense Department. You
know, we're going to have--if we have a nuclear
war--first of all, if we have nuclear war,
there is no life, so there's nothing to do.
But the idiots that were talking about mutual
assured destruction in the Defense Department
and how do you fight a nuclear war and said,
well, the first thing that's going to go is
the communications system--you know, electromagnetic
impulse and all the other things that happen
when you set off these bombs. So we won't
even be able to talk. We won't be able to
tell our plane, you can't make the rubble,
radioactive rubble dance unless you move over
to this position; there's still some surviving
person in the Ukraine or something you've
got to take out. And so they had this idea,
how do we have redundancy in communication.
And the whole idea of the internet is a system
that's decentralized.
And that has turned out to be the wonderful
thing about it. It can be added on, it can
be factored in, it can meet the situation
in different countries. And we know that.
That's the great thing.
And so, suddenly the Cold War was over, you
really didn't have much reason for it. And
meanwhile, the internet was out there. And
the reason it was out there was that the people
who want to sell stuff came to understand
that in fact it was the great marketplace.
And the reason was that before the internet,
when you were a newspaper or broadcast television
or what have you, you could only guess at
the impact of your readership on sales. You
know, I worked for the L.A. Times for 29 years,
and my wife was even a vice president and
in a much higher position, and they would
tell people on auto row or in the movie business,
take out these full-page ads and you're going
to have people go to the movies this weekend
or they're going to buy cars. And broadcast
television, it was the same thing: we have
all these eyeballs, and they're going to watch
this, and they'll buy stuff.
But it was really an inexact science, indeed
a fraudulent one, you know, your Nielsen ratings
and your surveys and focus groups. They basically
were lying to the advertisers about who you
can deliver. You could--you know, newspaper--did
they buy it for fish wrap? Did they buy it
for the sports section? Did they buy it for
the classified ads? And yet, you know, you
were claiming millions. You worked at The
New York Times, I worked at the L.A. times.
But economic model was based on kind of a
phony, certainly inexact science of who's
reading stuff.
HEDGES: Well, it was a scattershot [crosstalk]
SCHEER: Yeah. And what the internet did is
suddenly you had information on who these
people are. You know--you started to see,
you could know their most intimate habits,
their emails, their shopping habits, their
networks, particularly when social networking
and things like Facebook developed, who their
friends are, and so forth. And they were willing,
these people out there who're doing Google
searches or on Facebook, to surrender voluntarily
an enormous amount of information that you
never had before about their age and their
marital status and their sex life and their
dress size and whether they're bald or have
a lot of hair or are taking different medicines.
I mean the most intimate knowledge of people,
not just in the United States, but all over
the world, and you have this incredible data.
And then you're able to target your advertising
to get these people. And not only could you
get them in the sense that you could find
out if they went to an ad, clicked onto that
ad, but you could find what they did with
it. Did they tell somebody about it? Did they
ask for more information? And the killer app
of all: did they buy something? And were they
satisfied with it? And then you could retarget
them.
And so this heat-seeking missile of targeted
advertising turned out to be a source of incredible
profit, not for the producers of art and books,
you know, or news articles. It really--The
New York Times is in deep trouble, even though
it's still a very important paper. Why? Because
the advertisers don't really need to go to
The New York Times. Once they got the readers
and they got them in other databases, they
can mine that data.
HEDGES: Well, it broke that monopoly, 'cause
newsprint had for almost a century a monopoly
connecting sellers with buyers.
SCHEER: Right.
HEDGES: And that's with the internet did.
And that is why newsprint is withering away
as quickly as it is. And classified, as you
know, was 40 percent of most newsprint revenue.
SCHEER: Right.
HEDGES: And that immediately switched to the
internet.
SCHEER: Right.
HEDGES: But there's something else about the
internet. It's not just about surrendering
information. You now have large corporations--not
only does the government have profiles, but
large corporations--it's a huge, multibillion
dollar business--have profiles on us. So if
we go to apply for a job, you can pay one
of these corporations, and you get an entire
profile. They have everything on us, stuff
that we couldn't even imagine that they have.
So it's not just about connecting advertisers
with consumers, but it is now, this data mining
has become an independent business in itself.
SCHEER: Sure. And the reason people have done
that--if a government, any government in the
world, had asked for this kind of--required
this kind of information, okay, how far did
you read in that book, what movie did you
go to, who did you have dinner with, you know,
the information that is gathered up now by
the so-called private sector, that would be
considered the most totalitarian, invasive,
coercive, threatening model. Right? I mean,
this is something the Stasi in East Germany
couldn't presume. I mean, this was something
Stalin never dreamed of. It's something oHitler,
Goebbels could not dream of, this kind of
knowledge and following and the movement and
the action and the thoughts. And then being
able to manipulate it. You know, after all,
in my book I describe Facebook's experiment
to give you cheerful news or depressing news.
And we know, whether it's Barack Obama or
George W. Bush, they now do very effective
political advertising. They can get this data
and then they can target these people.
HEDGES: Well, the advertising is different
depending on who you are.
SCHEER: Right.
HEDGES: Just the same--and I think you also
mentioned about news stories. I mean, they
kind of--they develop a profile of your habits,
and then they feed those habits.
SCHEER: Right, and they can manipulate those
habits, whether it's taste or political direction
or so forth.
So what happened was that in the private sector
this became a source of enormous profits--not
for the artists, though--we have to remember
that--not for the news gatherers, not for
the people doing the hard work, but for people
who want to sell stuff. And they can grab
this data, through Google searches or Facebook
or so forth. So the people who are really
making the money are not the people who are
going to support journalism or the arts, right?
Book publishing is in trouble. You know, Amazon
may get the word out there, but they rip off
the money. But the main money being made is
being made by, without your really knowing
it, exporting your data.
Now, again, if that were really a transparent
activity and it remained in the private sector,
you could see that as a matter of individual
choice. If you really want to give Facebook
all of this information and allow it to be
marketed [incompr.] so forth, okay, that's
your stupid decision. But maybe you have the
right to make that stupid decision. When you
don't know what's happening with the data,
then you're not an informed consumer.
HEDGES: But it even goes beyond that, because
if you go down to the pharmacy and run your
credit card through, they immediately know
what medicine you bought, and that goes to
your profile. That's not giving it up. I mean,
we have gone far beyond the voluntary--it
is far more sophisticated than that and far
more intrusive.
SCHEER: Yes. And that's why it's important
to have laws that protect our right to our
data, to know what's happening to our data.
But what changed in this picture and has alarmed
people--and it bears repetition--is the connection
between the private sector and the government.
And as a result, thanks to Edward Snowden--and
there were other whistleblowers, William Binney
and Thomas Drake and others, but Edward Snowden
occupies a the unique place, in my mind, of
respect and decency and courage, that he let
us on to the fact that we have what our founders,
the framers of our Constitution, feared. Okay?
Our protection in the Bill of Rights does
not really do much to protect us in the private
sector. It is aimed at protecting us against
government overreach, totalitarian government,
because if the government allows you no zone
of privacy, then you have this thing that
humans have feared throughout their history.
HEDGES: Well, we have no zone of privacy.
I mean, we have no zone of privacy.
SCHEER: Right. And the reason we have no privacy
is: if the government had demanded this information,
we would know it's a totalitarian government.
What happened here, this intellectual sleight
of hand, is that increasingly the government
was grabbing this data from the private sector.
And the private sector was complicit. If you
look at--in my book, for instance, I trace
Google's connection with the Pentagon and
the top people at Google being on the top
Pentagon [crosstalk]
HEDGES: Right. And then, when they're exposed,
they're all saying it.
SCHEER: Yes. And so what changed was not suddenly
the private sector was stricken by conscience:
hey, we're party to betraying the Fourth Amendment,
we're party to enslaving the American people,
we're party to destroying the most precious--.
I begin my book by saying, when it comes--you
know, privacy is the ballgame for freedom,
'cause if you don't have a zone where you
can collect your thoughts, where you can talk
to friends, where you can organize, where
you can think the different idea--.
Just take something Tea Party people Rand
Paul, Ron Paul have thought about: should
the Federal Reserve be abolished? Okay? And
they're--you're having a discussion in your
living room. But if your cell phone has been
turned into a listening device, whether it's
on or off, because the government has grabbed
the SIM card and given you a phony one and
hardwired it, okay, and is recording this
whole conversation, and you're talking to
your neighbors, and you say, why do we have
a Federal Reserve? Oh, the Federal Reserve,
as the Tea Party, many believe, and as Ron
Paul and Rand Paul and other libertarians
believe, oh, the Federal Reserve really just
serves the banks and rips us off and steals
our money and prints money to make our things
worthless and so forth; we should abolish
the Federal Reserve; it's an agency of totalitarianism.
Okay. And you're having that conversation.
That conversation is being recorded by the
NSA, by the CIA, which we know, you know,
FBI, and they've got this data. And they say,
oh, in this really dangerous meeting that
took place in this home in Texas, these people
were plotting the end of the Federal Reserve.
Now, in that profile they don't say, they're
plotting the end of the Federal Reserve by
voting for a Congressman who would abolish
it. No. You can then add other information.
Oh, I read this book by Ayn Rand or I read
this book or that book--these people are plotting
to blow up the Federal Reserve.
HEDGES: Well, what happens--I mean, and all
of the great writers of totalitarianism have
written on mass surveillance, Hannah Arendt
being one in The Origins of Totalitarianism.
And she says that when you collect data on
every single citizen, it's no longer about
crime or justice; it is about having material
so that when you criminalize a certain category
of people--and Stalin was kind of the master
of this--you can instantly arrest them, because
there's always something, and they can exactly
do what you've done, where they take that
rather innocent discussion and twist it to
serve the ends of the state. That's the danger
of mass surveillance.
One of the things in your book is that you--I
think you chronicle brilliantly, as I've said,
the apparatus and how it works, and yet I
would argue with you that we already live
in a corporate totalitarianism that has extinguished
any idea of democracy. Now this security and
surveillance is so pervasive--and it was,
of course, as you said, exposed by Snowden--but
it's not implemented, because they don't need
it. It is used very effectively against those
who carry out dissent. We saw it in the Occupy
movement. So, for instance, because everyone
in Occupy communicated electronically, afterwards
they knew who the engines of Occupy were,
and they have gone back and used that data
to slap them with felony convictions, usually
for client crimes they didn't commit, put
them on probation for five years, so that
if they do any kind of activism, they have
to serve the sentence and they're locked up,
effectively neutralized. So they've--and I've
watched in New York, and I was close enough
to the Occupy movement to tell you they went
after the right people.
We live in a period where we don't have hyperinflation,
you know, we're not convulsed by catastrophic
effects of climate change yet. But the moment
that that comes, the mechanism is in place
so that it's just the flick of a switch, isn't
it? I mean, at this point, is there really
any going back?
SCHEER: Well, there is going back, for a number
of reasons. One is that what we do, our government
does, can be done by any government. We're
setting a standard for the world. And, in
fact, if--one of the great things about having
somebody like William Binney, who worked in
the NSA for 36 years--he's the guy, for people
who don't know, where they broke into his
house. His wife had worked for the NSA for
26 years. So this is--and he had been--before
he was in the NSA, he was in the military
for four years during the Vietnam War era.
He was in the Army. And then he goes into
the NSA for 36 years. So he's a good Boy Scout
and he believed in all this, right, till 9/11.
SCHEER: He designed the system.
HEDGES: He designed the system and so forth.
But he designed the system called ThinThread,
which at least preserved privacy, respected
to the Fourth Amendment, so forth. That system
was taken over after 9/11 and distorted into
something that became this vast spying network.
His wife had worked for the NSA for 26 years.
I only bring that up because when the FBI,
12 FBI agents blasted into his home, and pointing
guns, first at his son and then at his wife,
and then he's in the shower, you know, and
there they are pointing guns right at his
face, right, without any basis whatsoever--he's
never been charged with anything, okay, never
been charged with anything. Terrorized. You
know. Why? Because he told--he didn't even
do what Snowden--anything like Snowden. He
went to a congressional committee and said,
they're wasting money, they're not doing due
diligence. We have--you know, they're spending
billions [crosstalk]
HEDGES: And they're creating a system to spy
on everyone.
SCHEER: And they're--yeah. And he was a genuine,
basically a conservative person who believed
in limited government, that government is
not supposed to spy. But he has been a translator
for us of what these slides that Snowden revealed
tell us. He's one of the important translators.
I'm speaking out of some knowledge, 'cause
he just was at the University of Southern
California, where I teach, for four days telling
graduate students and everything how it works.
And it was an incredible eye-opener, even
after I've written this book, 'cause he said,
look, here's one of these sideshows, the degree
of cooperation. So these are where we have
these partnership agreements with Saudi Arabia.
Okay?
HEDGES: With Israel.
SCHEER: With Israel, with Egypt, you know,
all of these countries. Okay. But let's take
Saudi Arabia for example. That means if there's
some Saudi dissident who's criticizing the
Saudi Arabian government and he's living in
Detroit or she's living in Cleveland, that
our government is cooperating with the Saudi
government to give them information on these
dissidents living here. We had the Arab Spring.
We had people in Egypt protesting for freedom.
We've now forgiven the military junta that
came back in power, we now give aid, or we're
cooperating with them on intelligence. So
any Egyptian anywhere in the world, whether
they're in exile or at home, and they're writing
critically about the military dictatorship
of Egypt, our government collecting all this
data is cooperating with the secret police
here.
HEDGES: And we know that they are collecting
data on American citizens--
SCHEER: Oh, yeah.
HEDGES: --who are not dual nationals and giving
it to countries like Israel.
SCHEER: Yes. But let me just say--.
HEDGES: Let me just--we're going to go on,
Bob, so I'm just going to stop here.
This is the end of part two. This is Chris
Hedges for The Real News. I've been speaking
with Robert Scheer on his book about the security
and surveillance state called They Know Everything
About You.
Thank you very much, Bob.
And please join us for part three.
