Glenn Greenwald - The problem with endorsing abuse of state power

Gore Vidal (at 17 minutes) said:

"Every president wants to be a dictator. It is the nature of power. You don’t accept limited powers unless you’re a very limited man."

Gore Vidal said in 1999:

"I don’t know where the Internet is going to go but I do know that the government is going to try and take it over. You can count on that." 

Glenn Greenwald (at 26 minutes) said there are lots of reasons why people should be concerned about civil liberties, even if theirs aren’t being infringed or abridged. He gave two reasons.

Firstly:

"The first of which, history leaves no doubt that, although civil liberties infringements begin in a very confined way - directed at the most marginalized minorities about whom people don’t care or to whom they direct their hostility – it is inevitable, absolutely inevitable that those civil liberties abridgments, once they are entrenched, will spread ; and they’ll spread far beyond their original intended targets."

He continued:

Glenn Greenwald on abuse of state power, Ctd

Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) explained how the whole history of the United States has been a story of abuse of state power. One that begins as the state targets, infringes and erodes the civil liberties of feared minorities, and from their expands and employs those powers on the rest of society. He said in the video here:

"After the 9/11 attacks, the American people became convinced that one of our enemies was Islam, and muslims. And there was lots of talk about how not all muslims are a threat, but nonetheless the fear of Islam and muslims arose and pervaded the country because of the blame that was cast on that group for the 9/11 attacks. And so when it came to the time for government to get the power to do things like put people in prisons without any shred of due process, without the opportunity to be heard in court, or to be charged with a crime, the people they targeted were muslims almost exclusively because of the expectation, which turned out basically to be true, that the fear levels that Americans had of Muslims would make most Americans indifferent to that targetting and would make a lot of other Americans actively supportive of what was being done.

Glenn Greenwald on the abuse of state power through terror laws

Glenn Greenwald said here of the lessons learnt from the Church Committee:

"The lesson of the Church Committee from the 1970s is that when you allow people in government to spy on Americans in the dark with no accountability and without warrant, they abuse that power and that’s what’s happened; it’s rampant abuse and it needs sunlight."

Glenn Greenwald has previously also cited Cicero who said: "Laws are silent in times of war." Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) said of Glenn Greenwald and the abuse of terrror laws:

"In this respect, I can say this to David Cameron. Thank you for clearing the air on these matters of surveillance. You have now demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that these anti-terror provisions are capable of rank abuse. Unless some other facts emerge, there is really no difference in kind between you and Vladimir Putin. You have used police powers granted for anti-terrorism and deployed them to target and intimidate journalists deemed enemies of the state. 

You have proven that these laws can be hideously abused. Which means they must be repealed. You have broken the trust that enables any such legislation to survive in a democracy. By so doing, you have attacked British democracy itself. What on earth do you have to say for yourself? And were you, in any way, encouraged by the US administration to do such a thing?"