Has America Become a Private Police State?

When people think of a police state they usually think of East Germany's Stasi, Stalin's KGB or the Saudi Monarchy. A police state in America would look much different.

As the Bush administration calls for increased surveillance of the American public while defending the new tactics of torture and pre-emptive wars, many people jump to the conclusion that the American government is trying to impose martial law on the country. While they are correct in assuming that there are a lot of people in the government and military who have fascist tendencies, it's a mistake to think that the threat comes from the government, whose very purpose is to stop such a thing from occurring.

It was Calvin Coolidge who famously said, "The business of America is business." America's police state looks much different from the state-run totalitarian regimes we're used to. It has been privatized.

The internet is the most useful tool ever devised to keep records on people and their behavior. Technology has always been used to track the public, from the early census bureau card files to Thomas Watson's IBM computers which were used to track Jews by Adolph Hitler. Today, just about everyone in America has been identified and categorized. Private corporations know where the gays, the blacks and the Jews are. It's an easy cross-index in one of their huge data farms.

It's comfortable to bury our head in the sand and ignore the dimensions of the problem and hope that there's no one out there who means us harm. 9/11 taught us that we ignore such threats to our survival at our own peril.

Surveillance of the public is nothing new. I live in Southern California where the right wing kept files on anybody who was seen as a threat, from alleged communists to labor leaders to anybody they didn't like. The local businessmen were behind it, it was called the Better American Federation. Just a few years ago, the Los Angeles Police Department was caught with two and half million dossiers on Southern Californian citizens. The Chief of police was caught working with the John Birch society copying them. This information is documented in the book, "Suburban Warriors" by Lisa McGirr and also by the Los Angeles Times.

A troubling aspect of federal law is that there are strict guidelines in place governing the ways in which the government can collect information on its citizens, but there's a loophole that says they can use any information that a private company gathers on its own. That means the information collected by a company such as First American, is fair game and can be included in government research of its citizens . In the case of First American, that would includes drug tests, background checks, credit histories, and even illegal activities done with private detectives like surveillance, spying, and phone tapping.

Reactionary conservatives control mountains of information about you, from your school records to your medical history. The far right control the nation's credit bureaus, insurance companies, and title companies. They are the developers and builders of your community. Their banks know your financial transactions and they control the local police. They control who moves into neighborhoods and who gets what jobs. They play a huge part in selecting who gets into graduate schools and who will be allowed up the next rung of the economic ladder. Right wingers control the polls, telling us what America thinks, they are the owners of newspapers and media companies that filter our news. They even control the voting machines, America's ongoing scandal. The right wing has become the gatekeepers of American society.

The internet has just made it so much easier. You can be certain that there are people in the business world who have developed extensive files on liberals and other freedom loving people. Everything you write online, every person you communicate with, every thought you have can easily be swept up and saved. It's easy for these people to know what their opposition is thinking and doing, but it's equally easy to marginalize those they don't like.

There is a reason our neighborhoods are segregated and inner city schools are failing. There's a reason one out of four black men have a criminal record. There is a reason the left's leadership has been systematically eliminated over the years. It is easy to marginalize dissent and shape opinion.