Prism neg – lwy lab On Case us/eu adv
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- Alternative Causality: the modern Imperial Presidency is the root cause of Foucaldian biopower.
- Extension – Alt Causes to Panopticism
- Federal agencies other than NSA are complicit in maintaining the Panopticon.
Surveillance State AdvSurveillance State FrontlineThe surveillance state is too pervasive. All branches and agencies, plus corporations, exercise biopower over the people; NSA only reform will fail.Whitehead, 5-16-15 [John, constitutional and human rights attorney, and founder of the Rutherford Institute,” The NSA’s Technotyranny: One Nation Under Surveillance,” WashingtonsBlog, 5-16-15, http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/the-nsas-technotyranny-one-nation-under-surveillance.html] The National Security Agency (NSA) has been a perfect red herring, distracting us from the government’s broader, technology-driven campaign to render us helpless in the face of its prying eyes. In fact, long before the NSA became the agency we loved to hate, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were carrying out their own secret mass surveillance on an unsuspecting populace. Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power. And of course that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine. The raging debate over the fate of the NSA’s blatantly unconstitutional, illegal and ongoing domestic surveillance programs is just so much noise, what Shakespeare referred to as “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It means nothing: the legislation, the revelations, the task forces, and the filibusters. The government is not giving up, nor is it giving in. It has stopped listening to us. It has long since ceased to take orders from “we the people. NSA surveillance isn’t analogous to Foucault’s Panopticon. At best, reactions to rather than applications of surveillance are comparable. McGraw, ’13 [Bryan, Associate Professor of Politics at Wheaton College, “How NSA Surveillance is NOT Like Foucault (but our reactions are),” Civitas Peregrina, June 11, 2013, https://civitasperegrina.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/how-nsa-surveillance-is-not-like-foucault-but-our-reactions-are/] It’s easy to see why we might then jump from the NSA’s Prism program to Foucault. But here’s what makes Foucault’s argument interesting and not just some obtuse forerunner of the “X Files” (or any other conspiracy minded move/tv show). One of the panopticon’s key features was that the tower where the guards resided was mirrored so that the prisoners could not tell if they were actually under observation at any particular moment. In fact, they need not be under observation at all for the tower to do its job. Foucault’s view was that our liberal society was indeed one of deep disciplining, but it was not the case that there was a “them” that was doing the disciplining. Rather, we all are caught up and participate in our mutual disciplining. We are, to Foucault’s mind, our own oppressors in that we impose a kind of “normalization” on one another. What the NSA=Foucault folks suppose is that Foucault had in mind a social order in which some small elite, armed with technologies and power, would herd the rest of us into docile compliance. Foucault’s argument was actually much more worrisome: that all of us, armed with the ordinary technologies of communication and observation, would herd ourselves into docile submission. So the NSA program (whatever its merits and demerits) isn’t Foucaldian. Rather, I would argue, it is our reactions – where commentators assume their expected positions, offer ritualized expressions of support or outrage, and punish (via dialogue) those who range outside the bounds of “proper” discourse – that reminds me of Foucault. Alternative Causality: the modern Imperial Presidency is the root cause of Foucaldian biopower.Smith, ’13 [Reid, Freedom Works’ staff writer and editor, “The Surveillance State in Your Head,” The American Conservative, July 19, 2013, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-surveillance-state-in-your-head/] With the fall of the Soviet Union, there was hope that the imperial presidency would be scaled back by Congress, but such optimism proved hollow. In The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy notes that while partisan rhetoric today is as acerbic as it has been in decades, Republicans and Democrats alike accept the bottomless depth of executive responsibility and the president’s unique grasp on power. We’ve normalized dependence on his guidance and our subordination. The modern president has greatly exceeded, in size and scope, the few enumerated powers initially bestowed upon him and in the process has become a great deal more powerful—and potentially more dangerous. His powers of surveillance and social compulsion are virtually unmatched in human history. From a Foucauldian perspective, one might argue our president (Bush or Obama, it hardly matters) has staked his claim as our watchman. We become increasingly aware that all we do takes place under surveillance, and our dull surprise at this revelation suggests our submission to the system—the inevitable outcome of our assent to political power. Foucaldian critique of NSA surveillance is impossible under modern capitalism. Current power structures are self -reinforcing.Bruno, ’14 [Zachary, BA, Critical Theory, Occidental College, “The PRISM Program Panopticon: Foucault’s Insights in the Era of Snowden,” March 24, 2014, http://www.zachcbruno.com/academic/dd-preview/images/pdf/PrismProgramPanopticon.pdf] With this, Foucault would propose that critiquing the NSA’s illicit surveillance program would first require deconstructing the structures of power and discursive claims making which surround it. In this regard, Reeves (2003) argues that a self-reinforcing dynamics exists, as it pertains to the discourses and power structures sustaining such governmental tools. In this regard, the difficulty of critiquing them, in the sense which Foucault (1995) intends, is related to the manner in which this power is self-reinforcing. Indeed, to garner a better understanding of the difficulties of critique in such a context, one need only examine Foucault’s work on sexuality, repression, and biopolitics-based social control to understand the operation of these mechanisms. With the above in mind, what becomes most apparent, from considering Foucault’s portrayal of the diffusion of normalizing power in contemporary society, is that it is impossible to resist the potency of this power from within modern society itself. Given that the latter is permeated with multiple structures of repression, often invisible to the human eye, or already internalized to such a degree that we are no longer capable of even recognizing their existence; it becomes clear that we live in a social context in which resistance through critique, within society, is at least temporarily impossible. If a social revolution were to ever undo the structures of normalizing power which currently permeate our social interactions, it might become possible to rebuild a society without the concentrations of capital, and thus power, which prevail today. In the interim, however, resisting and informally critiquing within the confines of organized modern capitalist society is a futile endeavor because of the all-too-deep entrenchment of those entities which regulate us, and force us to adopt certain behaviors in spite of our desires. Thus, because the entirety of our society has been permeated by these powerful exogenous forces, there is no true potential for resistance within society. Instead, because we cannot necessarily understand or confront all of the elements of our oppression, it is clear that resistance to the forces identified by Foucault must take place outside of mainstream society. On this basis, critique of the everyday colloquial variety is impossible simply because it necessitates that we accept and take for granted the imposed structures of meaning which emerge from society’s most significant power bases. The American populace cannot engage in Foucaldian critique of NSA surveillance because of disciplinary structures like the War on Terror.Bruno, ’14 [Zachary, BA, Critical Theory, Occidental College, “The PRISM Program Panopticon: Foucault’s Insights in the Era of Snowden,” March 24, 2014, http://www.zachcbruno.com/academic/dd-preview/images/pdf/PrismProgramPanopticon.pdf] Applied to the context of the NSA’s surveillance Panopticon, the ultimate reality of the impossibility of critique is one wherein it is impossible for the American mass to understand the multiple structures of oppression inherent to the PRISM Program. Indeed, the apathy discussed by Zurchner (2014) is likely an embodiment of a context wherein the American population is blinded by the other disciplinary structures, like the purported threats of the War on Terror, which serve to maintain high levels of fear in American society. In this regard, the work of Lokaneeta (2010) suggests that these, associated with the notion of American governmentality, have preponderated in the post-9/11 context because of the visceral power of the discourse of threat which the Bush and Obama Administrations have spread. Extension – Alt Causes to PanopticismThe Foucaldian Panopticon is inherent to a myriad of government agencies. Restricting NSA based surveillance is too narrowly based to succeed.Buttar, ’13 [Shahid, former executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, is a constitutional lawyer and grassroots organizer. Shahid directed a national program to combat racial and religious profiling, after serving for three years as associate director of the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, “Beyond the Panopticon: The NSA Isn’t Alone,” Defending Dissent Foundation, 12-26-13, http://www.bordc.org/blog/beyond-panopticon-nsa-isn%E2%80%99t-alone] The Panopticon is real. It siphons billions of dollars each year from a federal budget in crisis. And it is watching you and your children. Lost in the debate about NSA spying, however — and even most public resistance to it — have been the various other federal agencies also complicit in Fourth Amendment abuses. Even critics of domestic surveillance have largely failed to recognize how many government agencies spy on Americans. A presidential review panel recently recommended substantial changes to FBI powers, including ending the authority to issue National Security Letters. NSLs are secret data requests used to circumvent both First and Fourth Amendment protections, demanding information about third parties and gagging the recipients. The FBI’s pattern of abusing undercover infiltration to disrupt First Amendment protected organizations, however, stretches back decades, threatens democracy even more deeply than NSLs, and continues unabated. Beyond the NSA and FBI, many other agencies are also involved in domestic surveillance. And all of them continue to evade public and congressional scrutiny. Federal agencies other than NSA are complicit in maintaining the Panopticon.A. Department of Homeland Security:Buttar, ’13 [Shahid, former executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, is a constitutional lawyer and grassroots organizer. Shahid directed a national program to combat racial and religious profiling, after serving for three years as associate director of the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, “Beyond the Panopticon: The NSA Isn’t Alone,” Defending Dissent Foundation, 12-26-13, http://www.bordc.org/blog/beyond-panopticon-nsa-isn%E2%80%99t-alone] The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a sprawling behemoth, with nearly a quarter million employees scattered across nearly two dozen component agencies. While purporting to protect the “homeland” (a term with loaded connotations worth noting, but setting aside for now) from various threats, DHS spies on Americans in several disturbing ways. Some of the most dystopian piggyback on programs presented to the public as supporting immigration enforcement. Border security agencies, like Customs & Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), have facilitated a record number of deportations under the Obama administration, creating a domestic humanitarian crisis. Critics of the administration’s immigration crackdown have vocally challenged its failures. According to the New York Times, “the department’s continually shifting strategies against illegal immigration had two things in common. They were ineffective and cruel.” B. Postal Service: Buttar, ’13 [Shahid, former executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, is a constitutional lawyer and grassroots organizer. Shahid directed a national program to combat racial and religious profiling, after serving for three years as associate director of the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, “Beyond the Panopticon: The NSA Isn’t Alone,” Defending Dissent Foundation, 12-26-13, http://www.bordc.org/blog/beyond-panopticon-nsa-isn%E2%80%99t-alone] Nor are law enforcement agencies the only ones joining the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans. Even the US Postal Service is getting in on the surveillance racket. In July, the New York Times reported on the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, “in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year….” It concluded that “postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail.” Like the NSA’s ubiquitous electronic wiretapping, postal surveillance carries disturbing implications, particularly in terms of enabling the suppression of political dissent. Most astounding in the context of the controversy over NSA spying, however, is the sheer ignorance about the postal service’s monitoring practices. C. State and local law enforcement: Buttar, ’13 [Shahid, former executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, is a constitutional lawyer and grassroots organizer. Shahid directed a national program to combat racial and religious profiling, after serving for three years as associate director of the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, “Beyond the Panopticon: The NSA Isn’t Alone,” Defending Dissent Foundation, 12-26-13, http://www.bordc.org/blog/beyond-panopticon-nsa-isn%E2%80%99t-alone] DHS also erodes constitutional rights through its collaborations with local police. State and local law enforcement agencies around the country collaborate with a series of over 70 regional DHS-funded fusion centers pursuing ambiguous missions at unknown costs. DHS leaders have praised fusion centers, but critics — extending from the libertarian CATO Institute and immigrant rights groups to FBI veterans — have described them as wasteful, duplicative, constitutionally offensive, and ineffective from a public safety standpoint. Targeted surveillance, of the sort abused by the FBI, is also a problem across state & local departments. For years, peace activists, Ron Paul supporters, environmentalists, and Muslims have been targeted for government spying in dozens of states--not only by the FBI, but also by state and local police. Until being shut down by the Governor in 2010, Pennsylvania state officials not only spied on environmental activists, but also shared its intelligence reports with their corporate targets, including mining companies. DHS also facilitates the paramilitarization of local and state police agencies, which around the country have sought DHS grants to buy everything from sophisticated listening devices to surveillance cameras, automated drivers license plate scanners developed originally for military uses, aerial surveillance drones, and even armored tanks. 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