What do the Palmer Raids and the Church Committee Tell Us About the NSA and Project PRISM?

According to a new Pew survey, a majority of the American people apparently support the violation of their privacy rights by the National Security Administration.

As we discussed earlier, this is a function of exhaustion--what I like to call the "so what, I can't do anything about it effect"--as well as socialization by the media and elites that such violations are acceptable because the bogeyman of terrorism must be stopped at any cost.

The National Security State's partnership with Hollywood has also helped to "educate" the American people about how "cool" it is that "their" government has such fantastic capabilities.

From the relationship, movies such as Zero Dark Thirty and Enemy of the State are produced, movies which are nothing if not advertisements for American Empire turned both outward against "terrorists" and inward against the citizens of this country.

Ultimately, the National Security Administration and the Surveillance Society are facts of life that have been with us for decades. The public's acceptance of this reality is not wise; however, it is understandable.

Operation PRISM is part of a long history of spying on the American people by their own government. The public may not have read books such as Body of Secrets or know about the Palmer Raids. The public may consider the endless list of alphabet soup names for spy programs such as Cointelpro, Echelon, Typewriter, Shamrock, Minaret, or Rex 84 confusing and tedious. This same public may also find such code names exciting and titillating as they evoke images of James Bond and Jason Bourne.

As street griots are fond of saying, "there ain't nothing new in the game." During the 1970s, the Congress convened a hearing on the law breaking excesses of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The Church Committee's findings are an eerie foreshadowing of what has come to light about the NSA and Operation PRISM.

And just as most Americans have little to no specific memory of the Church Committee, this most recent non-scandal about the NSA will be soon forgotten.

Edward Snowden likely has a movie, some books, and probably a video game on the way immortalizing his brave deeds. The National Security Administration's violation of the American people's rights are now part of mass popular culture. Therefore, as popular culture the memory of such misdeeds are forgettable and ephemeral. There is no public outrage because the "crime" is poised to be lost to the memory well and the collective political ether.