Deep State Hidden Behind Government

Exclusive Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State
by Mike Lofgren
BillMoyers.com
February 21, 2014

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power. [1]

During the last five years, the news media has been flooded with pundits decrying the broken politics of Washington. The conventional wisdom has it that partisan gridlock and dysfunction have become the new normal. That is certainly the case, and I have been among the harshest critics of this development. But it is also imperative to acknowledge the limits of this critique as it applies to the American governmental system. On one level, the critique is self-evident: In the domain that the public can see, Congress is hopelessly deadlocked in the worst manner since the 1850s, the violently rancorous decade preceding the Civil War.

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country…
As I wrote in The Party is Over, the present objective of congressional Republicans is to render the executive branch powerless, at least until a Republican president is elected (a goal that voter suppression laws in GOP-controlled states are clearly intended to accomplish). President Obama cannot enact his domestic policies and budgets: Because of incessant GOP filibustering, not only could he not fill the large number of vacancies in the federal judiciary, he could not even get his most innocuous presidential appointees into office. Democrats controlling the Senate have responded by weakening the filibuster of nominations, but Republicans are sure to react with other parliamentary delaying tactics. This strategy amounts to congressional nullification of executive branch powers by a party that controls a majority in only one house of Congress.

Despite this apparent impotence, President Obama can liquidate American citizens without due processes, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge, conduct dragnet surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant and engage in unprecedented — at least since the McCarthy era — witch hunts against federal employees (the so-called “Insider Threat Program”). Within the United States, this power is characterized by massive displays of intimidating force by militarized federal, state and local law enforcement. Abroad, President Obama can start wars at will and engage in virtually any other activity whatsoever without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, such as arranging the forced landing of a plane carrying a sovereign head of state over foreign territory.

Despite the habitual cant of congressional Republicans about executive overreach by Obama, the would-be dictator, we have until recently heard very little from them about these actions — with the minor exception of comments from gadfly Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Democrats, save a few mavericks such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, are not unduly troubled, either — even to the extent of permitting seemingly perjured congressional testimony under oath by executive branch officials on the subject of illegal surveillance.

These are not isolated instances of a contradiction; they have been so pervasive that they tend to be disregarded as background noise. During the time in 2011 when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Moammar Ghaddafi’s regime in Libya, and, when the instability created by that coup spilled over into Mali, provide overt and covert assistance to French intervention there. At a time when there was heated debate about continuing meat inspections and civilian air traffic control because of the budget crisis, our government was somehow able to commit $115 million to keeping a civil war going in Syria and to pay at least £100m to the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters to buy influence over and access to that country’s intelligence.

Since 2007, two bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of infrastructure, one killing 13 people. During that same period of time, the government spent $1.7 billion constructing a building in Utah that is the size of 17 football fields. This mammoth structure is intended to allow the National Security Agency to store a yottabyte of information, the largest numerical designator computer scientists have coined. A yottabyte is equal to 500 quintillion pages of text. They need that much storage to archive every single trace of your electronic life.

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself.

Republicans Attack Public Unions' Dues Check Off Rights

The Latest Attack on Public Sector Unions: Paycheck Protection in Pennsylvania and Missouri

Tuesday, 11 February 2014 10:06 By John Logan, Truthout | Op-Ed

Wisconsin workers rally, March 6, 2011. (Photo: Karen Hickey for wisaflcio / Flickr)

The GOP offensive against public sector unions at the state level that began in earnest in Wisconsin and Ohio in early 2011 is far from over. In its more recent manifestation, Republican politicians in Missouri and Pennsylvania are once again promoting so-called "paycheck protection" legislation, which they claim will protect the interests of ordinary workers. Nothing could be further from the truth. In common with similar legislation that right-wing groups have promoted for the past two decades, the goal of this legislation is to silence the political voice of working people and ensure that the wealthy dominate state elections.

Paycheck "Protection" Has Always Been a Partisan Right-Wing Ploy
Along with legislation restricting public sector bargaining and right-to-work laws, paycheck protection legislation - which either restricts unions' ability to raise or spend money on politics - has been one of the main anti-union initiatives that conservative activists have promoted at the state level.

Starting with the very first legislation in Washington State in 1992, a state-level network of right-wing organizations promoted paycheck legislation through ballot initiatives and bills. Paycheck legislation has always been a cynical attempt to tilt the balance of political power in favor of right-wing politicians who promote that legislation, not an effort to protect individual union members and non-union employees. In 1998, President Clinton explained that paycheck is a partisan power solution in search of an imaginary problem: "This is an attempt to create the impression that workers are being put upon when they aren't. And it's being done to alter the balance of power in the political debate."

Union members and non-members already enjoy a well-established legal right not to contribute to union political spending. Unions cannot force employees to have money for representation or political activities automatically deducted from their paycheck without authorization. Paycheck-protection legislation does not provide workers' with any rights they do not currently enjoy, but it deprives choice from workers who want a union with an effective political voice. In the name of solicitude for workers, disingenuous paycheck measures aim to take working people out of politics. In common with earlier paycheck measures, current paycheck bills in Pennsylvania and Missouri are based on model legislation devised by the ultra-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

In the past few years, right-wing organizations and activists have promoted bills targeting automatic dues deduction in well over a dozen states. They have succeeded in enacting legislation in Wisconsin, North Carolina (for school employees), Michigan (for school employees and child care providers) and have had partial successes in other states. Whenever they are put to the electorate, however, paycheck measures almost always lose - they have lost three times in California in the past 15 years - because voters recognize that they are a cynical ploy. In a 2013 campaign for protection legislation in Kansas, a right-wing lobbyist explained that he "needed this bill passed so we can get rid of public sector unions."

Corporate Political Money Is the Real Problem
The battle over political spending has intensified after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which stated that corporations and unions have a constitutional right to make unlimited independent expenditures, so long as they are not coordinated with candidates' campaigns. Although they are vastly outspent, unions are the only organized group whose political expenditures are anywhere near the level of spending by powerful corporations and conservative billionaires, which is why right-wing groups target them.

Moreover, unions are the most transparent organizations in the country when it comes to spending on politics. Unions file detailed reports with the Labor Department that disclose a broad range of activities related to politics, including polling fees, money spent on internal political communications, and even the cost of bratwursts used to feed workers protesting Wisconsin's controversial law eliminating public sector bargaining at the state capitol in early 2011. Powerful corporations, in contrast, do not disclose a broad range of their political spending activities. Unlike union members and non-union employees - whose right to opt out of political spending is protected by law - employees, customers, and shareholders have no legal right to opt out of paying for corporate political expenditures. The same groups that have promoted paycheck protection measures have opposed giving shareholders opt-out rights when it comes to corporate spending on politics.

As Harvard Law Professor Ben Sachs has pointed out, most public employees, who have no legal right to opt out, help fund corporate political speech. Public sector employees are forced to subsidize corporate political speech through pension contributions - they "cannot choose stock or avoid compelled speech associated with stock choices" - but no employee is ever forced to subsidize union political speech. In addition, corporations spend most of their political funds on external lobbying, while unions spend more on internal political communications with their members. This lack of transparency is especially significant because in recent years, corporations and conservative billionaires have vastly outspent unions in both state and national politics.

In the past, right-wing supporters of paycheck protection have stated that this type of legislation will "enable us to break the unions" and "crush labor unions as a political entity." Paycheck bills are part of a nationwide assault on public sector unions and a nationwide strategy to diminish the political voice of working people. Paycheck protection is bad for Missouri and bad for Pennsylvania and should be rejected.

John Logan is a Professor of Labor.

Bring Back Our Postal Savings Accounts

Elizabeth Warren: Let Post Offices Replace Payday Lenders

by GleninCAFollow for GleninCA

• 

A few days ago, a diary was posted explaining that the US Inspector General had recently endorsed the idea of the United States Post Office offering simple banking services in addition to its normal mail delivery service. While this idea might seem foreign to many Americans, in the past the post office actually offered banking services for over 50 years. Per The New Republic, beginning in 1911:

"...the Postal Savings System allowed Americans to deposit cash with certain branch post offices, at 2 percent interest. By 1947, the system held deposits for over four million customers. Though dismantled in 1967 (after banks offered higher interest rates and eroded its market share), the post office continues to issue domestic and international money orders, including $22.4 billion worth in 2011, as well as prepaid debit cards through a deal with American Express."

Putting aside the sad fact that banks once offered 2% interest rates (and you would now be lucky to get even half a percent), today post offices could offer basic banking services such as check-cashing, saving accounts, and even small-dollar loans similar to payday lenders, yet at much lower interest rates which could potentially save low-income Americans thousands of dollars per household per year. The idea is so good that Senator Elizabeth Warren has now endorsed the idea.
In an op-ed for The Huffington Post, Senator Warren explains that because of the exorbitant fees that payday lenders charge, low-income Americans spend roughly 10% of their income on things like checking cashing and short term loans, which is roughly the same amount that the average American spends on food.
Having grown up in a low-income family myself, I've experienced far too many times to recall when my single mother would go to one of these payday lenders for a short-term loan just to keep the lights at home from being shut off or to pay the rent and would quickly find herself in a vicious cycle of more loans, fees, and high interest rates.
Fortunately in my adult life I haven't had to endure that same hardship, but in today's world of stagnant wages and an increasing cost of living, many Americans still turn to these payday lenders as they struggle to stay in the middle class.
As Elizabeth Warren points out, this idea has been done in other countries around the world and has been proven successful. Furthermore, not only could it help millions of Americans but it could also prove beneficial to the postal service's bottom line at a time when USPS - which employs over half a million people - desperately needs it.
This idea could easily be adopted by the Postmaster General and begin without Congressional approval, but so far he has declined to endorse the Inspector General's recommendation. But hopefully now with people like Senator Warren endorsing the idea,  public pressure will mount for this idea to become a reality.

Internet Monopolies Expose NSA Orders

Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Yahoo release US surveillance requests

• Tech giants turn over data from tens of thousands of accounts
• Limited disclosure part of transparency deal made last month

• Spencer Ackerman

Microsoft, Twitter, Google and Facebook all participate in the NSA's Prism effort. Photograph: Pichi Chuang/Reuters

Tens of thousands of accounts associated with customers of Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo have their data turned over to US government authorities every six months as the result of secret court orders, the tech giants disclosed for the first time on Monday.

As part of a transparency deal reached last week with the Justice Department, four of the tech firms that participate in the National Security Agency’s Prism effort, which collects largely overseas internet communications, released more information about the volume of data the US demands they provide than they have ever previously been permitted to disclose.

But the terms of the deal prevent the companies from itemising the collection, beyond bands of thousands of data requests served on them by a secret surveillance court. The companies must also delay by six months disclosing information on the most recent requests – terms the Justice Department negotiated to end a transparency lawsuit before the so-called FISA court that was brought by the companies.

In announcing the updated data figures, the companies appeared concerned by the lack of precision over the depth of their compelled participation in government surveillance.

“We still believe more transparency is needed so everyone can better understand how surveillance laws work and decide whether or not they serve the public interest,” said Google’s legal director for law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado, in a post on the company’s official blog.
“Specifically, we want to disclose the precise numbers and types of requests we receive, as well as the number of users they affect in a timely way.”

In the most recent period for which data is available, January to June 2013 – a period ended by the beginning of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s landmark surveillance disclosures – Google gave the government the internet metadata of up to 999 customer accounts, and the content of communications from between 9,000 and 9,999 customers.

Microsoft received fewer than 1,000 orders from the FISA court for communications content during the same period, related to between 15,000 and 15,999 “accounts or individual identifiers”.
The company, which owns the internet video calling service Skype, also disclosed that it received fewer than 1,000 orders for metadata – which reveals communications patterns rather than individual message content – related to fewer than 1,000 accounts or identifiers.

Yahoo disclosed that it gave the government communications content from between 30,000 and 30,999 accounts over the first six months of 2013, and fewer than 1,000 customer accounts that were subject to Fisa court orders for metadata.

Facebook disclosed that during the first half of 2013, it turned over content data from between 5000 and 5999 accounts – a rise of about 1000 from the previous six month period – and customer metadata associated with up to 999 accounts.

Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo also gave the FBI certain customer records – not content – under a type of non-judicial subpoena called a national security letter. Since disclosure of national security letters is not subject to a six-month delay under last week’s deal, Microsoft revealed that it received up to 999 such subpoenas between June and December 2013, affecting up to 999 user accounts. Facebook’s National Security Letter total was the same.

Yahoo received up to 999 national security letters during the same period, affecting 1,000 to 1,999 accounts. Google received the same total, and disclosed that since 2009, national security letters have compelled the handover of customer records from as many as 1999 accounts every six months. Last week Apple disclosed that between 1 January and 30 June 2013 it had received less than 250 national security orders – including national security letters and other requests – relating to less than 250 accounts.

LinkedIn, the professional networking service, disclosed on Monday that it received the same total of generic “national security requests.”

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, posted on the company’s blog that “only a fraction of a percent of users are affected by these orders”, and argued that “we have not received the type of bulk data requests that are commonly discussed publicly regarding telephone records.”

But the disclosures only apply to data requests turned over to the NSA and FBI as the result of FISA court orders.

Documents that Snowden disclosed to the Guardian, Washington Post and other outlets show that the NSA also siphons communications and associated data from information in transit across the global communications infrastructure – without court orders, under authority claimed under a seminal executive order known as executive order 12,333.

“Nothing in today's report minimises the significance of efforts by Governments to obtain customer information outside legal process,” Smith said, affirming that the company remained concerned about reports of clandestine government hacking and would continue to press for more transparency from the US government and others.

Google data shows a significant growth in internet content collection from its products by the NSA. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The data from Google shows a significant growth in internet content collection from its products by the NSA. In the first six months of 2009, the company gave the government data from up to 2,999 customer accounts, a figure that grew to between 12,000 and 12,999 customer accounts by the second half of 2012 before dipping to under 10,000 accounts in the first half of 2013.
But the data does not provide any indication of what accounted for the rise, beyond the growth in popularity of Google email and other internet products.

Similarly, Microsoft revealed that it gave the US government content information on more than 12,000 customer accounts in the second half of 2011, a figure that grew to over 16,000 customer accounts in late 2012 before dropping to more than 15,000 in the first six months of 2013.
Kevin Bankston, the policy director for the Open Technology Institute in Washington, said the amount of information the companies were able to detail about their roles in US surveillance was “far less than what we need for adequate accountability from the government”.

“Lumping all of the different types of surveillance orders together into one number, then adding obscurity on top of obscurity by requiring that number to be reported in ranges of one thousand, is not enough to educate the American public or reassure the international community that the NSA is using its surveillance authorities responsibly," said Bankston, who like Google’s Salgado advocated legislation permitting the additional disclosure of “specific number of requests issued under specific legal authorities and the number of people affected by each”.

Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the new information in the transparency reports was “a good first step” but added that large questions remained. Cardozo said the national security letters had all been “lumped together” and it was impossible to see what legal framework had been used to compel the companies to hand over information.

“It makes you question the government’s repeated assertions that it welcomes this debate,” he said.
Microsoft’s Smith lamented that “despite the President's reform efforts and our ability to publish more information, there has not yet been any public commitment by either the US or other governments to renounce the attempted hacking of internet companies.

“We believe the constitution requires that our government seek information from American companies within the rule of law. We'll therefore continue to press for more on this point, in collaboration with others across our industry.”

• An earlier version of this story stated in error that Google did not disclose the number of national security letters it had received. This has been corrected.

 It was further revised to remove an unsubstantiated description of Microsoft being a "major surveillance partner for the US government".

Roosevelt's Job Investments 1932-1939

FDR Arts Programs 1932-1939

Federal Theatre Project

Flanagan’s Federal Theatre, and ‘living newspapers’

Federal Arts Project

200,000 works, including, murals by Diego Rivera

Federal Writers Project

Launched careers of J. Steinbeck & Richard Wright

Federal Music Project

Mr. Sokoloff created 36 Orchestras in cities all over

America.  In 1934, only 11 Cities had Orchestras.____

Works Progress Admin. WPA invested $1.4 Billion in living Jobs, 1935 dollars = $25 Billion today

National Youth Alliance  N. Y. A.

Millions of Youth saved from crime and starvation

“Frances Perkins”, Harry Hopkins ‘Minister of Relief’ ‘New Deal’ by Michael Hiltzik, Free Press, 2011

Unions United       Progressive Democratic Workers   2-4-2014

Obama 'State' Wish List AFL-CIO

What Do You Want to Hear in the State of the Union? Here's What You Said

1Comments

01/27/2014

Jackie Tortora

We asked you what you wanted to hear in the State of the Union address from President Barack Obama and here are some highlights of what you said.
Want to add your thoughts? Text SOTU to 235246 (standard data and message rates may apply).

• Tell the president not to Fast Track the TPP.
• Raise minimum wage. Pass immigration reform.
• Jobs. Inequality. Increasing Social Security.
• Talk about the economy and the disparity between the rich and poor.
• The solution to income inequality is stronger rights of workers to unionize & collectively bargain.
• More funding for public schools.
• That this country and middle class was built by the unions. He is going to work with the unions and corporations to help build a stronger America together!!!
• Pension protection.
• Living wage jobs!
• Student loan relief for teachers. I have over $153,000.00 in student loans and cannot ever hope to pay them off and afford to keep my house, as I am already 50 years old.
• Sign an executive order to higher the federal minimum wage to $10.10.
• Voting rights and minimum wage and women & reproductive rights.
• Restore UI benefits, end financial aid for millionaires tax policies, invest in U.S. infrastructure, end teach to the test education practices.
• Our tax and economic policies should favor domestic job creation and support working families.
• That fast tracking trade agreements violates democracy and is not good for America.
• Unemployment, jobs, roads and bridges and keep up the good fight for health care for all.
• This nation must extend unemployment compensation benefits.
• Education: save education and the rights of all workers!
• That he has not forgot about the elderly and where they can get housing.
• I want to announce the second coming of the WPA.
• I want him to address making it easier to unionize your place of employment!
• Make the co-pays affordable for the working class
• Taking away collective bargaining rights has lead to record wealth stratification and the lack of class mobility. We need national collective bargaining rights.
• The time is now for comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship. Education, not deportation.
• That our people are more important than corporate profits.
• ENDA passed.
• Raise min wage, work for fair trade not free, restore upward mobility.
• "I will stop deportations."
• Student loans, a solid plan to balance the gentrification of city neighborhoods by promoting more community organizations that reflect the community. 
• I wish he would talk about abolishing right to work and establishing a living wage.
• I would like President Obama to address income inequality and how we can change the systems that allow the 1% to make it happen.
• Veterans need jobs. The Postal Service is the largest employer of our nation's veterans. Congress needs to fix the prefunding mandate to make the Postal Service more solvent and allow them to hire more veterans.
• He supports Walmart workers, fast-food and low-wage organizing. That he rejects TPP fast track as a race to the bottom.

• I want him to cover unemployment extension and why it cannot get passed. In addition, how it's hurting Americans who are trying to find a job.
• I want the president to include a living wage for federal contractors, improved worker protections and to stop deportations!

Join the AFL-CIO Tuesday night online by following the conversation #ourSOTU on Twitter.

Obama's Bouquet to Spies

Obama's NSA Speech Makes Orwellian Surveillance Patriotic

  By Michael Ratner, Truthout | Op-Ed

President Barack Obama while speaking about the government’s surveillance practices during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, Jan. 17, 2014. (Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)

 

When considering the revolutionary history of the United States, most would think of fighting for freedom, the enshrinement of basic human and civil rights in a constitutional government of the people, by the people and for the people.
But in his speech on reforms to the NSA and the United States' intelligence gathering systems last week, President Obama had a creative new addition to the legacy of the American Revolution: surveillance.
"At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the Sons of Liberty was established in Boston," said the president. "And the group's members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America's early Patriots."

Collecting the meta-data of billions of phone calls and 200 million text messages a day, as well as gathering data through the government's PRISM program and placing bugs in 100,000 computers all over the world seems significantly more extensive than monitoring British troop movement via horseback and candlestick - especially when you consider that the data being collected is in large part that of the American people, not a foreign enemy during war time. Such metadata information would still be collected and stored in President Obama's "reformed" NSA.

The reforms proposed by the President's speech amount to nothing short of a bouquet of roses for American intelligence agencies. The changes detailed in the speech do almost nothing to actually rein in the growing national surveillance state. Billions of phone calls by Americans would still be collected and retained every single day - too much information for even the NSA to wade through properly. We're creating a massive database that could be used at basically any time to determine peoples' associates and behaviors.

While no cause would be necessary to collect this information, the president recommended requiring a court order for analysis of the retained data. This court order is far from a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, but is instead a rubber stamp from a secret court with a tendency to never say no. Considering that the definition of terrorism has sometimes included civil disobedience at demonstrations, the loose standard for issuing a court order for retained data is not a strong enough protection. Warrantless surveillance should be stopped altogether, and metadata should only be collected and retained on an individual basis by a court order under the Fourth Amendment, with a standard of probable cause.

Then there's the continued question of national security letters.

And when "legal standards" do exist in the realm of government spying, they prove very different than the constitutional measures American citizens should be able to expect.

The president left the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court alone, despite its horrendous track record of authorizing a massive spying operation on all of us. This secret court has authorized wide-scale surveillance, issuing 35 opinions upholding metadata collection and consistently granting secret warrant requests. Rather than opening up the court, limiting its powers or changing the method of judge selection (as of now, all FISA judges are handpicked by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts), the president instead suggested that Congress establish a panel of advocates to argue in these secret courts on behalf of civil liberties and privacy. Again, with no timetable or guarantee of Congressional action, it's unclear whether or when this change would be enacted.

But even with a set of privacy and civil liberties advocates, these secret courts operate on a corrupted base. What good is someone arguing on behalf of privacy and civil liberties when the law allows for the unlimited collection of metadata and wiretapping on Americans without probable cause?
In and of itself, disappointment in the president's proposed reforms isn't surprising - in some way it was expected, as the purpose of the speech was most likely to take the pressure off the president to make real change. What is shocking is that speech did not even do that. Instead, it told all of us, both here and abroad, that massive, Orwellian surveillance is somehow patriotic.

President Obama's assertion that our nation was formed as a result of a heroic history of surveillance, and that such surveillance is among the only things keeping us safe, is not only a striking misappropriation of the facts, but a misleading scare tactic clearly aimed at making Americans comfortable with the far-reaching government spying he seems bent to protect. The American Revolution was fought to prevent more than just taxes on tea. The British Empire's use of general warrants - including "writs of assistance" that allowed agents of the king to search and seize colonial property, including letters and papers - was an abuse of power that the writers of our Constitution specifically sought to address and protect against in the newly formed government they had fought so hard for.

The American people should never accept the collection and retention of millions of records by a government calling for our trust. Because, as President Obama said himself, "History has too many examples when that trust has been breached."