The Rise Of "Disaster Capitalism"
Published by BG on Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 9:41 AM.Journalist Naomi Klein has a new book coming out next week which analyzes the rise of what she's calling "disaster capitalism," better known as the privatization of security in the wake of 9/11.
It seems obvious to me (maybe not to you) that the post-9/11 fears of Americans and the Republicans in power contributed to the perfect storm necessary to create an industry of private companies working "to keep Americans safe" through government channels. I'm not calling 9/11 a government conspiracy, but I think this administration had to be excited in its wake to finally get the opportunity to expand the military-industrial complex in previously unnecessary ways, and to give rise to a new group of entrepreneurs supporting this complex - and by extension the fear-mongering and war-purveying political goals of this administration.
Guardian | The age of disaster capitalism (an excerpt from Ms. Klein's book)
With all that we've learned about this administration's willingness to engage in warrantless wiretapping and their desire to accumulate data on Americans, immigrants and foreigners alike to (supposedly only) target terrorists, the fact that this data is being gathered and handled by private companies seems to be lost on most Americans.
Even if you assume the government is asking for the highest level of privacy safeguards to be respected by their suppliers, is it difficult to imagine a scenario where those safeguards are ignored in the interest of preserving the company's income stream? Imagine that your company has constructed a data model designed to provide a high positive ID hit rate by identifying data aberrations. Let's say you sell this idea to the government on a renewable contract under which they specify your level of discretion with the data you're allowed to integrate into the program. Now, let's assume that once your data model has real live data to chew on, it's not working as well as you promised it would, but by breaking the rules of discretion, you could generate the metrics you promised and get another hundred million dollars when your bid is renewed.
Is that a scenario that couldn't possibly play out? Let's take this next clip to the same conclusion:
The CIA operates (presumably) with the oversight necessary to safeguard the constitutional rights of American citizens. Private companies providing intelligence services are (presumably) only judged by their efficacy, and are (presumably) not responsible for balancing their efficacy with the constitutional rights of American citizens. The only incentive, then, for private companies in this field is to produce actionable intelligence.
Simply put, this allows the government to divest itself of responsibility for civil rights violations. Not only that, but this administration's habits of declaring state secrets, attempting to immunize partners in spying from litigation, and allowing mercenaries to operate in Iraq without being accountable to the Uniform Code of Military Justice pushes privatized intelligence firms into a grey area in which they may not be subject to either oversight or litigation - the only two means the people have of putting a check on their behavior.
There's a good point made halfway through the article by a deputy director of DHS, Jane Alexander. She states, "We don't make things. If it doesn't come from industry, we are not going to be able to get it." Point taken. It's encouraging, in some respects, to know that our government is working with capable suppliers to innovate new ways to handle the law enforcement problem that terrorism presents. Ms. Alexander's also correct in stating that the government doesn't "make things," so there will always (for any department - the FDA doesn't make their own scientific equipment, right?) be a need for private industry to support public goals.
Going back to a quote from Ms. Klein above:
This is the idea that saddens and concerns me the most. 99% or more of all Americans have nothing to fear at all from terrorists, but should have a more realistic idea than they do about the consequences an abuse of police-state powers could inflict on the America they claim to love. Privatization, in this new disaster capitalism bubble, is being used to separate the goals and intentions of the government from the blame and liability of achieving those goals. And as America's oblivious complicity expands, so will the goals and intentions, along with the potential for abuse in the system.
I can't wait to read this book.
It seems obvious to me (maybe not to you) that the post-9/11 fears of Americans and the Republicans in power contributed to the perfect storm necessary to create an industry of private companies working "to keep Americans safe" through government channels. I'm not calling 9/11 a government conspiracy, but I think this administration had to be excited in its wake to finally get the opportunity to expand the military-industrial complex in previously unnecessary ways, and to give rise to a new group of entrepreneurs supporting this complex - and by extension the fear-mongering and war-purveying political goals of this administration.
Guardian | The age of disaster capitalism (an excerpt from Ms. Klein's book)
As hi-tech firms have jumped from one bubble [dot-com] to another, the result has been a bizarre merger of security and shopping cultures. Many technologies in use today as part of the war on terror - biometric identification, video surveillance, web tracking, data mining - had been developed by the private sector before September 11 as a way to build detailed customer profiles, opening up new vistas for micromarketing. When widespread discomfort about big-brother technologies stalled many of these initiatives, it caused dismay to both marketers and retailers. September 11 loosened this log jam in the market: suddenly the fear of terror was greater than the fear of living in a surveillance society. So now, the same information collected from cash cards or "loyalty" cards can be sold not only to a travel agency or the Gap as marketing data but also to the FBI as security data, flagging a "suspicious" interest in pay-as-you-go mobile phones and Middle Eastern travel.
With all that we've learned about this administration's willingness to engage in warrantless wiretapping and their desire to accumulate data on Americans, immigrants and foreigners alike to (supposedly only) target terrorists, the fact that this data is being gathered and handled by private companies seems to be lost on most Americans.
And with all the snooping going on - phone logs, wire-tapping, financial records, mail, surveillance cameras, web surfing - the government is drowning in data, which has opened up yet another massive market in information management and data mining, as well as software that claims to be able to "connect the dots" in this ocean of words and numbers and pinpoint suspicious activity.
Even if you assume the government is asking for the highest level of privacy safeguards to be respected by their suppliers, is it difficult to imagine a scenario where those safeguards are ignored in the interest of preserving the company's income stream? Imagine that your company has constructed a data model designed to provide a high positive ID hit rate by identifying data aberrations. Let's say you sell this idea to the government on a renewable contract under which they specify your level of discretion with the data you're allowed to integrate into the program. Now, let's assume that once your data model has real live data to chew on, it's not working as well as you promised it would, but by breaking the rules of discretion, you could generate the metrics you promised and get another hundred million dollars when your bid is renewed.
Is that a scenario that couldn't possibly play out? Let's take this next clip to the same conclusion:
Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa), a new intelligence agency created under Donald Rumsfeld that is independent of the CIA. This parallel spy agency outsources 70% of its budget to private contractors; like the department of homeland security, it was built as a hollow shell. As Ken Minihan, former director of the National Security Agency, explained, "Homeland security is too important to be left to the government." Minihan, like hundreds of other Bush administration staffers, has already left his government post to work in the burgeoning homeland security industry, which, as a top spy, he helped create.
The CIA operates (presumably) with the oversight necessary to safeguard the constitutional rights of American citizens. Private companies providing intelligence services are (presumably) only judged by their efficacy, and are (presumably) not responsible for balancing their efficacy with the constitutional rights of American citizens. The only incentive, then, for private companies in this field is to produce actionable intelligence.
Simply put, this allows the government to divest itself of responsibility for civil rights violations. Not only that, but this administration's habits of declaring state secrets, attempting to immunize partners in spying from litigation, and allowing mercenaries to operate in Iraq without being accountable to the Uniform Code of Military Justice pushes privatized intelligence firms into a grey area in which they may not be subject to either oversight or litigation - the only two means the people have of putting a check on their behavior.
There's a good point made halfway through the article by a deputy director of DHS, Jane Alexander. She states, "We don't make things. If it doesn't come from industry, we are not going to be able to get it." Point taken. It's encouraging, in some respects, to know that our government is working with capable suppliers to innovate new ways to handle the law enforcement problem that terrorism presents. Ms. Alexander's also correct in stating that the government doesn't "make things," so there will always (for any department - the FDA doesn't make their own scientific equipment, right?) be a need for private industry to support public goals.
Going back to a quote from Ms. Klein above:
September 11 loosened this log jam in the market: suddenly the fear of terror was greater than the fear of living in a surveillance society.
This is the idea that saddens and concerns me the most. 99% or more of all Americans have nothing to fear at all from terrorists, but should have a more realistic idea than they do about the consequences an abuse of police-state powers could inflict on the America they claim to love. Privatization, in this new disaster capitalism bubble, is being used to separate the goals and intentions of the government from the blame and liability of achieving those goals. And as America's oblivious complicity expands, so will the goals and intentions, along with the potential for abuse in the system.
I can't wait to read this book.
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