It is obvious that the beltway has fastened it grip around Fareed Zakaria’s neck so tightly that it has begun choking off the oxygen supply to his brain. How else to explain Senator McCarthy’s—I mean Mr. Zakaria’s—wild, hyperbole ridden claims, in Time’s February 3^rd issue, about the “millions of daily cyber-attacks”, etc., etc., which certain secretive government institutions claim to be suffering on a sustained basis. Moreover, he seems intent on trying to muddle the issue by introducing all sorts of new villains into the fray. Now, the phantom terrorists who some government officials, like the “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” claim are quite literally peeping through our Amazon.com electronic shopping carts, and our junk mail, have been joined by a cabal of “criminals and foreign governments.” Perhaps there is also a hairless species of humanoids, from the center of the earth, with the heads of possums, who burrow through the soil like mole rats and are presently massing for an attack on the Pentagon. Of course, such hysterical nonsense would normally be the province of science fiction films or fodder for the pages of the Weekly World News; and maybe—given its occasional penchant for overblown and exaggerated stories—Time magazine has one foot in that camp already; but surely they should notice when one of their usually sober columnists begins acting as a human bullhorn for fantasies that wouldn’t even make late night viewing in the  Corporatized foliage tangle of Dick Cheney’s over-taxed grey matter.

For example, Zakaria simply assumes that the Nuclear Security Agency’s claim that they suffer “10-million cyber-attacks daily” should be taken at face value. Gee Fareed, that’s a lot of espionage activity aimed at a single very secretive agency for one day, hmm. I wonder if you were actually shown any evidence at all to back this claim—probably not, given the level of secrecy at NSA (and, such familiar initials too)? One would have to envision literally thousands of Chinese cyber-techs manning computer banks, in some cavernous underground facility in Shanghai, all hooked right into the innards of the aforementioned agency’s main-frame, to even get a sense of the sort of effort that goes into such sustained activity. Obviously, a very plausible scenario; and just how many ‘sunshine units’ of radiation did the source of this information absorb in the hours leading up to these terrifying revelations?  It is far more likely that someone is disseminating data that has been radically divorced from its original context, perhaps in support of some pro-government secrecy agenda. In fact, there may even be a kernel of truth in these hyperbolic revelations, although taking this dubious statistic at face value, as a reflection of actual “terrorist activity,” seems completely absurd (perhaps Time Magazine’s columnists should start footnoting their information, but of course, that might compromise the privacy of their sources; how ironic).

By analogy, one would be far closer to ‘truth,’ asserting the popular claim that home burglaries cost millions of dollars in damage and stolen property—which, they obviously do—but you wouldn’t necessarily invite the police to take up residence in your living room, simply because someone twelve blocks away reported a robbery.  And, the fact that such things happen does not make them statistical probabilities for most people most of the time. Arguing that the NSA (The National security Agency, I mean) has the right to vacuum up huge amounts of personal data simply based on the statistical chance of using some miniscule portion of it to theoretically stop a terrorist plot, is tantamount to stopping the occasional robbery by putting surveillance cameras on every street in every city in the United States, and then adding new ones festooned from telephone poles and lamp-posts facing in the direction of people’s windows. I mean, it’s not like anyone will be looking at the monitors every minute of every day; and of course, they have no interest in whatever it is that you might be doing inside your house. But these sorts of explanations miss the point.

A Supreme Court Justice once said that living in a society with Fourth Amendment rights, means that one should never have to close one’s window blinds just to ensure that they aren’t being watched—it should be assumed that one is, in fact, secure in one’s possessions  when in one’s own home. People feel extremely uncomfortable when they become aware that all sorts of information about them is being saved in electronic files by a secretive agency only responsive to the secretive edicts of a secretive court apparatus. In fact, it’s downright creepy. It is also interesting that Mr. Zakaria assumes that information moves in a linear fashion through the various interception mechanisms that have been used to extract it. It is far more likely, that various bits of data about an individual can be utilized in ways not always immediately apparent, especially, when an organization, like the NSA has the capacity to save such data indefinitely. This might be cited as a potential example of the ‘law of unintended consequences.’ One should be mindful of such variables, and their broad and unpredictable ramifications. This, in itself, should at least inspire one to ask if it is really advisable to put blind trust in a system that allows for no transparency and provides ample ammunition for the misuse of information by hypothetical future leaders, whose motives we cannot conceive.

Moreover, a senate committee came out several weeks ago, with a detailed report stating that the NSA data-vacuuming program—and I am not quoting directly, but I implore someone at Time to actually look this up—was wasteful, involved much duplication of effort and was not proven to be effective. In reference to this last item, the report’s authors pointed out, very clearly, that even if some terrorist plots have been foiled since the passage of the so-called ‘Patriot Act,’ the NSA could provide no evidence that any of this had any connection to their hyper aggressive data collection efforts. I guess Fareed either missed that, or didn’t’; think it germane to his column. I mean, it was only reported by the New York Times, National Public radio, and numerous other periodicals—it probably even showed up in Time. But, after all, if Jack Goldsmith—in The New Republic, no less, same journal that printed that interesting, but irrelevant, Sean Willentz piece—says its okay to use “techniques that the New York Times…finds reprehensible,” then what’s the problem?

The real clincher though was when Fareed wrote that “…We all live, bank, work and play in a parallel world of computer identities…But we do not seem to realize that this enormous freedom of activity in the cyber-world…has to be defended. Just as the police need basic information about your life and activities, [italics mine] the government will need information about the cyber-world.” Again, I am astounded at all of these new revelations; especially the one about the “police needing information…” There are several Amendments in the US Constitution—the same document that all of the bureaucratic functionaries quoted in this article, no doubt, claim fealty to—that would put that italicized remark about the police in question; unless, of course, Mr. Zakaria just got overzealous while communing with the ghost of Heinrich Himmler on the Ouija board. Or was it J. Edger Hoover? Perhaps, Fareed just knows something that the rest of us don’t.

In fact, when I read the sentences quoted above, I almost fell off of the toilet laughing. “Performance art, parody,” I thought, before re-reading the name of the columnist. “’Fareed Zakaria,’ a serious fellow usually, but not known for having an outrageous sense of humor. And, yes, I said “toilet.” You see, I read Time Magazine precisely because it raises my hackles; and, in doing this, it stimulates motility in my colon; which is conducive to maintaining healthy bowel regularity. Thus, it has a salubrious effect on my digestive tract. It is also fairly good for killing flies, although a bit thin lately, and with a marked tendency to tear on the first swing (for that purpose, I highly recommend Foreign Affairs, another insular Washington journal that Mr. Zakaria probably reads regularly). I would like to claim that I also use it to wipe what the Chinese call the ‘eye of the fart’ afterwards; but, alas, the pages are too slick, and a good piece of toilet-tissue needs a certain roughness to insure proper penetration of all the little nooks and crannies. This might be something for you guys to keep in mind; perhaps kill two birds with one stone (or is it two liberals with one jeremiad), by advertising that, “in addition to being a good read, Time is also a good wipe.” I can say with all honesty that I regret, to some extent anyway, not having used the paper that this editorial was printed on for that purpose.

In fact, it is far more likely, that I will hang it on my bedroom wall, to remind me of the extent to which authoritarianism is making a resurgence in the annals of pop-journalism. This particular piece of HUAC style hysteria would probably not even make it into the pages of the National Review, although it seems on par with some of the theories I’ve read in the Flat Earth Society News. The fact that a few, or even many, of your readers may take this over-cooked tripe seriously is a sad testament to just how deeply the black-boot of governmental power is already established inside the crease of our collective fundaments. And, needless to say, such placement doesn’t bode well for the regularity of one’s daily evacuations. Lastly, in regards to the Alexander Hamilton quotation used in the summary of this article, one might ask, how a government that “controls the governed,” can ever be “[obliged]… to control itself [?]” If this “control” means relegating the populace to an information vacuum, then perhaps Mr. Zakaria is quoting the wrong text. Next time he should try Mein Kampf..

All scatological remarks aside, I do believe that Mr. Zakaria will eventually be quite embarrassed by the editorial that he has written on this subject. It would be a far greater shame however, if he is not.

Sincerely, Jeffrey Z Rothstein