After revelations that Glenn Greenwald's partner was detained and threatened by British security forces earlier this week, Britain's rightwing media moguls made sure to close ranks and shield Westminster from too much public criticism. Major news outlets including the usually libertarian Daily Telegraph have responded to the story by running an aggressive string of articles downplaying or smearing the Guardian's coverage of this abuse, and others, by Prime Minister David Cameron's government.

David Miranda, who lives with Greenwald in Brazil, was held at Heathrow Airport for nine hours under the Terrorism Act (2000), denied legal representation for the duration, and told repeatedly that he would be imprisoned if he failed to surrender the passwords to his personal accounts. Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, also revealed that two months ago "shadowy figures" from the government told him "you've had your fun" and demanded access to the newspaper's basement, where agents smashed hard drives thought to contain sensitive NSA and GCHQ data.

You've heard people say they want to be spied on, as long as it means that other people will be spied on too. I know you've heard people say this, and which people it was, and how your face looked when you heard it, and what your next telephone call was. Or, rather, I could know all of that if I were one of the thousands and thousands of low-level snoops it will take for our government to accomplish its surveillance goals.

The logic is completely flawed, however. As FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley remarks, if you're looking for a needle in a haystack, adding more hay doesn't help. It makes you less likely to find the needle. A government that sucks up ever vaster quantities of useless information on innocent people actually hurts its own ability to investigate crimes. And the imagined intimidating effect of things like surveillance cameras in public spaces doesn't actually reduce crime; it merely makes us think of each other as potential criminals.

Is the human race determined to snuff itself out through mass violence? There are many signs that it is.

The most glaring indication lies in the continued popularity of war. Despite well over a hundred million deaths in World Wars I and II, plus the brutal military conflicts in Korea, Indochina, Hungary, Algeria, Lebanon, Angola, Mozambique, the Philippines, the Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, wars continue to rage across the globe, consuming vast numbers of lives and resources. In 2012, worldwide military spending reached $1.75 trillion. Moreover, the most lavish spenders for weaponry, war, and destruction were the supposedly “civilized” nations of NATO, with $1 trillion in military expenditures. By far the biggest military spender in 2012 was the United States, which accounted for 39 percent of the world total.

In an August 15 Rolling Stone interview, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) made what appeared to be an inadvertent disclosure of some of the contents a classified intelligence committee document. Buried at the back of the article was a question about the role of contractors. The question was open ended and seemed refer to wiretapping of the American public. But Wyden decided to talk about torture. “One that is going to be part of an upcoming debate, I hope, which is something Senator Udall and I and others are pushing, is to declassify that report on torture. I think it will give us new momentum for drawing a sharp line on the contractor issue . . . and I think when Americans get to read about the role of contractors in some of those interrogations, they're going to share our view,” he said.

Stopping crime before it happens is a great idea, but stopping young men for “walking while black” — touted by true believers as the same thing — is a game played by an occupying army.

The tactic is called stop-and-frisk. As practiced by many police departments, including New York’s, it amounts to blatant racial profiling. Stop-and-frisk makes it impossible for young men of color to lead normal lives, to walk outside without fear of preemptive police harassment. The long-term hatred and tension it engenders does far more harm to a community than all the questionable good that proponents ascribe to it. Security based on racism is a sham.

So I join in the celebration of Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s ruling Monday in Manhattan’s Federal District Court, declaring the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional. She accused the city of “checkpoint-style policing” in minority communities and wrote in her decision, according to the New York Times [2]: “Blacks are likely targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of objectively founded suspicion than whites.”