The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently ran some photos of the new “National Defense Area” the regime has declared at the southern border as a way of excusing (and hiding) their use of the military to enforce immigration laws.
One of them is particularly significant.
In case you can’t read that, the “WARNING” sign on the gate reads:
THIS DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE PROPERTY HAS BEEN DECLARED A RESTRICTED AREA BY AUTHORITY OF THE COMMANDER IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THE DIRECTIVE ISSUED BY THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, PURSUANT TO THE PROVISIONS OF SECTION 21, INTERNAL SECURITY ACT OF 1950.
UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY IS PROHIBITED.
ALL PERSONS OR VEHICLES ENTERING HEREIN MAY BE DETAINED AND SEARCHED. PHOTOGRAPHING OR MAKING NOTES, DRAWINGS, MAPS, OR GRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE AREA OR ITS ACTIVITIES ARE PROHIBITED UNLESS SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED BY THE COMMANDER. ANY SUCH MATERIAL FOUND IN THE POSSESSION UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS WILL BE CONFISCATED.
Now, it’s usually argued that the State should be allowed to keep secrets from the citizens; that the actual details of some things the State has to get up to need to be held closely, even if only for a time.
It’s even likely that most of the folks in this country generally agree with that. But this right here is a perfect example of why that’s incorrect.
There are no legitimate secrets here.
Obviously.
The federal properties along the southern border have been handed to the Department of Defense in order to allow the military to operate as immigration law enforcement and have been declared a “National Defense Area” in order to invoke these very secrecy powers.
They’re not building or testing weapons there; there are no intelligence signals monitoring facilities there.
There’s nothing there other than a rather obvious attempt to illegally use the military as cops.
And to misuse State secrecy powers to cover-up the regime’s treatment of attempted immigrants.
Which is why the State cannot be trusted with secrets.
I have pointed this out here before: the power to keep secrets keeps being abused to hide illegal activities and misuses of State power.
And the mechanisms for oversight of how the power to keep secrets is used are blatant, obvious failures.
Mostly because those mechanisms are self-policing, which in practice amounts to little more than saying “don’t” while winking broadly.
There are better mechanisms for oversight of State powers.
We could implement a formal Shadow President and Shadow Cabinet system.
We could have randomly-selected juries be required to approve any secrecy, and have a very short time limit before those approvals expire.
We should probably do both of those things.
And I’m not going to pretend that that would be enough to solve this problem completely.
But whatever we do, we have to stop the State from keeping secrets.
Because it clearly cannot be trusted not to misuse that power.
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