The ‘war on terror’ has ushered in a domestic Homeland Security State – one of the fastest growing and privatised areas in US government. The author reveals the way that individuals from government are free to link to private businesses and go back to government. She argues that a decade of information collection and internal surveillance have not so much prevented terror attacks at home as alienated whole Muslim and Arab communities that are under scrutiny. And the involvement of the private sector in federal programmes now puts their human rights at risk.
Historically, both the military industrial complex and prison industrial complex tended to ‘generate huge profits from processes of social destruction. Precisely that which is advantageous to those corporations, elected officials, and government agents who have obvious stakes in the expansion of these systems begets grief and devastation for poor and racially dominated communities in the US and throughout the world’. See DavisAngelaMendietaEduardo, Abolition Democracy: beyond empire, prisons, and torture (New York, Seven Stories Press, 2005).
ScahillJeremy, Blackwater: the rise of the world’s most powerful army (New York, Nation Books, 2007).
14.
ShorrockTim, Spies for Hire: the secret world of intelligence outsourcing (New York, Simon & Shuster, 2008).
15.
Comments made by Patrick Egan, chief consultant for the Silicon Valley chapter of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group. Andrea Stone, ‘Drone program aims to “accelerate” use of unmanned aircraft by police’, Huffington Post (22 May 2012). Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/22/drones-dhs-program-unmanned-aircraft-police_n_1537074.html
TurseNick, The Complex: how the military invades our everyday lives (New York, Holt, 2009).
20.
PizzigatiSamAndersonSarahCavanaughJohnCollinsChuckBenjaminEric, Executive Excess 2006: defense and oil executives cash in on conflict, (Washington DC and Boston, MA, Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, 2006). Available at: http://www.faireconomy.org/files/ExecutiveExcess2006.pdf
21.
AllenIan, ‘CIA losing scores of officers to private sector, report finds’, Intel News (15 April 2011). Available at: http://intelnews.org/2011/04/15/01-700/
NaberNadine, ‘Arab Americans US Racial Formations’, in JamalAmaneyNaberNadine, eds, Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: from invisible citizens to visible subjects (Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2008), pp. 1–45.
27.
AkramSusanJohnsonKevin, ‘Race and Civil Liberties Pre-September 11, 2001: the targeting of Arabs and Muslims’, in HagopianElaine C., ed., Civil Rights in Peril: the targeting of Arabs and Muslims (Chicago, Haymarket Press, 2004), pp. 9–25.
28.
Naber, op. cit., p. 34.
29.
AkramJohnson, op. cit., p. 19.
30.
AkramSusan, ‘The aftermath of September 11, 2001: the targeting of Arabs and Muslims in America’, Arab Studies Quarterly (Vol. 24, no. 3, Spring2002), pp. 61–118.
31.
JosephSuadD’HarlingueBenjamin, ‘Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the New York Times, before and after 9/11’, in JamalAmaneyNaberNadine, eds, Race and Arab Americans Before and after 9/11 (Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2008), pp. 229–75.
32.
CainkarLouise, ‘Homeland Insecurity: the Arab American and Muslim American experience after 9/11’ (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 2009); YoumansWill, ‘The New Cold Warriors’, in HagopianElaine C., ed., Civil Rights in Peril: the targeting of Arabs and Muslims (Haymarket Press, Chicago, 2004), pp. 105–30.
Snowden’s employer, Booz Allen Hamilton has come under scrutiny since the reports of the NSA’s spying programmes. The cybersecurity firm reportedly earns profits of nearly $6 billion annually, with over 95 per cent of that revenue representing contracts with the US government. Booz Allen Hamilton’s reputation for the revolving door includes ‘the Obama administration’s chief intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., a former Booz Allen executive’ and ‘the official who held that post in the Bush administration, John M. McConnell [who] now works for Booz Allen’. See ApplebaumBinyaminLiptonEric, ‘Booze Allen grew rich on government contracts’, New York Times (9 June 2013). Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/us/booz-allen-grew-rich-on-government-contracts.html. Both in 2006 and 2012, Booz Allen Hamilton were accused of unethical contracting violations, including hiring a prior Pentagon official who shared ‘non-public information’ on his first day of work, which resulted in assisting the company to win an information technology contract. See HamburgerTomO’HarrowRobert, ‘Snowden case not the first embarrassment for Booz Allen, or D.C. contracting industry’, Washington Post (8 July 2013). Available at: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-07-08/politics/40433972_1_national-intelligence-u-s-intelligence-budget-national-security-agency
36.
MurrayNancy, ‘Profiling in the age of total information awareness’, Race & Class (Vol. 52, no. 2, 2010), pp. 3–24.
37.
BunyanTony, ‘Just over the horizon – the surveillance society and the state in the EU’, Race & Class (Vol. 51, no. 3, 2010), pp. 1–13; Murray, ibid.
38.
See BjeloperaGeromeRandolMark, ‘American Jihadist Terrorism: combating a complex threat’, in Congressional Research Service (7 December 2010). Available at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/R41416.pdf; and BeutelAlejandro, ‘Data Set on Post-9/11 Terrorism in the United States: policy report’, Muslim Public Affairs Council (2011).
39.
See transcript of CNN’s Global Public Square programme, featuring Fareed Zakaria’s interview with NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly (21April2013).
40.
CincottaThomas, ‘Manufacturing the Muslim menace: private firms, public servants, and the threat to rights and security’, in Political Research Associates (Boston, MA, 2011).
41.
MathurShubh, ‘Surviving the Dragnet: special interest detainees in the US after 9/11’, in Race & Class (Vol. 47, no. 3, 2006), pp. 31–46.
42.
Arab Discrimination Committee, ‘NSEERS: the consequences of America’s efforts to secure its borders’ (2009).
43.
Freedom of Information Act documents clearly reveal that Operation Frontline disproportionately focused on individuals who were from Muslim majority countries.
AllenCharles, ‘DHS Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Charles E. Allen address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’ (6 May 2008). Available at: http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/speeches/sp_1210107524856.shtm
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
