Thom Hartmann reveals how Big Brother is watching you

Syndicated talk show host and bestselling author Thom Hartmann returns with a new book, “The Hidden History of Big Brother in America: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy.” Hartmann shows how “the goal of those who violate privacy and use surveillance is almost always social control and behavior modification.” Multiple examples reveal how government and corporations track online activity and use that data to gain political power and profits.

Hartmann spoke with The Seattle Times ahead of an upcoming Town Hall Seattle event supporting his book slated for March 10.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You write that trust-based governments require high transparency, accountability and engaged citizens. Isn’t education also necessary?

Yes, absolutely education is essential. Specifically, civics education explains how government works and how citizens can interact with it. For example, Finland teaches its youth media literacy to help them become citizens to question the material they receive through the media intelligently. Our country needs to do the same thing.

How was the Patriot Act that passed in the wake of 9/11 used to persuade citizens to forfeit privacy?

For many years, right-wingers wanted to pass intrusive Big Brother laws, but they met resistance from other right-wingers who feared the government spying on them. The 9/11 attack so magnified the perception of a threat from radical Islamism that the loss of personal freedom wasn’t as significant. We now have a vast police agency that is difficult to oppose now that it is established as the new normal. It’s the same model that authoritarian strongman states use.

When corporations secretly gather data on consumer spending habits, are they working against the American free-enterprise system?

Businesses used to dominate markets through geography, brand or low prices, but now the use of data allows for noncompetitive dominance, which cripples the market economy. Industries in health care, airlines and internet service providers are all controlled by monopolies. It is anti-capitalism at its worse, being more of a real threat than communism.

Describe how conspicuous surveillance of people modifies their behavior and results in social cooling, which can destroy our democracy.

Social cooling, coined by Tijmen Schep, is behaviorism 101. When people are aware of being watched, they change their behavior. But, unfortunately, it’s the reverse of how government should be accountable to its citizens.

Security researchers say a foreign cyberattack could knock out our country’s power grid. Yet Republicans blocked President Obama’s requirement that businesses harden their cybercapabilities to protect “essential infrastructures.” What was their logic?

Their excuse that “we shouldn’t impose more rules on business.” It wasn’t ideological; it was politics. They openly wanted to sabotage Barack Obama, our first Black president. Businesses violate and endanger our country’s national security interests by not protecting their cybernetwork that provides critical domestic services. Cyberwar is now the preferred weapon over nuclear weapons.

Can you explain why President Trump fired his cybersecurity coordinator when Russia was hacking our computer network?

I believe he was in the pocket of oligarchs. And, it’s not just Russian oligarchs Trump has been doing business with for years. It’s creditable that Trump had allowed them to use his real estate empire to launder their illegal money. Real estate is one of the known best ways to do that. Trump eliminating the U.S. cybersecurity coordinator cripples the most aggressive nation fighting international money laundering.

Google co-founder Eric Schmidt said that the No. 1 threat from cyberattacks is distributing disinformation because it is low cost and high value. Is there evidence that those attacks have begun?

Of course, the 2016 election with evidence of all the trolls that Mueller found. However, that is low-hanging fruit. Another more visible instance demonstrates the power of disinformation to wreak havoc. One Sunday in the autumn of 2020, small towns across the country, like Klamath Falls, Oregon, saw people gathering in their downtowns with shovels, axes and shotguns. They were convinced that buses rented by George Soros were on their way filled with Black antifa rioters to pillage their towns.  

China has developed and uses a social credit score for each person, restricting their access to services and travel. Could the use of facial recognition technology lead the U.S. down that road?

Easily, the technology is in place right now. Although at this time, our government is not exerting social control like China. We use it for police activities to find criminals, not to enforce political conformity like we see throughout the Mideast or in places like Singapore.

What is the public interest in limiting social media giants like YouTube and Facebook from applying algorithms to direct users to websites that promote disinformation?

If your business model is based on damaging the U.S., like promoting disinformation, then you have no business being in business. There need to be restrictions on how far companies can go using algorithms. As a first step, we must at least make them transparent because transparency is the mother of democracy.

How does the government get around laws that forbid it from spying on U.S. residents?

A nongovernment entity can get around the laws that government must meet. For instance, The New York Times recently reported how billionaire CIA contractor Eric Prince created a private spy company, employed by Trumper politicians to do surveillance on democrats, unfriendly republicans and political activists to damage them. And the government directly hires companies to do things it cannot legally pursue. For example, half of the Pentagon’s operations and intelligence budget now goes to private corporations.