If unions are not speaking out against PRISM, it is because they have short memories.

[Teamster Jeff]

>>>
But throughout the 20th century, U.S. domestic spying tended to focus on precisely those individuals and organizations who posed a perceived threat to corporate plutocracy and the hegemony of (white) elites—i.e. radical labor, left-wing advocates for a more just economy, and organizers in the fight for racial justice. As early as 1916, New York police were revealed to have wiretapped the phones of labor organizations in the city. “The police tap the wires of a union as soon as a strike is started,” testified a union official, “as soon as it is known that trouble is brewing.” Information regarding unions’ plans, he said, was then transmitted to the employers, enabling them to block strikes.
>
All this points to the fact that today’s ever-expanding surveillance state should strike fear into the heart of organized labor not only because there is opportunity for abuse, but because there is motive. Thanks to Citizens United, the funding of most major political campaigns by the richest fraction of society, and the increasing coziness of Washington and Wall Street, we’re living in a moment in which the interests of the U.S. government and its representatives are increasingly synonymous with the interests of the wealthy, the banks, and major corporations.

Therefore, organized labor and left-wing activists—agitators of Wall Street and corporate America—pose a threat to the aims of the U.S. government. Which is to say that now is an extremely bad time to permit the feds any more power to invade our privacy, as they have throughout American history, to undermine economic justice organizing. Because, frankly—as the collusion between intelligence agencies and the private sector during Occupy Wall Street already attests—they will.
>>>

http://inthesetimes.com/article/15346/why_nsa_surveillance_should_alarm_labor/

[limpyhobbler]

2. K&R.