Only Supporters of 'White Privilege' Oppose the Panopticon

William Norman Grigg
Jun. 02, 2015

Owing to his Pakistani ancestry, former FBI double agent Naveed Jamali was able to exploit the perception of “conflicting allegiances” when trying to lure Russian businessmen into sting operations. Once he mustered out of service with the American version of the Cheka, he found himself “fighting a new battle: The Assumption War,” Jamali writes in Salon. “Based on nothing but my last name, people assumed that my stint with the FBI had involved terrorism. I know this because even now I constantly field questions like `Where were you born?’ or `Are you Sunni or Shia?’ As soon as those questions are asked, I feel that all of the work I've done, from fighting to expose the Russians to joining the military (activities that prove my loyalty), is erased and I'm nothing but my last name.”

Rather than seeking to dispel the stereotypes that have been diligently cultivated by the Regime that employed him, Jamali insists that all Americans should partake equally in the suffering that unwarranted suspicion brings — which means keeping intact the NSA’s program of universal electronic eavesdropping.

“Ancestry bias, which is not confined to Russian intelligence operatives but is widespread, makes me a staunch supporter of any method or system that brings an objective approach to identifying potential spies and terrorists,” he explains. “[This] is why I have no qualms about taking a wide-net, mass-data approach rather than selectively profiling based on background or heritage.”

Washington’s foreign policy offers a far more reliable predictor of future terrorism than ethnic or religious profiling, but altering that foreign policy apparently isn’t an option. So rather than demanding that Washington stop bombing, starving, and otherwise terrorizing brown people overseas, Jamali imputes bigoted motives to Americans who want to protect their right to be left alone by that same government here at home.

“Perhaps to those like Sen. Rand Paul who've never had to fight assumptions based on one's ethnicity or the color of one's skin, the thought of cell phone data being pooled and analyzed is disconcerting,” sneers Jamali, oblivious to the privileges he has enjoyed as part of the tax-feeding class. “However, as someone who regularly puts up with extra scrutiny, whether it's at an airport or a shopping mall, I welcome the leveling of the playing field that bulk data collection brings. I urge our government not to follow the Russian method of profiling, but, instead, to use bulk data collection to arrive at objective analyses.”

Jamali’s argument is a rhetorical Ouroboros: He insists that people who oppose Stasi-style surveillance methods are no better than those crypto-Commie Russians.