Apart from the occasional jaywalk or
lapse in due diligence with regard to sorting my household recyclables, I'm
what you would call your garden variety, law-abiding citizen. I shy away from
online German pornography, I return library books on time, I would never even
think of speed-walking with scissors, let alone running with them; I keep my
nose clean. More importantly, I keep my electronic devices clean. The bits and
bytes of my electronic existence are sufficiently unremarkable as to warrant their
being surveilled. I click on 'accept' at
the end of privacy statements with impunity. I'm not worried. I've got nothing
to hide.
That is, until just a few minutes
ago. It just dawned on me that in the course of researching Edward Snowden and
the infamous security breach that is attached to his name, I very, very recently typed
the following words or phrases into the search bar on my web browser: "NSA
infiltration"; "precedents for Russian asylum"; "Espionage
Act"; and "Tupperware versus Rubbermaid." (OK, that last one
doesn't really have me worried so much as it is evidence of my abiding concern
for my perishables). In light of Snowden's allegations that the NSA is spying on
Americans' internet usage, though, you can see where a fella like me might
start wondering if some monolithic, CIA supercomputer database somewhere isn't connecting
those other, potentially seditious dots and turning a suspicious, blinking LED
eye towards the nascent evidence I am assembling against myself piece by piece.
I may have nothing to hide...but The
Matrix doesn't know that.
Alright, Matrix might be a bit of an overstatement (no neural
interface...yet), but you can see where this is leading. In the referenced
interview, Snowden reports that Prism,
the NSA's intelligence gathering program is unique in that it isn't simply
combing meta-data for red flags or dubious links; it is collecting actual content.
In other words, the whole of our electronic lives, everything we engage in that
has some kind of record, whether by phone or computer, is at least potentially,
being collected and analyzed without our consent. Medical records, psychiatric
diagnoses, sexual predilections, library records, private communications
between lovers are all fair game--no warrant necessary.
Lest we think that we are safe if we
have done nothing wrong, imagine anyone, let alone the NSA or FBI having access
to all that personal information about you. The temptation towards abuse of
that access in order to leverage, extort or otherwise undermine your sheer
existence would be too strong for those with that power to resist if they saw
some advantage to themselves or their cause could be advanced if only they are willing to use it
against you. Imagine a potential prosecutor who knows your every weakness in
advance. Such a scenario would render any inquisitor virtually omnipotent.
Our forefathers imagined such a
scenario, albeit not as sophisticated technologically speaking, when they
crafted the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution. In protecting every
citizen's right against unreasonable search and seizure, the drafters of the
aforementioned document addendum foresaw that giving our government, any
government for that matter, too much skewed advantage over its citizens would
inevitably lead to the trampling of civil liberties. Thus, those invested with
the task of enforcing the law are kept in check by such notions as probable cause and due process. If Edward Snowden is to be trusted, both are woefully
lacking in Prism's methods.
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