Productive Paranoia

Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you!

I just finished reading an article at CNN.com (drawn from the AP) that has reminded me that the demise of citizen anonymity (and the advent of Big Brother) is imminent and all-encompassing.

Jump to the Article: Intelligence Deputy to America: Rethink Privacy.

I remember thinking how intelligent the Founding Fathers of America were when they designed a system with separation of powers, that separated what the federal government could & should do, from what the individual states could & should do. Today I am continuously reminded that the modern day political spectrum seeks more to consolidate and hold power than maintain the bastion of democracy set forth in the American Constitution.

A direct quote from the article: “Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.”

This is one of the most foolish statements I’ve hear from a public official in a long time. The government that cannot properly manage natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires wants us to trust them to manage private communication, personal, as well as financial data? The government that cannot account for how vast sums of money have been spent in the Iraq War, the government that routinely hides pet projects and kickbacks inside unrelated bill proposals wants the citizen’s of America to trust them with the most (non-physically) damaging information it is possible to obtain?

To be clear, I have no theoretical problem trusting the federal government. I believe the American system sports far less corruption than many of the other similar representative democracies. What I have a problem with is the perversion of the natural system of checks and balances--originally designed to combat such corruption--being systemically eroded, particularly in the name of security.

Another quote: “Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.
The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil in order to protect Americans' privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering because, as technology has changed, a growing amount of foreign communications passes through U.S.-based channels.”

In simplest terms: Congress was designed to make laws; the President set up to administer them; the Courts designed to verify that both groups are obeying them.

By allowing Congress to pass—and the President to enact—a law that at best circumvents parts of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has neglected to uphold their duty in preventing The White House from bending (potentially breaking) the law. Does the simple nature of a law obstructing intelligence gathering give enough rationale for that law to be abolished? This is analogous to a doctor assigning a private investigator to constantly follow you around to report when you eat unhealthy food, then complaining that your refusal to tell the investigator what you ate is hindering his information gathering efforts.

I am reminded of a Benjamin Franklin quote: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

If the world has become a dangerous and unsafe place, then we need to recognize and accept that is the world we live in. We cannot buy our safety with the trading of our liberty: it is impossible. If we attempt to do so, we will find ourselves robbed of everything we value, holding dirt and stones instead of what we were told were diamonds.

The White House complained that getting warrants to tap phones and listen to conversations was too cumbersome. So rather than get Congress to pass laws to increase and streamline the U.S. Court system, The White House Administration gets Congress to eliminate the law requiring them to get warrants. That is akin to a six-year old deciding that rather than asking a parent to reconsider a request for a pre-dinner cookie, it is just better to eliminate the parent entirely. No parent, no oversight; no oversight, as many cookies as the six-year old wants.

It is officials from this type of administration that ask us to trust them in how they handle the information they are gathering. How does the saying go…? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Is the American populace still so naive that we’ll believe that someone who says ‘Trust us, we’re the good guys!’ cannot do any wrong?