Recently, there's been a lot of discussion about President Obama's decision to continue warrantless wiretapping of citizen communications. With a new administration that campaigned on a promise of renewing civil liberties, restoring openness and transparency in government, many Americans are calling for Obama to throw out this Bush policy along with the evils of torture and rendition. It's a powerful and fascinating topic, because the issues involved are ethical, ideological, and very personal. But I want to make the case that publicly opening our communications will give us more civil liberty than privacy can.
What Americans cherish most is freedom. Free people are happy people, free from anxiety and fear. In a democratic government, we choose to give up some of our individual freedom for the privilege of public benefits like law and order. It's important to remember in these times that this is desirable, and that progress is not possible without this type of compromise. The sacrifice we make in paying taxes to support programs like public health, education, and national defense is absolutely worth making because together we create something better than we could have ever achieved on our own. But wiretapping is different. Now we are being asked - no, forced - to give up something else and that is our constitutional right to privacy. When our emails and telephone conversations are being monitored and analyzed, our identity is exposed. Now, our individual lives have become public.
I acknowledge that this is a profound transformation. Unfortunately, these changes have been carried out in secret by a fearful administration. However, it is my sincere desire that this new practice can and will help us guarantee and protect the most essential freedoms - freedom to live, and freedom from harm. Consider this: 57 people were killed by mass-shootings in March. There are thousands of people who want to kill our democratically elected president. These lunatics have guns, and they are plotting to kill Barack Obama and others on the basis of ancient obsolete ideology. Don't we have an obligation to identify these people and prevent such attacks from occurring since we have the potential to do so by monitoring internet and telephone communications? Barack Obama is too important a leader for me, for this country, and for the world to lose to a madman's bullet. I would gladly trade privacy for protection of the lives of others.
Secondly, we have to deal with the unintended consequences of being an imperialist superpower in a world of chaotic indeterminacy. There are many people who want to do us harm with weapons that pose an existential threat to our nation. Nuclear, biological and chemical weapon threats exist, and the risk of profound existential threats will only increase as we continue into this century. For the sake of society, I would gladly give up my privacy if it means protecting a city and millions of people from a catastrophic weapon of mass destruction. Intelligence agencies and policing authorities deserve the most powerful technologies available, because we deserve the best protection possible. That is the type of freedom I would stake my claim to privacy on.
Balancing our cherished privacy with the need for protection is a profound challenge. For some of us growing up in this century, this transition is natural. Technology has already rendered our lives open, transparent, and public. We live our lives in windows and mirrors like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube. For others, it's too much change at once. The last eight years have been a nightmare of disastrous policy followed by disastrous policy. Like others, I believe it's important that President Obama restore the rule of law and investigate the actions of the last administration. At the same time, he has to improve healthcare, respond to an economic crisis, raise taxes, pull back from Iraq, move troops to Afghanistan, make major investments in education and energy, represent us at the G-20 summit, and improve our damaged relations with the Arab world. Wiretapping is now tied to our national security, so reform will be slow, and painfully so for those expecting Obama to wipe away the Bush legacy in a matter of months. But what is important is that progressives embrace the future of a recorded, public world, and guide it towards openness and transparency rather than the secrecy in which it currently exists.