To be perfectly honest, for the most part, I feel a general blase about the NSA "revelations." I know that as a good liberal, I'm supposed to be up in arms about this intrusive Big Brother super-scandal, but for some reason, my hair simply won't ignite.
No matter how hard I try, no matter how many times I start re-reading "1984," there's no smoke, let alone open flame.
I do, however, find myself getting very agitated over the pie fights erupting regarding this matter. They are the more dangerous aspect going forward, I believe.
First things first: the scandal.
I knew about years ago - 2005, 2006, at the latest. It was in the Times, and in Bamford's excellent work, among other places, including a massive fight about the concept of the Unitary Executive. John Yoo wrote memos claiming that President Bush did not need to use the FISA Court, and that on these matters of national security, the President was indeed King.
I haven't forgotten those battles - they were over grand and sweeping data collection and warrantless wiretapping. I remember being galled back then, hair igniting and all - because President Bush was thumbing his nose at the "quaint" FISA Court and at the very notion of checks and balances.
I wasn't comfortable with the information vacuuming, but I accepted it, not because I'm a sleeping sheep, but because...
Well, because of these things:
I remember watching a report years ago about cameras on the streets of London. "Oh no," I thought, "here it comes."
That was many years ago, and yeah, it did indeed come rolling along. The surveillance state arrived, here and everywhere. It was inevitable, like my inability to drive without a seatbelt now. And I mean exactly that: if I'm in a car without a seatbelt on, I get irrationally nervous.
People are like that when it comes to self-preservation. I know people now who get jittery if they're in a car without their phones - not because they want to call friends, but because "What if something happens?"
Not so long after the London story, I saw Donald Trump on some talk show (this, too, was many years ago, maybe even pre-911). Trump was bragging about having cameras IN THE ROOMS at the Plaza hotel. I remember it keenly because my wife, some sisters and some girl friends were planning a trip to New York to catch some plays and were planning to stay at the Plaza.
I still recall the look on all their faces when I told them about the cameras. Trump had said that he put the cameras there because his patrons wanted it - to make sure they couldn't be robbed while they were out, or some other such nonsense. All I could think of was Plaza rent-a-cops in the basement following pretty women through the halls and into their rooms...or, on am ore nefarious level, suppose a business rival or a politician went to the Plaza and was spending a little "alone" time in his or her room, or a sexual dalliance, perhaps. Think about the power possessed by a person holding such a video recording. Even before that, the worst kept secret in the world is the amount of money hotel patrons spend on pornography...the title won't appear on your bill, but the hotels have it in their records, of course.
Soon after came many stories about department stores with cameras in dressing rooms to prevent shoplifting...
The point is, the technological encroachment has been going along at an increasing pace for a long time now. Snowden's revelations really didn't surprise me at all, and weren't revelations at all, given that I had read all about this, and fully believed it, more than half a decade ago - and I've fully expected it for a longer time than that.
Did anyone bat an eyelash or take to the streets when they saw the videos of the Tsarnaev brothers walking the streets of Boston? Every move, recorded.
Similarly, Verizon and AT&T have my phone metadata. All of it, going back many years. They use it to bill me.
My browser(s) have my internet data. I have no idea of whether or not any major site I'm using is collecting, collating and selling my every keyclick. It's ubiquitous and pervasive and all but inescapable. I've had fans find my phone number, my address, and much more personal information - I was shocked the first few times it happened, and them my daughter showed me how easy it was.
Some savvy friends have told me how to mask my presence by bouncing IP's or how to steal bandwith from neighbors...but then of course, other MORE savvy friends have shown me how to really won't work anyway, because blah blah blah will trace it back to the actual source anyway.
Friends track the movements of their kids through their car GPS system, or the GPS in cell phones. At a crowded Epcot a month ago, a friend and I found our wives by calling up a tracker on their cell phones.
I once had my password stolen for an on-line game account. I was shocked, honestly, because I had been so careful with it. I explained all of my security to the company's Customer Service rep...she asked if I went to a certain site. Yes. Had I ever opened the game while my browser was on that site?
Yes.
Apparently one of the banner ads there wasn't a banner ad at all, but a device for recording keyclicks - and since I had logged in with that page opened...
It is what it is. The only privacy regarding my or your movements on the internet is that nobody gives a crap - other than to sell you stuff. My assistant bought some printer ink from my computer, and boy, you should see the ink sale ads I get now...
Now, don't get me wrong as I'm fully aware that the government could take this information and do some really horrible things with it (see Plaza Hotel, above). Which, going back to the top, is why Yoo's memo ignited my hair. The government can do lots of horrible things - they have an army, and nukes and bio-weapons and such. It is the system of checks and balances that I cherish, along with the ability of the voices of the American people to be heard, albeit (admittedly) distantly in the age of corporate ascendance.
Not only am I not surprised that the NSA is outdoing the spying of Facebook, Google and others, but I would be shocked (and scared in an entirely different direction) if this wasn't the tip of the iceberg. Cyberspace is the most powerful weapon on the planet right now. Watch the old "Connections" series and you'll see what an attack on an electrical grid could do to millions of people.
This is the new nuke, the new arms' race. It can be used for good ends - interrupting Iran's nuclear program) - and for bad ends - stealing intellectual secrets and property or shutting down air traffic control or electrical grids. China is ambitious in this arms' race - I hope we stay ahead of them. Way ahead of them. Not because we=good, them=bad, but because our system of checks and balances must prevail in these regards.
So, to summarize this first discussion, while I believe that we're long past time for an adult conversation about privacy and perhaps more importantly, about expectations of privacy, my hair will not ignite about this unsurprising twist.
Which leads me to the second point. I've seen many posts (and expect a few here aimed at me) calling people Obamapologists or some other pejorative regarding this issue.
As of right now, I stand firmly in that camp, but for a different reason than is assumed by some who will throw that insult, and certainly not because I like any of this. I don't. I've hated it for years as I've watched the privacy train leaving the station, as I've watched my only hope for privacy become the comforting thought of being a pebble on a beach with 7,000,000,000 other pebbles.
But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit back and let this freight train become a political weapon against a person who inherited an untenable situation, and ultimately become a ladder to the benefit of the people I truly fear in this regard (think, John Yoo).
I do not believe that this President, or any President, could or would unilaterally stop this train. I would never expect that of a person in that position, where any attack against us falls on his or her shoulders, internally (conscience) and/or externally (politically), anymore than I would expect a person in that position to scrap our nuclear arsenal. Just as no one man should be able to take us to war, as the Founders rightly insisted, so should no one man determine the balance between security and civil rights.
The Legislative and Judicial branches make the laws and determine the Constitutionality of those laws. They give the Commander-in-Chief the tools he or she needs to keep us safe, and his job is to use those tools. And if he fails at his job because he does not use those tools, he will be scorned. Period.
A couple of weeks ago, before this latest kerfuffle, President Obama gave a remarkable speech...
http://www.usnews.com/...
Clearly, he understands that Congress has abrogated its solemn duties, and understands, too, that no matter what he does while in office, the possibilities of gross and LEGAL abuse will be sitting there waiting for the next President.
So I put this encroachment and erosion on Congress, both parties. As far as I've read, President Obama enacted safeguards to comport to the FISA Court and other necessary checks and balances when he came in - I would expect nothing less. Show me where I'm wrong on that and maybe a flame will appear atop my head. Until that time, I fully understand and accept the difference between a President Obama putting tools away, and a Senator Obama telling Congress to put tools away.
In the meantime, I hope that people to the left of center will recognize a very real and imminent danger: the right-wing will use this to dissuade and discourage liberals from voting, or at least, from voting for Democrats. These guys have no compunction at all against simply flipping their positions (see the Hannity story, for example) and ignoring their own recent history. And they know damned well that their base voters will accept their duplicity and step up and pull the level for whomever Fox News and talk radio endorses.
I'm all for the conversation. I'm all for easing the ridiculous intrusions at airports, or in putting more transparent and powerful safeguards and oversight regarding the NSA (and in stopping private corporations from such data-sweeping altogether!).