Spy on me, I've got nothing to hide.

Many of us have heard that invitation countless times since the exposure of the president's illegal NSA wiretaps - on radio talk shows and TV programs, in newspapers and other blogs, on the street and around the water cooler. Today, half of our fellow citizens say giving up their privacy is a price they're willing to pay, in order to give the administration the tools it needs to protect us from that scary "them."

As more than a few diarists here and columnists elsewhere have noted, the nation managed to respect privacy rights when things were a heck of a lot scarier than today - like during WWII or the Cold War, when thousands of missiles were aimed at our duck-and-cover asses. (Historically, when we did step over the line, as in the Sedition Act, Internment camps, or McCarthy, it turned out to be wrong. Duh, a clue perhaps?) Of course, Bushie's heh-heh excuse that implementing this unauthorized snooping prior to 9/11 might have tipped us off in time to stop the WTC attacks has pretty much been put to bed. Even so, we continue to hear, "Go ahead, do your spy thing, I don't have anything to hide." Bullshit, here's why.

First, most of us do have something to hide. I'm not talking about a cell phone record to your favorite Al-Qaeda operative, but face it: have you ever run a red light, cheated on your spouse, exaggerated on a tax return, drove home drunk, smoked a joint, shoplifted a pack of gum, lied to a superior, or broke some law, no matter how ticky-tacky? If you haven't, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din. I just hate that "I have nothing to hide" shit, because if you dig deep enough, most of us have a few skeletons hanging in the closet. We're not bad people, we're human, we make mistakes, we do stupid stuff - and that's life. Unfortunately, a lot of people - doing the same crap you did - got caught, and their lives are fucked, forever. I live a comfortable life, but I know if things had played out differently - just a split second this way or that - when I was younger, I could be that homeless person walking on my street.

Beyond that, sanctioning the government to spy on you is the first step toward fascism and totalitarianism. I was watching a History Channel show about Stalin last night and I thought, "How the hell did these people allow this to happen?" With a Stalin or a Hitler it happens gradually. You surrender a few mundane rights in the name of patriotism or security or just "going along" - no big deal. Eventually, however, the leaders change the playing field; what is "wrong" and therefore punishable begins to shift. You thought you had "nothing to hide," but now being Jewish, homosexual, Estonian, left-handed, or critical (i.e., a blog poster or a T-shirt wearer at the SOTU) is a crime. And now you, who believed yourself honest and law-abiding with "nothing to hide," find yourself in Siberia, or a concentration camp, or a ditch. When I hear, "I've got nothing to hide," I want to scream: "Do you think most of the prisoners in Auschwitz were criminals with something to hide?"

I used to sit in my father's lap and watch the McCarthy hearings on a tiny black-and-white television (the first on our block), not really knowing why dad, a blue-collar union guy, was so worked up about the senator from Wisconsin. Years later I understood his anxiety and I wondered, "How did they let that guy happen?"

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. - Thomas Jefferson

 

When you hear that "I've got nothing to hide" crap, call them on it. This shit today makes my sphincter shrivel.