During a meeting earlier today, my MDA buzzed the long buzz. I can tell by the duration of the vibration what type of notification I’ve received: short buzzes are incoming phone calls; medium buzzes are text messages; long buzzes are email messages, and really long buzzes are appointment reminders.
The long buzz was for a "Breaking News" email from Yahoo!, and it was informing me that the NSA’s secret wire tapping program had been deemed unconstitutional. I read the summary of her judgement, and it seemed logical to me: it’s unconstitutional for the government to monitor citizens without having a reason to do so. It’s an invasion of privacy, and the government shouldn’t have free reign to peak in on our daily lives on a whim. Okay, I get it.
I wonder, though, how people will react to this. I asked myself the following question:
Would I prefer to keep my pizza order to myself, if sharing it with someone in the NSA means that my family stands less of a chance of being blown up on the way to the grocery store?
Before you all start leaping out of your chairs at my gross exaggeration, consider the question in a more down-to-earth sense. Do you think people are more concerned about terrorism, or privacy? What confidence level do people have in the NSA’s ability to keep their surveillance activities limited to the pursuit of terrorists? Is it ridiculous to assume that individual liberties, like privacy, trump individual safety? Most importantly: is that even an applicable question?
If you’re looking for a political opinion from me on this one, hold on to your chairs: I don’t know that I have one.
I wish that there was a way to fight terrorism out in the open, and that the battlefront can be kept as far away from my 10 month-old as possible. But, is that realistic?
I can say two things without hesitating:
- The government works for me, and I want them to stay the hell out of my daily life. That’s one of the reasons why being an American is infinitely cooler than being Chinese (for instance).
- If there was a terrorist planning something in my neighborhood, and the NSA was able to catch them by wire tapping everyone on my block, I’d be all for it. Tap away.
Ambiguity makes me nuts….but I don’t have enough information to work my way through this issue.
Discuss.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Blameless Caterpillar // Aug 21, 2006 at 5:57 am
I’ve lived overseas for the past twelve years as the trailing spouse of an international civil servant. I’ve lived in five different countries and some of those countries have significant Muslim populations. I would love to stay in touch with friends I knew for many years before moving overseas. Personal information that I might exchange on the phone with family or old friends is all fodder that intelligence agencies are entitled to gather about me because I live overseas. Do I trust my government or foreign governments to use any information they might gather about me in a responsible and appropriate way? What if intelligence operatives were to share personal information they’ve gathered about me with people they suspect of terrorist activity? And what if that accurate highly personal information is mixed with disinformation made up by an operative that could make me useful or of interest to known terrorists? Could I be made unwittingly and without my permission a party to espionage activities in the surveillance of suspected terrorists? Do I put family and long term friends back home at risk by staying in touch?
2 tom // Aug 27, 2006 at 10:27 am
My son in law is coming back from Iraq wounded. proud of him as we all should be, his story and pictures are on my Hideaway Picture site. As to the wire tapping…no thankyou, we are already to “Big Brother” for my taste.
3 Kachina Crowe // Aug 27, 2006 at 11:51 am
I think anytime you can make an issue about “life and death” it becomes more hyperbolic and monumental than necessary. Your example about ordering a pizza is perfectly legitimate if you frame the arguement in terms of “death” and “not death”. You’re more likely to be killed in a car accident than by a terrorist, but the governement hasn’t installed monitering devices in cars to track down unsafe civilian drivers. It’s not about death and not death – it’s about the law plain and simple. “Did the government break it’s own law?” I remember being in highschool and my folks would get ticked if I went out late at night with friends without asking – not because I went out but because I didn’t *ask*. Democracy is built around the consent of the governed, without the “consent” part, we don’t have democracy. If the NSA feels that the law needs to be changed, then find a congressman to write up a new bill. Just because you think marijuana should be legalized, doesn’t mean you won’t get busted, and just because you think the NSA should listen in on domestic calls doesn’t make it legal.
4 Vivian Chen // Sep 3, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the program the NSA was using called Echelon? In which case, Echelon was in use during the Clinton administration and no one thought it was a violation of privacy. The program, I am told, was supposed to pick up strings of key words, like “President Bush”, “bomb”, and “Osama bin Laden”. To listen to whole conversations would take up too much time, anyway. So why can’t we use it to protect our citizens if that’s all the program “hears”?
5 Amanda // Sep 17, 2006 at 4:19 pm
I am a fan of the proverb:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
6 Andrew // Sep 20, 2006 at 4:40 am
You did an excellent job of summarizing the argument.
Amanda, I think the key words in that proverb are “essential” and “temporary”.
Kachina, the problem is that if the government had “asked first”, they would have blown the whole program. Americans need to get it through their heads that there are things they don’t need to know.
7 jason // Oct 21, 2006 at 3:14 pm
People keep thinking too small and too close to home. It’s not about keeping individuals safe, it’s about what is best for the nation as a whole. 3000 people died on 9/11. That is terrible. On average 36,000 people die of influenza or pneumonia in the United States a year. The over reaction to the whole thing is insane. We now have 100,000+ dead Iraqis 3000+ dead American Soldiers. We can be taken away and tortured without habius corpus. Our phone calls and e-mail are monitored and we are $400,000,000,000 in the hole. We can no longer move freely in our own country and most of the world hates us.
I would say that the freedoms of the general public far exceed any damage that Osama and his cohorts can reasonably cause.
A free democracy, like we used to have, comes at a price. The high road is not easy. And now we, not so slowly, descend to Osama’s level because people are thinking “tap my pone, I haven’t done anything”, “torture that guy, It’s not me or anyone I know”.
8 dini // Oct 24, 2006 at 1:25 am
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