Surveilance

Today I overheard a discussion about politics. Now, mostly it was about how the US economy is tanking, and how bad a president Bush has been (thank gods he'll be gone soon!) and other relatively rational opinions. Except then I heard "I don't get what all the fuss about the Patriot Act is all about. I don't have any problem with them listening in on my telephone conversations or reading my emails. If I say something I shouldn't, then I should be locked up."

Well, now I'm going to put my two cents in on what all the fuss about the government spying on US citizens is all about.

It's easy to think "Well, I'm a decent, law-abiding person, so if the government or police or FBI were to start listening in on me, I've got nothing to hide." This is the founding philosophy behind sites like myspace and livejournal, and also reality TV. But it's a terrible trap to fall into. There seems to be this growing sense in recent years that "privacy" is some archaic, out-modeled social idea left over from the Victorian Age, right alongside segregation and eugenics. People who, like me, still consider personal privacy an important right are becoming fewer and fewer in number.

We are treading on thin ice here. Sure, you may think your lifestyle and opinions are perfectly normal, but there is a huge variety of things that while seemingly normal, someone is going to be offended over. For starters, spending any amount of time in close quarters with some friend you thought you knew well (such as a sleepover or camping trip) will reveal that there is a huge range of preferences in personal hygene, including practices that will most likely offend you. It's not too far a stretch of the imagination that some of your routine personal cleaning will offend somebody. Then, of course, there are the parts of one's lifestyle generally best left unsaid: politics, religion, sexual orientation.

I highly doubt you could find 10 members of some minority lifestyle or opinion, 10 gays, 10 neopagans, 10 transexuals, 10 Ralph Nader supporters, ect, who would agree it's a great idea to have "nothing to hide" to the point they would think it a good idea to let their boss and coworkers know such details about their private lives. Now imagine that we had this wonderful "transparent society" where due to surveilance the government knew such details about everyone, including you.

Just stop for a minute, poke around google or youtube or something, and think it over. If you don't get chills up your spine, you are both naieve, and already standing in line to become one of big brother's sheep.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say there will always be a person who would be offended by your lifestyle, and your beliefs. Maybe some prudish public servant on the other side of the cameras would find one of your kinks an offensive "perversion" worthy of stamping out. Nothing like sexual preferences to raise somebody's ire. Maybe some zealot of [insert religion here] would see your faith (or lack thereof) as an "abomination" that should never be practiced. After all, religion is just such a great starter of flame wars, (and real ones!)

More to the point, do you really want the government to know everything that you say all the time? Who among us can honesty say they didn't, at one time or another, blurt out in an angry moment how this or that person should die?

I will put myself on the spot here and say that, while I'm not the perfect model of citizenship, I do vote, and have not commited any crimes beyond a few traffic tickets. And yet, I have, in private, throughout my life, advocated horrible fates to some people. In high school, me and my friends used to draw cartoons of kids and teachers we didn't like meeting horrible ends. Even now, some of my professors end up in the margins of my homework and notebooks, always about to suffer a terrible fate. I have, in anger, advocated the destruction of certain countries, and death to certain groups of people. (Most notably nuking Islamic countries, drowning large numbers of lawyers, hanging terrorists and pirates, and the like.) And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

None of this I ever meant seriously. But if there was a government surveilance program listening in at all times, would they know that? If the people running it had the (lack of) sense of humor of, say, airport security workers, I daresay I would (gods forbid) be in jail already for some "terrorist plot".

Just stop for a minute and think about your own private conversations and tell me you have never, ever, wished death or suffering on somebody. Even if it was just for a moment in a fit of anger. Then tell me with a straight face you would like Homeland Security agents listening in on that, all the time.

Think it over.