The United States’ best response to date for its apparently continuing intrusion into the private communications of citizens around the world is remarkable in its disingenuousness: Everybody does it.
Its unclear who the “everybody” in that statement refers to. I know I’m not spying on anybody.
I’m a bit shock-and-awed at the complacency that seems to the sum of the public response to what the U.S. admits is an ongoing program justified by domestic security interests. While I doubt there’s a single voice who would argue against the fact that this form of surveillance might prevent future 911s, Americans especially fail to grasp the ramifications of being cool with such open-ended spying.
Big Brother can be a Big Monster
We need look no further than China to understand the dangerous implications a fully wired in government has for grass roots opposition. China relies on communications surveillance to ensure that freedom is not a state-sanctioned topic of conversation. When anybody with an audience suddenly becomes a little bit too strident in their anti-government or pro-democracy diatribe, the response is predictable: they go to jail or else just mysteriously disappear.
According to Radio Free Asia:,
“Liu Hu, a reporter with Guangzhou’s Modern Express newspaper who had exposed official corruption in his hometown of Chongqing, was formally arrested earlier this week, his lawyer said on Thursday.:
While there aren’t any examples of that kind of government-sanctioned sponsorship available in the free world outside of China, there is every indication that the willing participation of organizations like Google and Facebook might constitute some method of censorship passively. Imagine if a publisher of a web site becomes aware of or regularly exposes through writing and interviews a system of corruption within a high-ranking financial institution. What’s to stop Google, on orders from the NSA, to divert search traffic away from such a web site to ensure the message is not penetrating the blogosphere as easily as it might if not censored?
More importantly, imagine a situation where the government in power is exposed as colluding with financial institutions to enrich connected elite bankers and politicians at the direct expense of ordinary citizens, and awareness of and opposition to such collusion starts to manifest itself as some form of protest growing incrementally more violent. Do you think the governing power would not exploit its communications surveillance to isolate and arrest the leaders of such a protest movement?
Americans are so covetous and protective of the idea of liberty and freedom, but fail to act when the political system violates those basic foundations or are assailed by the elected government. It’s complacency, and it’s dangerous.
