PERSONAL PRIVACY – I WAS WRONG….BUT, I TOLD YA SO !!

Yes, I admit it, I was wrong in my May 23, 2011, blog post regarding personal privacy and the threats to personal privacy.  I was wrong because I so incredibly underestimated what the government of the United States, and specifically the National Security Administration (NSA),  was and is doing to compromise the security and privacy of…of…well EVERYTHING !
 

The NSA has adopted a policy that everyone is suspect, until proven otherwise, and then, in all probability, that one time they prove otherwise applies only until the next time they suspect you.  They have adopted a policy of collecting everything and then they get to figure out who was naughty and who was nice, only Santa they ain’t.  This policy has likely created the largest dragnet of personal information of innocent people the world has ever known.

Thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden, we now know that the NSA has been collecting pretty much every communication between every United States citizen and anyone else on the planet inside or outside the United States.  This includes email, telephone calls, radio calls (okay, that was always pretty open anyway) and the United States Mail.  We now know, in fact, that the NSA has done its level best to compromise, by hook or crook, any kind of communication security in which we engage in this country and probably the world.
 

The NSA has worked to compromise the security of communications using requests, begging and pleading and finally, conniving, threats, coercion and force.  Every company and designer of security software has been asked to put a weakness in their encryption software or install a “back-door” that allows the NSA to circumvent the need for a password to de-encrypt an otherwise coded message.  Those that refused found themselves “under investigation” and their top-level executives threaten with prosecution and jail if they failed to comply.  Many companies just got “hacked” and the back-doors installed without their knowledge.

As more and more information becomes known, we find the NSA reeling.  Why?  Because they never thought they would ever get caught.  They never thought they would have to explain, to a previously unsuspecting citizenry, why they need to read our mail and listen to our phone calls.  They are having a huge hard time of it. 
 

It seems that when they have screwed up in the past, the so-called FISA Court, has admonished them.  What has been the result?  Greater secrecy!  The NSA is not about doing what the Courts tell it what it should be doing, it is about figuring out how to make things ever more secret; make it harder to get caught.  When the NSA and the government get caught with their hands in the information/intelligence cookie jar, they just add a few more layers secrecy so no one can figure out how they are violating the privacy of the people.  It is that simple. 
 

Nothing healthy grows in the dark.  The kind of growth you don’t want is what thrives in secret.  The NSA has become a mold on freedom and all it wants is more secrecy, more darkness so it can flourish at the expense of us all.
 

Edward Snowden will be forever reviled in the intelligence community.  As a result of what he has released, and what he continues to release, We The People, have figured out what our government is collecting on us, but this is not about Edward Snowden as much as it is about what the government is collecting on each one of We the People.

I do not understand why people are not standing on very tall soapboxes, screaming at the top of their lungs, to whoever will listen, that this is wrong.  We are being raped of our privacy and the NSA’s response to getting caught, in addition to trying to make it harder to catch them next time, is to tell us it is necessary and for our own good.  The government is engaged in the moral equivalent of combining “Trust Us” and “It is inevitable, just lay back and enjoy it.”
 

I know the response of most of my Conservative friends, “Well, I don’t care who knows what I am doing.  I am not doing anything wrong.  Let them look.”  As I have said before, that is fine, you are welcome to give up your Right to Privacy, but you are not entitled to give away mine.  Sit down right now, draft a letter to the NSA and give them the authorization to read every letter, email, text message, note and memo you write.  Give them the authority listen in on every conversation you have, tap your phones and hell, while you are at it; let them take a peek at your medical records.  Why would you care if they know you aren’t sick or maybe you are?  What difference does it make?

It is when you start to try to give away MY right to privacy that I take great exception.  Remember, some of the worst oppressions on the planet came at the hands of a majority against a minority.  Just ask African Americans (You remember, slavery?), Native Americans (does Wounded Knee ring a bell?  Reservations?  The Trail of Tears?).  The world is rife with examples of uncaring majorities allowing the rights of minorities to be compromised or eliminated altogether.  The Jews in Nazi Germany were just such a minority and now we hear that prolific cry, “Never Again.”  Where are those cries now, in light of the massive violation of our privacy at the hands of the government?
 

Since it is a Right (note the capital R) as defined by the Supreme Court as being guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I do not have to justify why I wish to invoke that Right.  It is my Right to do so, and I am not required to explain it to anyone.   Ask a Conservative to justify why he wants or needs to keep and bear arms, they will routinely tell you, “Because it is my Right.”  Oh and one of the justifications for why the government cannot require you to register your firearm(s) is because you have a Right to Privacy.
 

By the way, all you so-called “Constitutionalists,” the word “privacy” never once appears in the Constitution, but it comes from an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment by the Supreme Court.  Does that reviled term “judicial activism” work for you here, or would you argue that in the United States we have no Right to privacy and the government can act with impunity and disregard to anything related to personal privacy?  You better watch out because without a Right to Privacy, gun registration may not be far behind.  Is there anything at all that is just none of their business?  I am afraid the American People have a strange way of deciding what is and is not anyone’s business for themselves, but then there is that pesky majority rules, minority Rights argument.
 

This issue is becoming less and less about Edward Snowden and more about the abuses of power and technology in which the U.S. Government is engaged.  We are finding out that the Government views us as little children who have no idea what is in our best interests, but as good parents, our government thinks they can tell us.  This does not, in my opinion, square with government by the people, but most certainly fits within their definition of government of the people.