Not a Terrorist, but I still have something to fear...

I've been thinking more about what bothers me so much about warrantless spying on American citizens, when we're assured that this program is only in place to catch potential terrorist threats. There is, of course, the obvious (and somewhat abstract and theoretical) “Because it violates our privacy and the freedoms we're supposed to have as Americans”, but that argument doesn't hold much weight with the “I'd rather be safe than completely free” crowd.

I've come up with two arguments which I think demonstrate the very real risks involved, even to those who aren't terrorists. Well, to be fair, my wife came up with one of them, I came up with the other (and to be COMPLETELY fair, the one I “came up with” is an expansion on the germ of an idea I read elsewhere).

My wife's point is this: Warrantless spying, when American citizens are on one or both ends of the conversation, runs the very real risk of violating some privileges which are supposed to be above the law: Attorney Client privilege, Doctor Patient privilege, even Pastor/Priest/Rabbi/etc confessional privilege with members of their congregation. All three are protected and privileged conversations, and all three are things which no one but those expressly involved have any right to be part of. And all three are places where you might want to discuss privately things which are not illegal or damaging to anyone, but which you still wish to remain private.

Who needs the NSA having a record that you had a bout with depression or had hemorrhoid surgery? Why should the government have access to the knowledge that you had impure thoughts about your neighbor's wife? What business is it of anyone's that you've decided to leave all of your assets to one child, because you feel the other one has been a sorry excuse for an offspring? And you may ask “Where's the harm?”, but if you don't think it's secret information, then why have the three privileged classes of communication? It's not information that anyone has any right to, but if you happen (for example) to be politically inclined and decide to run for office, do you really want the incumbent against whom you are running to possibly have access to the fact that you had plastic surgery and regularly confess to the sin of masturbation? Couldn't that information, if made public, harm you, whether it represents illegal activity or not?

The second point is, I think, even scarier. As you may have noticed in the news recently, the Federal Government has been trying to get Google to turn over records of all searches done in a certain period. Initially, the request does not ask for IP addresses or any identifying information, but the request was made in order to track down pornographers, and the request was made under one of the powers of the Patriot Act. Remember, this is the same Patriot Act whose proponents insisted that opponents were being silly, because the Act was only to give the Government power to chase down terrorists and protect Americans. And now that same Act is being used to chase down purveyors of pornography.

So what, you ask, I'm against Pornography anyway? Yes, but the point is that the powers, once granted, will not remain unused, and will not be used only for what they were initially granted for. Today it's terrorism and maybe pornographers. Then maybe they decide to go after mass murderers, trying to identify them by their pattern of web searching. Then maybe they start going after drug users, based on drug-related searches. And then some enterprising politician, knowing he's got all of these secret Patriot Act powers, decides to search for seditious behavior, or maybe the legal but publicly embarrassing internet porn history of his political rivals. Imagine a modern-day Joe McCarthy with access to people's personal web search history.

Every ten years, the Census department goes around and counts us all, and we're asked to fill out a form with all sorts of personal information. We're assured that it will be used only for statistical purposes and that none of it will be released outside of the Census department attached to us in any way. It's supposed to be illegal for any Census collected data to be released to anyone else, and yet there is evidence that the Census information was key in helping to round up Americans of Japanese descent during the second World War. According to one site I found, Census-gathered information is routinely used in urban areas to detect “illegal two-family dwellings” and evict people from their homes. Supposedly secret information misused, and this is all PUBLIC, open to scrutiny and oversight.

And so the argument that warrantless wire-tapping is no risk to anyone with no terrorist leanings is simply not credible. Governments at all levels have repeatedly shown a marked inability to follow through on promises. Taxes passed on the basis of their being earmarked for one program then get spent on something different. “Debt Ceilings” are raised so often, it's a farce to even claim they have any legitimacy at all. And again, these are all public and overseen flauntings of the rules.

Both the Patriot Act and the NSA spying program may have been initiated with the best of intentions. The originators of both may honestly never have intended for them to be used except to protect Americans from another 9/11 style attack. But both have insufficient safeguards to ensure the powers thus granted are only used for the purposes for which they were enacted, and the spying program doesn't even have the benefit of any oversight at all, so we have only the word of the Administration and the NSA that they are only spying on terrorists, and only on international calls. If it's that easy to violate rules and regs when there IS oversight, what chance is there that a completely secret program with no one looking over will remain pure?

The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. This is not a road which I wish to see paved. I have no wish to make it any easier for us to get to that destination than it absolutely has to be.

Liam.