political commentary

Life in the surveillance state

When an empire loses the loyalty of those who are most likely to defend it, it is doomed.

by T.J. Nelson

political commentary

W hile everyone else is concerned about the latest revelations about the Republican dog and pony show, the latest foreign policy debacle from the White House, and something called a “Hildebeest” (whatever that is), the most important story of the decade is being forgotten. Maybe we just want to forget, but the government is still spying on us.

Thanks to Edward Snowden, like him or not, we learned that every email we write, every web page we view, and maybe even every phone call we make is being monitored in real time, and almost certainly converted to text, recorded by the United States government, and searched for key words and phrases that might merit further scrutiny.

Whether we realize it or not, that changes how we live our lives. We keep our heads down. We try not to say anything that might upset the government. We find ourselves wondering whether that black SUV with tinted windows is really just an ordinary SUV or something sinister. That changes who we are as a people. Americans are not meant to be like that.

Barbed wire

Back in the days of Mao and the Soviet Union, we'd hear stories about how reporters in Red China could hear delayed echoes of their own voices coming from the next room. They'd find their luggage subtly messed up. The Chinese government routinely spied on all foreigners because in their eyes all foreigners were a threat. How awful it must be, we thought, to live in a country like that. Now we know.

You'll never be able to prove it, but we all know how it works: if the government's computers tag something you wrote with high enough score, suddenly you notice a jump in your ping times. If you've used computers long enough, you know what that means, and you don't even have to measure it. Maybe it means your entire site content is being downloaded and examined. For sure it means they've traced your network path. Maybe they'll start tapping your phone. Or maybe they won't. What matters is not what they might do. What matters is that you have no say in it.

I wouldn't be surprised if posting the lyrics to the American national anthem gets you tagged, with those bits about ... various things ... bursting in air.

What's disturbing is that this happens while you're testing the page before it ever goes live, which means they're not just reading your public comments—they're monitoring your traffic and recording the content. Imagination? Maybe.

Then one day your electricity goes off—just for a second, but you wonder if it's really those geniuses down at the electric company or something else—somebody subtly telling you they know where you live, and they can make trouble for you if you don't stop. Then one day you come home from work and things seem out of place. Just little things, like your potted plant being tipped over, or an unexpected odor.

That's what life will be like if this is allowed to continue. That is what it will feel like not to be free. It is indistinguishable from paranoia. The first time you worry about whether the government will dislike something you say or write, that is the day you know you have lost your freedom. Knowing you might be watched, consequences might happen, and no one will be held accountable, changes your behavior.

Of course people make accommodations. Maybe they rationalize it: if you do nothing wrong, and you're not a terrorist, you have nothing to fear. Except you have no say in what is right and wrong, or even what constitutes terrorism.

It's a disaster waiting to happen. There's little to stop some politician from expanding the definition of ‘national security’ almost without bound, as Congress did in 1918 with its Sedition Act, which made expressing unfavorable opinions of the government during wartime an offense punishable by up to 20 years of imprisonment. We almost got a reprise eight years ago when the House passed the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 by a vote of 404 to 6. The information being collected now could easily be used against us.

For a while it will seem normal. People will make jokes about it. Then one day your favorite website will go dark, and you'll wonder why. Or somebody down the street will disappear, and you'll wonder why they didn't stop over and say goodbye. And you will get even more paranoid.

The step after that is creating informants. The purpose of informants is not to gather information; it is to ensure that no one can trust anyone else—to isolate, weaken and intimidate the individual.

Then you will wonder: what is it they want us to say? What if I say the wrong thing? What might they do to me? That is what is known as alienation. It is the great irony of politics that it's impossible to be loyal to a government that wants to coerce loyalty from you. You can't be loyal to somebody who says to you: you are a threat.

When an empire loses the loyalty of those who are most likely to defend it, it is doomed. When a government regards its citizens as a threat, there are no citizens, only people waiting to become victims. Mass surveillance sends an unequivocal message to the people: you are a threat. When government sees the people as a threat, government is a threat to the people. It means the country we once loved is gone.

All the other things, all the plane crashes and shootings and the lost puppies are important; if nothing else it makes a nice change to worry about something else. But in a surveillance state none of that really matters, because in a surveillance state nothing you say or do matters, because it is not you who is saying or doing it.

A population that knows the government is watching every move and recording every conversation becomes a dead culture. Intelligence agencies must be made to understand if the spying is not provably and permanently stopped, they will be reorganized until it is—even if that means disbanding them.

Forget which candidate wants to close the borders and which one wants to install a free solar panel on your house. All that is secondary. The only important issue is to get the government back in control.

See also:


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aug 06, 2015; updated dec 10, 2015
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