Badges? We Don't Need...
Had a friend suggest that the current snooping scandal is overblown; after all, we haven't been bothered by it when we thought the data was being collected by Google, et al., and "shared only" for the purposes of marketing, etc., among other companies. Well, the issue isn't that.
I think it has more to do with the fact that it's the gov't doing it, and was doing so without opening the matter to public scrutiny. It's one thing if for example an employer insists you wear a dorky uniform for a job at the burger stand because that's part of the gimmick; it's another if the gov't insists that you do so simply because it wants you to. There's a substantial distinction between expectations between private parties and ones between the citizen and the state.
If I know info about my online and phone comm'ns and behavior are recorded by a business that has said it's doing it and both tells me why and has a policy of keeping it just between "us", or will only share it with certain other entities for their particular purposes (and without person-specific info), and sticks to that, then fine. But what about that same company not sticking with it; of course they can claim force majeur if the gov't is requiring the info from them, but they also neglected to mention that they're being compelled to provide on demand that content to the gov't. "It wasn't me, it was them!" hardly passes.
Our Con'n is supposed to be the guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures (reasonable ones require, assuming there's no expectation of sudden loss of the evidence, a court order), and to also guarantee security of "persons, property, papers, and effects". By "papers" it is meant things like letters: the only non-face-to-face comm'n available back in 1787. Today, we have all manner of other things acting as "papers", incl. email, phone convos, etc.
The security guarantees found in the Con'n are applied specifically to the citizen's relationship with the gov't. At this point, it has in essence decided to ignore these basic principles and gather comm'ns of all kinds to and from anyone and everyone based on whatever suspicions they may have, even mere ones. The hair-splitting argument that it's gathering the info from companies and not the actual people who created it doesn't hold water. If the gov't cannot randomly open letters in the mail (it can do so but only upon reasonable suspicion that the contents pose a physical danger to the postal workers or recipient), nor specific ones without a court order, and the USPS is itself a gov't agency, how does it now get the all-clear to snag at random a letter, for example, that I might send you? Even after you have received it, the gov't has no right to just insist at random that you hand it over or to sneak into your house and read it while you're away, nor even to "just" keep track of who you got it from and when. Same for emails, phone convos, etc. But this is pretty much what they're currently doing.
Where are the "checks and balances"? Well, it seems between our three branches of gov't, not one is even remotely interested in crying foul. The Supreme Court is the last line of defense for the Con'n and as you can see via their many judgments these past couple decades, they've chucked that role. Congress is utterly complicit, despite some members' newly-found objections delivered as sound-bite condemnations. It's on both sides of the aisle and there's collusion between the two major parties to stop any significant third party effort before it even begins, so we're left little alternative between Dems and Reps, both of whom are in any case firmly in corporations' pockets. And the president? Forget any relief from the executive branch, they're the ones loving it since they get to do the fun stuff, like snooping on emails and phone calls.
Well, as far as I can tell, we've arrived at 1984, only without actual secret police grabbing people off the street because they said something that seemed critical of "The Party". But it's just a question of when, at this point, though arguably, they have no need to drag people in for questioning. The technology is now in place to quantify, categorize, pigeon-hole, label, and snoop everyone, creating "profiles" about everyone (including personal beliefs and opinions about all manner of things), identifying "weak spots", suitable for use against them. But eventually, merely snooping will get old, and they'll want to up the game a notch... or two. What that'll mean-- I suppose we'll find out. I've recommended the BBC TV series The Prisoner made in the '60s previously and do so again; if you haven't seen it yet, you're bound to recognize by allegory the state we're moving toward.
The gov't can keep doing what it's doing and utterly vacate the Con'n until there's no longer any semblance of rule of law -- Constitutional law -- left. Or, it can admit it's been coloring way outside the lines, make a case as to why it *needed* to chuck the Con'n, and immediately do what I've been advocating for a long time: call a Constitutional convention and start a substantial effort to update the US Con'n. The world of 2013 is radically different from that of 1787. We need an updated, fundamental legal document to reflect our new challenges and concerns particular to today's world while still creating effective and defensible protections against government's tendency to grab more and more power over time, as ours has done, until it starts resembling something people have a hard time trusting or feeling good about. If we don't undertake such an effort, as contentious and troublesome as it undoubtedly would be, the alternative is likely to be a lot more troublesome and contentious.
I think it has more to do with the fact that it's the gov't doing it, and was doing so without opening the matter to public scrutiny. It's one thing if for example an employer insists you wear a dorky uniform for a job at the burger stand because that's part of the gimmick; it's another if the gov't insists that you do so simply because it wants you to. There's a substantial distinction between expectations between private parties and ones between the citizen and the state.
If I know info about my online and phone comm'ns and behavior are recorded by a business that has said it's doing it and both tells me why and has a policy of keeping it just between "us", or will only share it with certain other entities for their particular purposes (and without person-specific info), and sticks to that, then fine. But what about that same company not sticking with it; of course they can claim force majeur if the gov't is requiring the info from them, but they also neglected to mention that they're being compelled to provide on demand that content to the gov't. "It wasn't me, it was them!" hardly passes.
Our Con'n is supposed to be the guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures (reasonable ones require, assuming there's no expectation of sudden loss of the evidence, a court order), and to also guarantee security of "persons, property, papers, and effects". By "papers" it is meant things like letters: the only non-face-to-face comm'n available back in 1787. Today, we have all manner of other things acting as "papers", incl. email, phone convos, etc.
The security guarantees found in the Con'n are applied specifically to the citizen's relationship with the gov't. At this point, it has in essence decided to ignore these basic principles and gather comm'ns of all kinds to and from anyone and everyone based on whatever suspicions they may have, even mere ones. The hair-splitting argument that it's gathering the info from companies and not the actual people who created it doesn't hold water. If the gov't cannot randomly open letters in the mail (it can do so but only upon reasonable suspicion that the contents pose a physical danger to the postal workers or recipient), nor specific ones without a court order, and the USPS is itself a gov't agency, how does it now get the all-clear to snag at random a letter, for example, that I might send you? Even after you have received it, the gov't has no right to just insist at random that you hand it over or to sneak into your house and read it while you're away, nor even to "just" keep track of who you got it from and when. Same for emails, phone convos, etc. But this is pretty much what they're currently doing.
Where are the "checks and balances"? Well, it seems between our three branches of gov't, not one is even remotely interested in crying foul. The Supreme Court is the last line of defense for the Con'n and as you can see via their many judgments these past couple decades, they've chucked that role. Congress is utterly complicit, despite some members' newly-found objections delivered as sound-bite condemnations. It's on both sides of the aisle and there's collusion between the two major parties to stop any significant third party effort before it even begins, so we're left little alternative between Dems and Reps, both of whom are in any case firmly in corporations' pockets. And the president? Forget any relief from the executive branch, they're the ones loving it since they get to do the fun stuff, like snooping on emails and phone calls.
Well, as far as I can tell, we've arrived at 1984, only without actual secret police grabbing people off the street because they said something that seemed critical of "The Party". But it's just a question of when, at this point, though arguably, they have no need to drag people in for questioning. The technology is now in place to quantify, categorize, pigeon-hole, label, and snoop everyone, creating "profiles" about everyone (including personal beliefs and opinions about all manner of things), identifying "weak spots", suitable for use against them. But eventually, merely snooping will get old, and they'll want to up the game a notch... or two. What that'll mean-- I suppose we'll find out. I've recommended the BBC TV series The Prisoner made in the '60s previously and do so again; if you haven't seen it yet, you're bound to recognize by allegory the state we're moving toward.
The gov't can keep doing what it's doing and utterly vacate the Con'n until there's no longer any semblance of rule of law -- Constitutional law -- left. Or, it can admit it's been coloring way outside the lines, make a case as to why it *needed* to chuck the Con'n, and immediately do what I've been advocating for a long time: call a Constitutional convention and start a substantial effort to update the US Con'n. The world of 2013 is radically different from that of 1787. We need an updated, fundamental legal document to reflect our new challenges and concerns particular to today's world while still creating effective and defensible protections against government's tendency to grab more and more power over time, as ours has done, until it starts resembling something people have a hard time trusting or feeling good about. If we don't undertake such an effort, as contentious and troublesome as it undoubtedly would be, the alternative is likely to be a lot more troublesome and contentious.
posted by Matt Campbell at 12:05 AM
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