The NSA Pees In The Pool

I was refraining from saying anything about the NSA data-mining, also know as PRISM, also known as "you know how you know that there's urine in the pool, but you don't think about it?" In part because there's probably more to come. But also because what I have to say pales in comparison to what others have already written. Then I remember that I wrote a book about an overzealous surveillance state. And that I'm probably not allowed to let it pass just because that government is being operated by a president I kinda like.

We knew that private companies were compiling our information--for targeted advertising or for simpler customer service--and we had little problem with that. We can opt out of those, right? We knew that Google had a running record of our porn searches, but we didn't need to think about it. And we knew that with evolving communications technologies, we were creating our own records of ourselves: our movements, our purchases, our major and minor life events. Again, we were fine with that because that was our choice and whatever resulting wounds were self-inflicted.

But simultaneously, we also knew that the government was fighting a War on Terror somewhere in the background. We knew the Patriot Act existed (and had been reauthorized by Obama) alongside the NDAA and so many other innocent-sounding acronyms. We may not always have been conscious of it, and we kicked up brief fusses when something new plopped down in front of us: body imaging at the airport, removing our shoes at the airport, no liquids at the airport... a lot of it had to do with inconveniences when flying (we could've started taking trains, but trains are for Euro-fags). The point is, we could've--and some of us did--put two and two together a long time ago. We're not allowed to be shocked now. We can be outraged, on the understanding that we may look silly doing so. As of this writing, nothing appears to be illegal. On that level, some outrage is probably called for.

It was understandable of liberals to expect better of Obama, but never totally realistic (though, hey, torture's gone, so... whoo?). It's always been on us. We get the government we deserve. We wanted Internet, cell phones, and security. Welp.

From my time in the federal government, I know that low- and mid-level abuse is vanishingly rare (yes, I'm aware of the IRS thing). That kind of tinkering is both extremely illegal and also pointless for most bureaucrats to think about, because they don't want to intrude on your life--it creates more work for them. And I think of the hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras in operation in a place like London, where too much information is granted to an entity--however nefarious--to be of any good to anyone; they have to really want to track someone to get use out of the system and that initiative has to come from the top. I generally trust President Obama to use these methods with the right intent. I may, however, not trust his successor, just as I did not trust his predecessor.

And there's the rub.

If we're comfortable with one government being able to do a thing, we have to be comfortable with every subsequent government being able to do that thing. The government does not cede authority: that would be irrational on its part. And that goes double when presidents of both parties have done something. So now we ask questions. And it is we, because congressional Republicans can and will weasel out of investigating and fixing this (Benghazi this is not, apparently) and Democrats will be all too happy to slump away from the scene. Calmly, rationally (again, this is all legal and we only have ourselves to blame in the first place) we find out how the government uses the info and where's it been successful in the past (did it help get bin Laden? That would be bolster the case). Is the price of swimming in someone else's urine worth the convenience of being able to pee in the pool?

... I might have that analogy backward.

Maybe now we finally get the grown-up discussion about security and civil liberties. Maybe we don't let fear and anger rule the day. Maybe a kind of libertarian awakening occurs and we start pulling back the security apparatus we've allowed to be erected in our name. But that doesn't appear to be happening yet. And if the distracting argument of Edward Snowden's heroship or villainy is any indication, we're not yet ready for the adult conversation. That and the fact that I'm sure someone laughed at my use of the word "erected" (that person was me--I'm not ready for the conversation).