The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
–John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off”
–Samuel Johnson
When did the presumption of innocence, the distrust of power and the need for oversight and checks and balances go out the window? When did we decide that we were so terrified by the terrorists that we were willing to do anything—anything—to protect ourselves against even the slightest chance of harm?
Hey! You know what would really make us safe? We could put a government agent in every house! It’ll be great—he can watch everything you do—he can watch you when you make a phone call, pay your taxes, hire a nanny, discipline your kids, go to the bathroom, call in sick, drink or smoke or see how well you drive. You’ll probably never get killed by terrorists ever! We don’t do such things, of course, because the calculus we use in deciding how safe we need to be and how much intrusion we can stomach leads us to rightly conclude that privacy is an innate part of being free.
Among the weakest of the arguments in defense of the government’s wireless wire tapping, NSA call records gathering and assertion of the ‘state’s secret privilege’ is the ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to be afraid of’ canard.’ That is nonsense. There are many rejoinders to that (lack of a) rebuttal, such as the fact that information is wrongly used to infer false conclusions all the time, or that it falls into the wrong hands that cause damage to people, or that information can be used to apply pressure to people not because they’ve done anything illegal, but merely to exploit their circumstances to avoid embarrassment or other concerns. You can talk about the opportunities for corruption such discretionary access to information provides and the almost inevitable misuse of it or the distrust in society, law enforcement and government such actions engender or even the pragmatic consequences of a culture of secrecy that creates such an environment of distrust that government agencies fail to cooperate meaningfully while they focus on the minutiae and leave real threats unexposed. All of that is true but today I want to focus on the fundamental reasons why we should not stand by and let our privacy be violated and torn away from us.
Privacy—in and of itself—is a fundamental right. It is our right, and our inherent birth right as Americans. You don’t watch citizens—you watch criminals and mostly only convicted criminals at that. Surveillance of people—of citizens—isn’t what you do in a free country; it’s what’s done in the places where we claim regime change is in order and where we’re trying to bring ‘freedom.’ Isn’t that grand? We’re doing precisely the sorts of things that we abhor in others—state secrets, secret surveillance, no judicial oversight or checks and balances, no access to the courts or the ability to face your accuser, no warrants or due process, torture. Yep, sounds like America.
More Precisely, it sounds like the kind of America our enemies want to create. That’s the deepest irony of all. No terrorist is capable of defeating us, not in total, they can only snipe at best, but we can defeat ourselves. We can become them and disavow our heritage and in the process, of our own volition hand the terrorists the greatest victory of all, grander than any they ever dreamed of grander than the destruction of any city or building. We can give them the elimination of America as a light to the rest of the world if we so choose. We can extinguish hope and all that this nation has historically stood for.
When we’re done bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq and Iran and all of the other places we criticize do you think we might be able to have a little here?
The saying goes that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Make no mistake—secret information is power of the most serious sort but even if it didn’t corrupt, even if you could somehow guarantee me that nobody in this administration would ever misuse the information (and you can’t) the same would not be true for future people who have access and you know what? I am still every bit as violated even if they don’t. I don’t need anyone perusing my data for their personal gratification—and I use that phrase quite deliberately, because peeping-tom like, the government has transformed itself into a furtive secretive organization and the real effect there is their own gratification, not our safety.
The fallacy of those who would defend such secrecy at the expense of privacy as the explicit acknowledgment that freedom and privacy are incompatible—you can’t have ‘security’ under those circumstances. It’s wrong because you have no freedom without privacy!
Even when the guard is your friend and looking out for you, you are still a prisoner under watch, whether you know it or not. A ‘friendly’ tyrant is no friend at all. It is corrupt and intrusive and tyrannical. You should stand up for yourself and reject that because if you don’t you will one day find yourself unable to. Even when you have nothing to hide and have done nothing wrong. There are many names for that, but ‘freedom’ isn’t one of them.
Conservatives used to be the standard bearers of protecting the common man from big government, or stopping government intrusion and of liberty. I charge them and all citizens—you are not, after all, prisoners—with reclaiming their right and their duty, protecting real freedom. Let it begin with the sacrosanct privacy of your person. Because you are not criminals and you are presumed innocent and inviolate in your person—at least when you are when you are free. Those who operate in secrecy and without oversight are despots and worthy of suspicion. Privacy is for the people—the government is answerable to the people and rightly overseen for the protection of all.
There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots—suspicion…[] Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.
–Demosthenes
Citizens & Other Criminals…
The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
–John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off”
–Samuel Johnson
When did the presumption of innocence, the distrust of power and the need for oversight and checks and balances go out the window? When did we decide that we were so terrified by the terrorists that we were willing to do anything—anything—to protect ourselves against even the slightest chance of harm?
Hey! You know what would really make us safe? We could put a government agent in every house! It’ll be great—he can watch everything you do—he can watch you when you make a phone call, pay your taxes, hire a nanny, discipline your kids, go to the bathroom, call in sick, drink or smoke or see how well you drive. You’ll probably never get killed by terrorists ever! We don’t do such things, of course, because the calculus we use in deciding how safe we need to be and how much intrusion we can stomach leads us to rightly conclude that privacy is an innate part of being free.
Among the weakest of the arguments in defense of the government’s wireless wire tapping, NSA call records gathering and assertion of the ‘state’s secret privilege’ is the ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to be afraid of’ canard.’ That is nonsense. There are many rejoinders to that (lack of a) rebuttal, such as the fact that information is wrongly used to infer false conclusions all the time, or that it falls into the wrong hands that cause damage to people, or that information can be used to apply pressure to people not because they’ve done anything illegal, but merely to exploit their circumstances to avoid embarrassment or other concerns. You can talk about the opportunities for corruption such discretionary access to information provides and the almost inevitable misuse of it or the distrust in society, law enforcement and government such actions engender or even the pragmatic consequences of a culture of secrecy that creates such an environment of distrust that government agencies fail to cooperate meaningfully while they focus on the minutiae and leave real threats unexposed. All of that is true but today I want to focus on the fundamental reasons why we should not stand by and let our privacy be violated and torn away from us.
Privacy—in and of itself—is a fundamental right. It is our right, and our inherent birth right as Americans. You don’t watch citizens—you watch criminals and mostly only convicted criminals at that. Surveillance of people—of citizens—isn’t what you do in a free country; it’s what’s done in the places where we claim regime change is in order and where we’re trying to bring ‘freedom.’ Isn’t that grand? We’re doing precisely the sorts of things that we abhor in others—state secrets, secret surveillance, no judicial oversight or checks and balances, no access to the courts or the ability to face your accuser, no warrants or due process, torture. Yep, sounds like America.
More Precisely, it sounds like the kind of America our enemies want to create. That’s the deepest irony of all. No terrorist is capable of defeating us, not in total, they can only snipe at best, but we can defeat ourselves. We can become them and disavow our heritage and in the process, of our own volition hand the terrorists the greatest victory of all, grander than any they ever dreamed of grander than the destruction of any city or building. We can give them the elimination of America as a light to the rest of the world if we so choose. We can extinguish hope and all that this nation has historically stood for.
When we’re done bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq and Iran and all of the other places we criticize do you think we might be able to have a little here?
The saying goes that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Make no mistake—secret information is power of the most serious sort but even if it didn’t corrupt, even if you could somehow guarantee me that nobody in this administration would ever misuse the information (and you can’t) the same would not be true for future people who have access and you know what? I am still every bit as violated even if they don’t. I don’t need anyone perusing my data for their personal gratification—and I use that phrase quite deliberately, because peeping-tom like, the government has transformed itself into a furtive secretive organization and the real effect there is their own gratification, not our safety.
The fallacy of those who would defend such secrecy at the expense of privacy as the explicit acknowledgment that freedom and privacy are incompatible—you can’t have ‘security’ under those circumstances. It’s wrong because you have no freedom without privacy!
Even when the guard is your friend and looking out for you, you are still a prisoner under watch, whether you know it or not. A ‘friendly’ tyrant is no friend at all. It is corrupt and intrusive and tyrannical. You should stand up for yourself and reject that because if you don’t you will one day find yourself unable to. Even when you have nothing to hide and have done nothing wrong. There are many names for that, but ‘freedom’ isn’t one of them.
Conservatives used to be the standard bearers of protecting the common man from big government, or stopping government intrusion and of liberty. I charge them and all citizens—you are not, after all, prisoners—with reclaiming their right and their duty, protecting real freedom. Let it begin with the sacrosanct privacy of your person. Because you are not criminals and you are presumed innocent and inviolate in your person—at least when you are when you are free. Those who operate in secrecy and without oversight are despots and worthy of suspicion. Privacy is for the people—the government is answerable to the people and rightly overseen for the protection of all.
There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots—suspicion…[] Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.
–Demosthenes