If you can't say fuck, you can't say "fuck the government" - Lenny Bruce
In the ongoing battle between privacy and security - it seems like security has won. And we only know this because of the sacrifices made by American hero Edward J Snowden.
Snowden proved that in America, we no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy and while this may be a concept OUR generation is having a hard time coming to terms with- what will the coming generation think about widespread government surveillance when they're born into it? If you're born wearing a strait jacket and never know what life is like without one, you're much less likely to question it than if someone tries to strap you into one on your 21st birthday.
For millennials over 20 and the generations before us the dichotomy between privacy and security has always been a point of contention because we were born in times when the government either couldn't create a surveillance state due to the limitations of technology, or we simply didn't know about it- and thus lived under the assumption that we had a reasonable level of privacy. This will no longer be a reality for the coming generations and will drastically impact their culture by altering the meaning of freedom of speech. The consequences of dissent become much more severe when you’re living under an oppressive surveillance state. At that point, privacy is no longer about personal correspondences but about liberty.
The fourth amendment intends to protect us from unlawful search and seizures. This is a laughable concept in our current surveillance state backed by a rubber-stamping FISA court. The real problem here comes from the erosion of the first amendment of the constitution.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble, or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.
We already know that the government has access to our private conversations and frequently joke about what we can and can't say and how that might put us on some government watch list. This surveillance-state concept has already entered our culture, meaning we've normalized what would have been considered completely unacceptable in a pre-911 era only two decades ago.
So I ask you: How is our speech truly free if we're constantly aware that the government is monitoring us?
How can one freely express natural curiosity or engage in open and honest discussion about ideas that may seem fringe with the constant threat of being put on a watch list and constantly being surveilled around the clock from private Facebook posts to live camera feeds on your laptop webcam.
And what’s to stop a government from attributing threats to domestic dissenters who simply have an unpopular opinion, or an opinion those in power deem politically incorrect? If the freedom of speech and a free press are two foundations of a healthy democracy - what becomes of our democracy if both those concepts are subject to eradication?
Also, when the track record shows corporate interests being extended privileges not extended to the rest of us, what’s to stop private contractors from using this surveillance to their company's’ financial interests?
For the benefit of future generations, as much as we love our Facebook and gmail and webcams, it’s our duty to fight the normalization of the surveillance state. Because generations yet to come will be even less equipped to do so than we are. The US track record on spying on domestic dissenters is clear. People whose ideas have had a lasting impact on the betterment of american society in general - I am of course referring to MLK, who was subject to the kind of constant surveillance that is now being expanded to all of us, and we all know what happened to him.
And I fail to see what the opposite argument is here. Is it that omnipresent government surveillance is good? That we have to allow it because that’s the only way we’re going to prevent the big bad terrorists from getting us? Except that we often don’t, like the recent case with the NY/NJ bomber or the Boston Marathon bombing that proved government surveillance and facial recognition to be ineffective in prevention. But we do get to hear about NSA contractors trading audio recordings of people having sex or reading the explicit emails and texts we send to one another.
Or is the argument that if you’re not doing, saying or thinking anything “wrong,” then you have nothing to worry about? This argument proves the lie that right wingers believe Obama is a dictator - if so, they’d oppose the security state because they’d believe he’d use it to go after them. But instead it’s used to go after whistleblowers or monitor peace groups, so they’re clearly full of shit. Not that that relates to your argument.
I think exposing the truth is the most important concept here. The american people have been made unwitting participants in a bargain that they never opted into. IF we are truly being protected by the surveillance state’s heavy hand, there needs to be more than a rubber stamp protocol and clear cut evidence that all this surveillance is actually helping to stop terrorism - and the first step is to inform the American public about just what level of monitoring is going on. Edward Snowden is an American hero because he saw the treatment of whistleblowers before him and the lies the government was telling the American people and risked everything to bring this information to the public so that we could be informed. But now that we know, thanks to Snowden, the question remains: what are we going to do about it?