Can You Hear Me Now, Uncle Sam?

Professor J,

While I was formulating a response to the second post in your Scanalmania series, another one erupted. And if my recent acquisition of an smart phone wasn't proof enough that the Zombie Apocalypse is surely upon us, I now agree with Al Gore.

God help us all.

But when AG tweeted,  "In the digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?" I have to say, no, Al. It's not you.

On the heels of the scandals you've been dissecting, comes the uncovering of the government forcing Verizon to hand over phone records. Phone records secretly compiled on millions of calls between April 25th when it was signed and July 19th when it will expire. The Orewellian crevices of my brain are vibrating furiously while many downplay the act with euphemisms like "over reaching." As you pointed out in your most recent post we have two opposing tasks to accomplish simultaneously, protecting the public (which often means there is a need for covert action) and keeping the public informed, safe, and assured that civil rights are being protected. Wherever this falls on the scale between defensible (for some necessarily unknown reason) and indefensible (due to the violation of privacy of millions of citizens) it is at best...creepy.

And what laid the groundwork for this kind of intrusion? The Patriot Act. The gift that keeps on giving.

So while it's creepy and has people feeling uncomfortable about it, I think on a deeper level we all know that any real privacy we use to have is gone. And increasingly people seem to be less concerned about it at all. I'm thinking of a Chris Hedges comment from Empire of Illusion about us being conditioned to living in a surveillance state. You run the red light and the ticket appears in the mail days later, thanks to the camera at the intersection. You "check in" on Facebook to your favorite restaurant or concert. You walk down the street and feel safer in a city because of the cameras capturing what is happening. Something deep inside is uncomfortable but we allow ourselves to slip closer to a comfort zone where little is unknown.

Apparently NSA collects this kind of information all the time and nothing is done with it unless there is reason to analyze it. The vast majority of this kind of it is mundane and useless but the idea that the government would move from looking for evidence of specific illegal activity to patterns that may indicate something illegal may be going on is tantamount to a launching preemptive war. And we all know what a good idea that turned out to be.

Over the years we've heard lots of people testify before Congress and  make these "We aren't spying on our own citizens" declarations or say it in  press conferences and interviews. Which now, makes this revelation seem much worse. And yes, the Bush administration did the same thing but (supposedly) only overseas and not here at home. It will be interesting to hear in future days whether or not Verizon is the only company that has received such a request. If so--why? It seems much more likely that there are many more revelations along these lines (pun intended) to come.

And in delicious irony, the camp that is going to scream the intrusion factors of this scandal the loudest are the flag waving, fear mongering Republicans who acted as flower girls tossing out civil rights for the Patriot Act to trample upon as it was made into law.

Good job, guys.