I don't agree with that Jon. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Total access to all personal information of every citizen will only create a slippery slope to widespread abuse of such access. Totalitarian countries have had and do have government informers and "minders" in workplaces, in apartment buildings, as well as shops and stores. They use this info to deny or grant people jobs, promotions and so on.
I'm all for stopping and preventing terrorism. If they really did all this only to be used for that sole purpose, I'd be okay with it. But... How many of us believe that over coming decades that the access to all that personal information will only be used by the government within the narrow scope of keeping the country safe from terrorism? After going through great time and much expense to collect all this info...the natural inclination by bureaucrats is to try to keep finding more uses for it, beyond the original parameters, in order to justify the expense. How many of us will like those other ideas they might come up with in secret?
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Hey, Tampa -
This is an important civil liberties issue, and warrants debate. My sense of this falls (I think) somewhere between yours, and Jon's.
The way the NSA data-collection programme is SUPPOSED to work, is this:
*Telephone and Internet companies typically retain their records for only a few years, due to the expense involved.
*The NSA has gotten the ability to save those records indefinitely, and retrieve them, indefinitely. But these are (in the first instance) records of call- and Internet-contact times and numbers/addresses, with no content attached.
*IF the FBI, CIA, or other national security agencies get a lead on someone who is suspected of terrorist activity, then, the NSA can search this database for calls or e-mails to known terrorist hubs.
*If the NSA believes that there IS terrorist activity happening, then they can petition the judiciary for a warrant, to open and examine content, of these documents: but a warrant is required. However, if they GET a warrant, the content CAN be accessed.
Now, this is a lot different, from the government listening in on EVERY conversation. And, I think it is a defensible plan, to ensure public safety. This is essentially the case that President Obama made on "Charlie Rose", last week:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12981 William Saletan, of
Slate Magazine, also issued a persuasive defence of this policy, recently - with significant caveats:
http://www.slate.com/articles/techn..._database_a_defense_of_mass_surveillance.html
The caveats, though, Tampa, ARE important. When such masses of data (or avenues to data) are collected, and ARE available for scrutiny (notwithstanding safeguards) the potential for abuse is ever-present, and real. Saletan, in his article, suggested that further safeguards are necessary. And one of his colleagues at
Slate, Ryan Gallagher, recently published an article suggesting that the process is not QUITE as clean as President Obama suggested, and that sometimes information regarding American citizens IS viewed, without proper judicial authority (though I think, for the record, Gallagher's headline is deliberately provocative, and that President Obama had no intention to mislead people as to the broad outlines of the information-gathering policy):
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t..._public_on_nsa_surveillance_of_americans.html
So, Tampa, I think you're right, in this regard. A new information-gathering policy, which hitherto has been enacted only administratively, ought to have public assent, going forward. I suspect that, if the American public is aware of the policy, and there are safeguards in place, there will be not so many objections as one might suspect. Officials of the FBI and the NSA have recently testified that the NSA information-collection programme has helped to avert 50 terrorist plots, including plots to bomb the New York Stock Exchange, and the New York subway.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-York-Stock-Exchange-citys-subway-system.html
However, the SCOPE of the programme, and its limits, must surely be clearly known, and assented to by the public, and by elected officials. And not simply be a matter of administrative fiat. Such basic knowledge is the price, but also the glory, of democracy.
There is no question that achieving the right balance, between liberty and security, is always tricky. It is an ongoing and thoroughly vexatious problem. In posting this letter, I am well aware that the public in Canada and the U.K., are much more accepting and tolerant of government intrusions upon public liberty, than is the public in the U.S.A. That is why y'all had a REVOLUTION, I suppose ;-))) BUT - in any country, the fundamental questions of maintaining a proper balance between personal freedom and the safety of the community, are eternal.
I hope that, in the U.S.A., there will be a good and enlightened debate about this matter, and that a reasonable solution will be found. At any rate, it is a fascinating question with respect to issues of security, liberty, and law.
Yours,
"A" XOXOXOXOXOXO
P.S. A little postscript to all virulent Obama-haters, survivalists, conspiracy theorists,
et. al. ~ let me pre-empt your inevitable comments, right at present. For, I don't wish to engage in correspondence about a lot of paranoid suppositions:
* You make like or dislike or hate Barack Obama (and his foreign and domestic policies) but he is neither a fascist, a communist, nor even a democratic socialist. In world-historical terms (though not in American terms) he is a moderate conservative. Nothing more, and nothing less.
* If you think the government of the U.S.A. has the TIME, or is well-ORGANIZED enough, to investigate your favourite brand of underwear, your favourite sexual positions, or your favourite television-programmes, you are NUTS, and ought to betake yourself IMMEDIATELY to the nearest mental-health facility. Because,
your family and FRIENDS don't even care about those things.
* The current U.S. Administration is quite a bit more scrupulous about civil liberties than many previous ones - and, if you doubt that, just give my old friend
Henry Kissinger, a ring ;-)
* Finally, in the U.S.A. (as in Britain and Canada, currently): most of the awful things that governments do to people have less to do with some heinous, overarching, conspiracy, than with simple
mistakes, and occasional ineptitude. *Though, in this regard, I have to say, governments often come off not a great deal worse, than the
private sector.*
* So, please - if you have some terrible intuition that Barack Obama is engaged in a terrible plot to subvert the U.S. Constitution, or destroy you PERSONALLY: I ask that you not address me personally, in this chimerical vendetta. Because,
a priori, I regard you as a
very silly person, and the discussion simply WON'T go well ;-)))) (On the other hand, I am open to real discussions about governance, checks and balances, and the role of law, in a free society.)