Flathead Memo focuses on state and local issues, so until now I’ve resisted commenting on our national surveillance state, the astonishing scope of which continues to be revealed. But all governments, national to municipal, collect data on those they govern, and presumably serve, so Big Brother’s watching is worth a comment even by local bloggers.
Big Brother is doing a lot of watching. He has been for a long time, but he’s increased his surveillance by at least an order of magnitude since a handful of suicidal terrorist murdered three thousand people on 11 September 2001. He’s increased it with the support of most Americans, who fear acts of terrorism more than they fear the loss of their freedoms to heavy handed security.
And he’s watching with the blessing of President Obama, who seems more concerned that programs that never should have been secret have been revealed than he does about the adverse consequences of too much secrecy and too much surveillance. I’ll offer some thoughts on Obama in a moment.
First, let’s look at what we’ve learned so far:
Our government collects these data on everyone not because it suspects everyone of wrongdoing, at least not yet, but because it’s building a haystack through which, using huge, lightning fast computers, it can look for patterns — needles — that might point to activities and individuals posing security threats to the nation. In this world, no bright line separates passively collecting and storing data from aggressively surveilling a person of interest. The process is not perfect: some innocents will be targeted as suspects (false positives), while some people up to no good will be considered harmless (false negatives).
Much of this, of course, was known or suspected before Edward Snowden, no saint but probably not a sinner of the Benedict Arnold genre, disclosed without authorization the NSA’s amassing of domestic emails. Snowden’s disclosures, and subsequent information uncovered through independent investigative reporting, did, however, help bring into focus a picture of just how widespread Big Brother’s activities are — and just how unrepentant Big Brother and Obama are.
Obama’s embrace of the surveillance state probably derives from his presidential campaigns, the security bubble that surrounds all presidents, the adverse political consequences faced by high officials who are perceived as having failed to do everything possible to prevent a incident of terrorism, and what appears to be a personal righteousness not seen since Woodrow Wilson’s presidency:
Big data and political campaigns. Obama ran the most sophisticated political campaign in history, spending tens of millions of dollars on data and the means to analyze it. His campaign had enough data to predict, and predict with great accuracy, which citizens would favor him. Campaign staff then registered those voters and got them to the polls. A man who wins the presidency with those methods knows their value, knows how they can be applied to other problems. Obama is comfortable with big data. He believes its benefits outweigh its drawbacks by a wide margin. And he’s confident he can prevent government from putting it to malevolent purposes.
The security bubble. All presidents receive threats on their lives and the lives of their wives, children, and families. Obama began his presidency receiving a record number of threats because he’s of mixed race. Like his predecessors, his Secret Service bodyguards employ every available method, including Big Brother’s most intrusive, to assure his safety, and the safety of his wife and daughters. A man in Obama’s position inevitably comes to regard what others consider an unwarranted invasion of privacy as a small and reasonable price to pay for staying alive.
The political rewards of taking no risks. No one ever lost an election by being too tough on terrorists. But after 9/11, Max Cleland, a Democratic senator from Georgia who lost limbs in Vietnam, was defeated in his bid for re-election because of reprehensible accusations he was too soft on terrorism. There are no political incentives for taking risks in the pursuit of liberty, but there are many rewards for infringing liberty in the pursuit of security. As a consequence, we have the Patriot Act, which appears to authorize much domestic spying. Only a few have dared resist it, among them former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who voted against it, and Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who on 7 June 2013 sent his constituents this email message:
I vote against reauthorizing the Patriot Act every time it comes up in the U.S. Senate. I also fight to prevent the U.S. Government from eavesdropping on phone conversations between law-abiding American citizens and foreign citizens without a warrant.
That’s because - like most Montanans - I firmly believe in the fundamental importance of our Constitutional rights, our civil liberties and our right to privacy.
Folks sometimes ask me why I continue to fight so hard against the Patriot Act. Well, the news about the National Security Agency collecting phone records of law-abiding Americans is ‘Example A’ for what happens when the government ignores the very Constitutional rights that make our nation great and respected around the world.
America is respected because other countries admire our rule of law. So while we must keep our families safe, we must do it in a way that preserves the principles that set our nation apart and lives up to the ideals set forth by our Founding Fathers.
The recent news shows us once again that we must remain vigilant in the fight for our civil liberties as we work to return our country to a course that properly balances our Constitutional rights with our national security.
As your Senator, I will keep fighting for our right to privacy and against the kind of government overreach that we’ve seen this week.
Personal righteousness. Social reformers have strong senses of moral right and wrong — it’s what makes them reformers. Sometimes those moral convictions harden into sanctimony and righteousness, turning virtues into vices. That seems to have happened to Obama on national security and secrecy. He abhors leaks, treating them not as de facto elements of legitimate debate, but as personal affronts that approach treason. He never served in the military, but he has a contempt for leaks that an Army intelligence officer would have been proud to have instilled in him. That, combined with his affection for the convenience of secrecy, causes him to have what I think is a far too sanguine view of the threat the surveillance state poses to our freedoms.
Somehow, we Americans, and the people we elect to run their government, need to overcome their irrational fear of terrorism before they sacrifice all of our liberties on the altar of perfect safety. Terrorism is not quite a bogeyman, but it’s very close to being one. We are far more likely to die in automobile accidents or of a medical mistake than we are to be killed in a terrorist attack.
When I launched Flathead Memo in September, 2006, I compared George W. Bush’s address to the nation on 9/11 with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Day of Infamy speech asking Congress to declare war on Japan. My post included a speech that Bush should have given, not the frightened remarks he delivered, that contained these paragraphs:
What I cannot and will not promise is that terrorism will never again visit our nation. Dangerous currents of zealotry and malice flow throughout the world, currents that will, on occasion, send waves of violence against our shores. But terrorist attacks are rare events. It is an objective fact that Americans are much more likely to be injured or killed by automobile accidents than by terrorist attacks.
Therefore, as we begin our response to today’s attacks, let us remember a great truth about America: we can be defeated only if we defeat ourselves.
The terrorists intended to spill American blood, and they succeeded. But their ultimate goal was to frighten us into surrendering our freedoms in exchange for the illusion of greater safety. Their definition of victory is an America that reacts to today’s attacks not by remaining true to its principles, but by abandoning its freedoms for the false security of a police state. They hope to panic us into committing national suicide.
That will not happen. That is not how Americans confront adversity. (Full speech, PDF.)
Unfortunately, we decided to confront adversity in the worst way possible. The Patriot Act, which legalized breathtaking expansions in our surveillance state, is a long step down the road to a complete, and unnecessary, surrender of freedom. Perhaps nothing bad will happen under Obama’s watch. Perhaps. But when all that stands between government mischief are the assurances of officials who prefer to operate in secret, mischief becomes inevitable. Unless we come to our senses, and soon, Big Brother will be watching us everywhere, even the word “privacy” will disappear, and Osama Bin Laden will have won.