After reports of massive government snooping, sales have jumped for 1984, the frightening Big Brother is Watching novel of the warrior against totalitarianism, George Orwell
A false dichotomy: Either we have the government fail to stop domestic terrorist attacks, such as the one at the Boston marathon last April, or we welcome, or at least tolerate, the kind of massive government intrusion into our phone records, emails, and computer servers, made public last week.
It’s a false dichotomy on two counts. First, it is precisely the kind of misleading argument predicted by the prophet of totalitarianism, George Orwell. It is the kind of argument, Orwell said, that goes down easily, that constitutes the barely noticed, smooth slide into the renunciation of freedom by which non-violent totalitarianism is predicted to work.
Notice the slope: Only a couple of weeks ago, the government was trying to defend its snooping into the emails or phone records of merely two reporters. Two! Now, it is hundreds of millions of citizens who are potential targets, both directly and indirectly — directly through their own phone records and emails, and indirectly, through their use of massive servers such as Google.
The lesson — long articulated by hard voices such as Orwell (Animal Farm, 1984) — is that once the government has the power and justification to rob a few people of their privacy, this becomes habit-forming. Justification becomes passe. The power to invade privacy becomes its own justification. Get away with it once or twice — then it feels indispensable.
That is why it is critical to freedom-loving Americans to stand up against the government’s illegal snooping into the records of, yes, just two journalists. If you blithely say “who cares about two journalists,” well, you’re next.
Second, the dichotomy is not true. It is not necessary to regard every citizen as a potential terrorist, whose privacy may potentially be robbed, in order to stop the enemies of the US. This is a breathtaking leap without foundation. We never thought we would see the day when the successor state to Nazi Germany, the current democratic republic of Germany, would regard the United States of America as less committed to personal freedoms than it is.
The suspension of unlawful search and seizure is constitutional only due to legally defined red flags. However broadly these red flags may be defined — belonging to, associating with, or being trained by, a group that wants to harm America (for example) — these warning signals hardly encompass every citizen. Notice, again, the slippery slope: We no longer debate what a legitimate red flag is; we dispense with red flags altogether and just assume that every citizen is potentially a target.
Make no mistake. Everyone is at risk under the current National Security Agency policy. Forget the idea that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. Have you ever dialed a wrong number? Have you ever received someone else’s mail, who lives a mile away? Have you every heard a piece of gossip you’d prefer not to hear? If so, be prepared to be regarded as guilty by the government until you prove yourself innocent, just in case that wrong number, wrong address or unwanted gossip implicates someone in a crime against the US.
If you think these possibilities are farfetched, consider that the root of the world “totalitarianism” is total, and right now what the government wants is total access, that is, access to every citizen’s electronic communications, based (at best) upon the approval of a secret court proceeding.
Secret courts? Does that oxymoron ring a bell? It should, to students of the past century.
President Obama says that this country needs to face hard choices, that complete privacy is impossible. Excuse us? We thought the country already made precisely that hard choice by electing Obama! He ran on a platform opposing George Bush’s approach to fighting anti-American terrorism. Once in power, Obama sings a radically different tune. And people wonder why citizens are cynical about politicians?
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
