CSotD: The dog ate my privacy
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There have been a number of government-spying cartoons, most of them not all that good.
I like Stuart Carlson's cartoon, but it does more to point out the inconsistency than to analyze it.
That is, are critics genuinely surprised at the end result of inviting the camel's nose under the tent flap? Or is this simply the ongoing game of blaming the Democratic president for things you praised in the Republican one?
I highlighted Tom Toles today because he took a more comprehensive view, which mirrors my own, and which, like Carlson's, plays on "what did you expect?" but brings the charge home against the reader rather than pointing the finger at some vaguely defined figure of authority.
My own outrage is more comprehensive than simply not wanting my phone records and computer practices tracked. I've posted this Ann Telnaes piece before, but it remains at the top of my favorites list, not simply because it sums things up so well but because it ran in 2004, almost a decade ago, and because, as with the Toles cartoon, it doesn't duck the blame by pointing fingers at the government.
We did this. However imperfect our system of democracy, the bottom line is that the dog did not eat our civil liberties.
I will admit to being a little creeped out by the way online advertising has advanced its stalking ability to the point where, if you go to an airline website to see what it costs to fly to Denver, you'll have ads on every page you visit for weeks urging you to fly to Denver.
(At the moment, this only makes me giggle, because last night I was reading the Bloggess and clicked on her Zazzle link, so that this morning I am being stalked by, to use a technical term, some really weird shit.)
You're not going to get the overall privacy toothpaste back in the tube. Deal with what is.
For instance, look into how so many people became convinced that gluten is a bad thing. The whole anti-GMO and anti-vaccine things, though all over the Intertubes, have remained marginal compared to whatever campaign resulted in "gluten-free" sections in mainline grocery stores, servicing what is, to the extent that it exists at all, a niche disorder.
Do that with privacy laws. I'm perfectly serious.
But remember that a lot of what Hoover was doing was illegal. Adjust your "reasonable expectations of privacy" to reality, not some airy ideal, or even a legal standard.
Here are three concepts that have made me shrug off the latest revelations without surrendering my values:
1. Didn't we already know this? You don't have to go back to Hoover for reasons to be paranoid, but even in current times, the monitoring of on-line traffic has been part of the background for so long that I can't even remember the name of the spying-on-the-Internet program that came to light after 9/11.
Experienced broadcasters assume every microphone is hot whether or not the red studio light is on. Similarly, it's best to assume that whatever you put on line may end up somewhere you didn't intend it to, even without government surveillance.
Most of us learned this in fifth grade by trying to pass a note to somebody we had a crush on, didn't we? It was the analog version of accidentally hitting "reply all." And there was also the strong chance of it being intercepted by the teacher, or given to her by some brown-nosed little squealer. Did this not happen in any of your classes??
2. Nobody cares what you think. The only episode of "Dharma and Greg" I remember watching concerned trying to get her Sixties-radical father's FBI file, and then trying to cushion the blow to his ego when it turned out there wasn't one.
They care about Bradley Manning and Julian Assange and somebody is probably keeping an eye on Michael Moore, too, not because he's doing anything illegal but because the nail that sticks up gets the hammer. They are probably also watching Glen Beck and the more radical among the screwball survivalists, too.
But, in the words of Bart Simpson, who the hell are you? And, if I have to ask, you don't have to worry, because …
3. Spying on everybody is the same as spying on nobody at all.
If you enjoy paranoia, you'll love this collection of stories and links the Guardian has put together. If you're going to take it seriously, though, put on some Depends before clicking.
But yesterday, in addition to that Guardian material, which includes the revelation that the feds collect 100 billion records every month, I also ran across a story on public radio, which I can't find now, about the now-sealed Fish Kills landfill.
In the landfill story, they were standing on this 800-foot-tall dirt-covered hill, part of the 2,200 acre site of the former landfill, and the guy said some archaeologist had taken a core sample once and came up with a 10-year-old hot dog.
I'm not surprised that he drilled down and found a hot dog, but I'd be damned impressed if he had done it because he was looking for one.
Similarly, I don't feel paranoid about my email and phone records being mixed in with the 100 billion bits of information. I'd feel even more secure if the feds would collect 200 or 300 billion bits of information every month.
As I've noted before, if I had a "file" in the Sixties, it was simply a list of places where my name appeared in the footnotes of files on much more interesting people. But they were listening. Sort of.
For instance, the feds were tracking a draft counselor who lived in the basement apartment of a house I lived in, which we knew because, after she moved, they came to the door and asked if anyone knew where she'd gone. Not exactly Three Days of the Condor.
And we got a call from the mother of a girl who was coming out to visit, because the FBI had come to her door and asked to talk to her. Told she was visiting friends out of town, they asked if she were headed for our address.
We assumed that meant they were reading our mail and listening in on our phone and they might have been. But they didn't care about us, or about Lucy. They were tracking Lucy's boyfriend, who was importing significant quantities of controlled substances. Most likely, they were just reading her mail and listening to her phone calls to see if he'd turn up in them.
Point is, I don't think they can stand on that mountain and say, "Let's find a hot dog," and pull one up with a blind core sample.
Unless there is a reason they actually, specifically want to see what you are doing, your data will remain part of that huge pile of garbage. Which it already is, whether the feds have quick access to it or need to get a warrant or decide screw getting a warrant.
If they decide they need to see what you are doing, they're gonna see it anyway, aren't they? Well, aren't they?
To be clear: Learning to deal with it isn't the same as learning to like it.
You may never learn to like it. And I hope you don't.
But standing in the blizzard in shorts and flip-flops complaining about the weather does not mean you care more than the person who pulled on a parka and boots, whether he actually succeeds in getting that fire started or not.
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