Irreal

Karl Voit brings us a message from George Orwell:

A message from George Orwell to everyone on the Internet: https://t.co/aDgmlCRTCz #privacy #videos #mustsee

— n0v0id (@n0v0id) January 2, 2016

Remember a year ago when the CIA was shown to have spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee? Senator Dianne Feinstein, a vocal apologist for NSA snooping, was beside herself demanding investigations into the nation-threatening lawlessness on the part of the snoopers. Sadly, her indignation was short lived and she’s back to telling us that NSA surveillance is no big deal and for our own good.

Now we’re into round two, this time with Representative Peter Hoekstra, a very reliable and outspoken supporter of the NSA’s spying on American citizens, demanding the investigation and prosecution of the NSA for the effrontery of spying on Congress instead of just ordinary citizens. Don’t they know who he is?

Of course, we here at Irreal welcome Representative Hoekstra’s come-to-Jesus revelation; we just wish it would last more than a couple of weeks and translate into some concrete action. In the mean time, we’re enjoying our moment of schadenfreude and the spectacle of seeing Hoekstra’s own ox being gored.

Follow the link above and read Glenn Greenwald’s righteous takedown of the political elite who believe that surveillance is just fine for us ordinary folks but a constitutional travesty when applied to them. As much as we might hope that this will result in some legislation reining in our runaway intelligence community, the more likely outcome is that we’ll get a law making it illegal to spy on Congress.

Moxie Marlinspike, whom I’ve written about before, has a nice article on Wired about Why I Have Nothing to Hide is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance. In the first place, you have no idea of whether you have something to hide or not. There are an estimated 27,000 pages of federal law and another 10,000 regulations that have the force of federal law¹. Some of these laws are about obscure matters that you probably wouldn’t think would be illegal—see Marlinspike’s example concerning lobsters, for example.

If government lawyers don’t know how many laws there are, how is the average person to know if any given action is illegal? Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average American commits three felonies a day. Not nuisance misdemeanors but civil-rights-canceling, prison-punishable crimes. And you don’t even know you’re doing anything wrong. The point here is that whenever someone says they have nothing to hide, they’re almost certainly wrong.

Next, Marlinspike suggests that we should have something to hide. People breaking bad laws is how bad laws get changed. Consider the sodomy laws, for example. Until very recently it was against the law in most jurisdictions to have same sex relations. Now, of course, it’s not only allowed but the right for same sex couples to marry is the law of the land. Marlinspike makes the case that things would be very different with ubiquitous surveillance.

Finally, Marlinspike says that privacy advocates are facing an enormous steamroller built on careers and billions of dollars of surveillance related contracts. There is no compromise. The efforts of those who claim they have the right to examine our every action must be resisted at every turn. The alternative is 1984 writ large.