Administration statements responding to criticisms of its surveillance activities are characterized by obscurity. Words such as "incidental", "relevant", and "targeted" are frequently used in misleading ways that distort their commonly understood meanings [Timm].
A big league whistleblowerFor some time now there has been considerable evidence in the public realm that the US government has been spying on people all over the world, including American citizens in the US. E.g., in 2006, Russell Tice, who had been employed over a period of two decades by various intelligence agencies, including the NSA, said that there was large-scale NSA eavesdropping on phone calls without legal warrants [Ross].
The NSA revoked his security clearance and fired him. But, perhaps because he was careful not to reveal details or provide copies of secret documents, the Bush administration did not prosecute Tice.
The revelations of Edward Snowden [Wikipedia-Snowden] are more dramatic. Rather than speak in generalities, he released a number of secret documents that revealed, in great detail, the enormous scope of NSA surveillance on a worldwide basis. This surveillance covers email and other internet communications, phone calls, and even bugging the offices of diplomats of friendly nations both in the US and abroad. Truly massive amounts of information are collected and stored.
Snowden solidly documented the way the US government has been using modern technology to expand on the kind of surveillance of citizens depicted in the classic novel, "1984". Detailed logs listing recipients and topics of email correspondence and phone calls are being compiled and stored by the NSA. The agency is also intercepting and storing the contents of emails, text messages, and phone calls. There are no effective restrictions on the accessing of such material by government employees or contractors, altho various officials and legislators have made contradictory, often vague, statements on this [CNET].
It is claimed by some that Snowden should have used internal mechanisms for calling attention to the problems he saw, rather than release classified material to the public. This is not a very realistic position, given the experiences of others who did take this path. The Government Accountability Project (GAP), perhaps the leading organization in the area of whistleblower protection, considers Snowden's action to have been very appropriate [GAP]. Others have pointed out that, contrary to what President Obama said about Snowden's failure to use internal mechanisms, that such mechanisms are not available to employees of contractors (which is what Snowden was), as opposed to government employees [Masnick-Protection ].
Especially in the light of the vicious way the Obama administration attacked whistle blowers such as Bradley Manning, John Kiriakou, and Thomas Drake, it took great courage, patriotism, and a strong moral sense for Edward Snowden to give up his promising career and comfortable life in order to call the attention of the public to this assault on our civil liberties.
A bizarre sidelight is the fact that the government has blocked access by army personnel to the website of the Guardian (British-based news organization that has been publishing material released by Snowden). An army information assurance security officer (perhaps in an attempt at comic relief) explained that this is "to prevent an unauthorized disclosure of classified information" [Molnar].
Why worry about privacy violations?"I have nothing to hide, so I don't care if government agents read my email or listen to my phone conversations." This expresses the views of many Americans to concerns about privacy losses due to the operations of the NSA, FBI, etc. It is a very short-sighted attitude.
Stripping people of privacy by eavesdropping on their communications has always been a prime characteristic of totalitarian governments, such as those of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Altho not many Americans would be significantly harmed today by the kind of privacy loss under discussion, this may not hold for the future. It was certainly not true in the past.
During the McCarthy era, many people were greatly harmed by disclosures of information about them that involved no wrong-doing. Past views that they no longer held, and current views that were perfectly legal, but not in line with the prevailing national ideology, were used against them, often making them unemployable. Such matters as being related to, or friends with, a person considered to be a radical caused great career damage, leading, in some cases, to suicides. The surveillance methods discussed here would have greatly facilitated such attacks.
A current indication that this sort of problem is not just history is the No-Fly list. People on this list, including American citizens, are prohibited from flying. There is no legal process that put them there, and there is no simple way to contest inclusion, or even to find out if you are on the list, short of buying a ticket and trying to board a plane [Zetter][Wikipedia-no-fly]. The massive data files being created by the NSA via its surveillance operations is a plausible resource for adding names to the No-Fly list.
Many politicians have had extra-marital affairs, or engaged in other potentially embarrassing sexual activity. Others have exploited inside information, unethically, or even illegally, for financial gain, or have used campaign funds illegally. If evidence of such can be retrieved from email, telephone, or other records, they would become vulnerable to blackmail, subjecting them to control by government agents.
Defenders of the current system claim that abuses are precluded by strict rules limiting access to surveillance files. Such claims are not persuasive, since there are so many people involved in the agencies and private companies building and maintaining these files. The level of secrecy makes it impossible for outsiders to verify whether various purported safeguards are being properly implemented. As pointed out above, those kept in the dark include members of congress.
It remains to be seen whether Edward Snowden's revelations will be sufficient to jolt enough Americans into recognizing how far we have gone toward developing--and I don't think the words are too strong--a new version of totalitarianism. Bear in mind that the same government carrying out the activities discussed above has also been imprisoning, torturing, and killing people, including Americans, all over the world (and not just on battlefields) without a semblance of due process. So far, this has been done on a relatively small scale, but precedents are being established that could easily lead to such atrocities being made routine.
ReferencesCNET, "NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls", CNET, June 15, 2013
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