The NSA’s assembly of Americans’ domestic phone call information into the world’s largest database is just one of many post-9/11 incursions into aspects of American lives, and although Polimom spent much of yesterday reading tons of opinions (left and right), what I found didn’t soothe my disquiet (from USA Today):
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
Yes, I get it that they’re not “listening in” (although there’s an enormous leap of faith there…).
Yes, I realize we’re at war. Not only that, but like everyone else, I know that we’ve been down this road before. During WWII, we forcibly relocated nearly 120,000 people (most of whom were American citizens) to internment camps, and Abraham Lincoln took this path when he suspended habeas corpus in two states during the Civil War. (Of course, we’ve already done this.)
So silly Polimom, what is your problem? You just said we’re at war, and there’s plenty of historical precedent for extended executive powers for security reasons. We’ve slipped down this slope in the past and returned to the top.
As ever, it was during a conversation with someone else that everything started to gel for me. It went like this:
Polimom: I’m really bothered by the NSA’s assembly of all the phone records.
Friend: I think it’s great! It’s what they’re supposed to be doing because we’re at war.
Polimom: It doesn’t bother you that your phone number will be linked to people you know nothing about, and patterns you aren’t involved in?
Friend: It’s not that big a deal, and you know, the medical insurance companies already collect all this type of information.
Polimom: But they’re not the NSA, invested with super-secret cloak-and-dagger war-time powers over citizens. If we go down this road much further….
Let’s stop right here, k? Because that’s where I finally nailed down my problem with the situation.
History shows that war, suspicion, and at least some loss of civil liberties go together, and America has, in fact, slid down that hill in the past and come back again… but there’s something much different this time: I can’t identify the bottom of the slope.
When does this war end? How will we know that?
Is The War against Iraq? If it was, I could see a return to our freedom from government surveillance and the re-establishment of rights at some point in the future (presumably, when they get themselves a real live, functional government).
But The War isn’t against Iraq. It’s against terrorism, and unless somebody has a way to wrestle that definition into a box, we’re in real trouble.
Will “terrorism” just surrender? Does The War end when we occupy “terrorism”, or “terrorism” is overthrown? HOW?
This, my friends, is what’s so very scary for Polimom about the continuing incursions by the government into our personal lives. We’re on a path that we’ve traveled before, but there was always a definitive temporal moment when the insanity ended — when America looked around and said, “The war is over! At last, we can get back to normal.”
We can’t do that with this war, and if we can’t define the bottom of the slope we’re sliding down — if The War has no definable end — then the brakes won’t ever be applied to our loss of privacy and rights. These slow, individual encroachments on our lives and liberties will simply accumulate over time…. decades, or even lifetimes.
When it’s all said and done, that long, drawn-out process could twist the very warp and weft of our country’s fabric and lead to the ultimate defeat – that we won’t be America anymore.
Wasn’t that what Osama was after in the first place?
(Also posted on Polimom, Too.)
* * * * *
Update: According to WaPo, polls show that the majority of Americans support the NSA’s efforts:
Underlying those views is the belief that the need to investigate terrorism outweighs privacy concerns. According to the poll, 65 percent of those interviewed said it was more important to investigate potential terrorist threats “even if it intrudes on privacy.” Three in 10–31 percent–said it was more important for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.