PRIVATE PARTS

Quis custodiet custodes ipsos?
("Who watches the watchers?")

Privacy has become a central issue in the affairs of U.S. citizens as of late and I felt the need to take a closer look at the whole area. Public surveillance by police departments and other government agencies has expanded in leaps and bounds recently. New York, Chicago, Baltimore, etc., and cities all across the nation have installed, and plan to install, 1000s upon 1000s of video cameras throughout the cities.

It occurred to me that Privacy could be broken into three major considerations:

Legality – What is the legal definition of Public vs. Private.

Personal Feelings – Regardless of the law or other moral/ethical concerns how does it make one feel to be surveilled.

Ethics – What are the intentions of those doing the spying/surveilling? Do they have the best interest of the citizenry at heart or are there other motives?

Legality

What exactly is the Public domain for surveillance? It is generally considered OK to train cameras on people in public streets, malls, parking lots, etc. Security cameras pointed at the building being secured is generally OK, but if it is pointed at the surrounding neighborhood, it may be a problem. I was unable to find a clear definition of public in this context; it seems a little fuzzy. For example, one police department considers it fine to point the cameras at streets, but considers it crossing the line to point it at windows in high rises. So where exactly is the ‘public’ area where it OK to observe and record video and audio of citizens. How about restaurants and bars? They are privately owned but publicly visited. How about the restrooms in the Federal Building? Public property, but is it private? What about if you leave your window shades open in your house? Does that qualify as an invitation to be observed by video? There are audio devices that can zero in on a particular location at a very long distance. There are satellites that can presumably take a picture of any location on planet surface. Can these be used? What about in your car? You are in public streets so is anything that goes on inside the car up for government grabs? Do the same rules apply to citizens surveilling government officials as to government agents surveilling citizens? There are hundreds more questions like these, and I am not sure the legality has really been defined. If there were definitely boundaries of where we cannot be surveilled, it would be interesting to see the government define these? I know that it was considered illegal to use very good encryption on messages and files on the Internet. It is categorized in the same section of law as using munitions. I also read that it is illegal to insulate your house walls with tin foil, since it ‘foils’ efforts to use high-tech electro-magnetic sensing devices. Intelligence agencies already have access to our phone conversations, and Internet emails and activities. Just where is the line drawn?

So what is the point to Privacy anyway? Cardinal Richelieu once said concerning surveillance, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." The idea is that if you watch someone long enough, eventually you will find something to prosecute, or at least blackmail them with. Privacy helps keep the powers in check, and those using their powers from corruption. It helps prevent abuse when we are doing nothing wrong.

“A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty.”
–Bruce Schneier - Wired

Personal Feelings

Think of a world in which we are constantly observed. How does it make you feel? It would make me feel like I might be judged, corrected, censored, and criticized at any time. I would feel like I would have to watch everything I say. There is nothing wrong with making love to my wife, or visiting the head, yet I would wonder if someone were watching or listening in. I would feel like a child under the eyes of a watchful parent, only the parent has become governmental authority. I would feel like whatever actions I take may come back to haunt me. I would feel inhibited in being my self, like losing my individuality for fear of retribution. How would you like it to be talking, and in the middle of a conversation and stop suddenly to wonder if you were being eavesdropped on?

All of this feels like a loss of Freedom. It feels like what I would imagine Nazi Germany to have felt like. It feels like what I was told it was like in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It feels like giving up liberty to authoritarian control.

“No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.” - Edward Abbey

Ethics

What are the motives of those doing the watching and eavesdropping? We are told it is to protect us from criminals and terrorists. But why is it necessary to bypass previous laws that required a court order and probable cause? By circumventing these laws, it allows the ones doing the watching to hide their true motives. Has it ever happened that eavesdropping has been done for less than honorable purposes? You betcha, and plenty of it has occurred. J. Edgar Hoover had files on virtually anyone who appeared in public. Do you think politicians have ever been blackmailed with secretly collected data? I think with little research you will find there is a huge huge potential for unethical use of the data collected. So the question arises, should any attempt be made to judge the ethical intent of spying on citizens? Should those in power, such as government agencies, have limitations and restrictions or how they gather data about citizens? Because anyone can go to a sporting event with a camera, does that mean we should pay government agents to take pictures of our citizenry, with no restrictions?

“Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.”
–Bruce Schneier – Wired

No matter which of the three viewpoints from which I choose to look at the issue, I guess I just don’t being like being watched without my consent.

A Discourse Between Friends

Let us plant flowers instead

This conversation started with some published piece that was talking about what would have happened to the world if Bush hadn't lied about WMDs and invaded Iraq, implying somehow that many bad things would have happened.

HE: I'm usually particularly adept with instances of sarcasm (as opposed to facetiousness) so let me see if I can extract the essential syllogism being made here, implicit by reverse reasoning vis a vis the sarcastic intent:

"If the President had not lied to the American public, some very unlikely shit would probably not have happened. Because we would NOT have wanted some very unlikely shit to have NOT have happened, it is a good thing the President lied to the American public?"

Is that it? Because that's just fucking brilliant!

AE: Well, I just took it for what it was. That if Bush hadn't started the war in Iraq, we'd be planting flowers with the Iranians, and global peace would now exist. Kumbaya My Lord !!!! ;)

Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
O Lord, kumbaya! Someone's laughing,
Lord, kumbaya! Someone's laughing,
Lord, kumbaya! Someone's laughing,
Lord, kumbaya! O Lord, kumbaya!
Someone's crying, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone's crying, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone's crying, Lord, kumbaya!
O Lord, kumbaya! Someone's praying,
Lord, kumbaya! Someone's praying,
Lord, kumbaya! Someone's praying,
Lord, kumbaya! O Lord, kumbaya!
Someone's singing, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone's singing, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone's singing, Lord, kumbaya!
O Lord, kumbaya! Kumbaya, my Lord,
kumbaya! Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
Kumbaya, my Lord,
kumbaya! O Lord, kumbaya!

YOURS TRULY: Because someone does not commit a treacherous or deceitful act does not necessarily imply in any way that all other events related or not will therefore turn positive. It simply means that possibly the direct consequences of the dastardly deed in question may have a different outcome.

HE: I like that. When you put it in that form, it is a classic non-sequitur called "denying the antecedent." Ahh, logic, you gotta love it. Political hacks, however, seem not too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent

AE: I seem to remember a couple of star trek episodes where logic was proven inferior to gut feelings! )

HE: I would be inclined to agree that this administration's concepts can be described as "science fiction" except that they seem not to believe in science as a whole.

That, and your use of the term "proven" would be suspect in any discussion, regardless of Mr. Roddenberry's involvement; but that's a logic issue, so perhaps you will discount it. If that is the case, my gut feeling is that George Bush is a ignorant little meat puppet, controlled by Dick Cheney and directed by Karl Rove and pussy whipped by his wife and anyone who thinks otherwise is a pusillanimous fool, incapable of recognizing an obvious reality... oh, the gut feeling is... so... lovely, Jim!

YOURS TRULY: Must be a gut virus. I think I have the same gut feeling.

HE: What this country needs is a great big bottle of "Authoritarian Colon Blow," to purge the system! I would like to have hopes for the upcoming election. If the opposition party operates as nothing other than cellulose, that would be an improvement; because it would be impossible to do less, as a congress, than this current congressional body has managed to accomplish in the past six years--unless you count rolling like punks to the administration's whims.

The rally cry I hear from the irrational 'right' is that Democrats controlling one or even two houses of congress will mean that the final two years of the Bush administration are embroiled in subpoenas and, perhaps, impeachment hearings. These are the same guys who sent 144 subpoenas to the Clinton administration and accused his efforts to get Osama Bin Laudin during that time frame as a 'wag the dog' to distract from their bullshit investigations. Now, I'm not a big Clinton fan (or the fan of any real 'politician' for that matter--and he certainly was that); but when I hear that same group of neocons now claiming that Clinton "didn't do enough" to stop terrorism in his term--alla the Chris Wallace interview--I just want to puke. Here, again, it is my own issues with logic getting in the way, I'm sure.

Besides, If the executive branch is doing illegal things, that's kinda what the congressional impeachment power was intended to curtail as designed by the founding fathers. To argue that use of that power to halt illegal activities by the executive branch will somehow impede the executive branch's ability to continue in those illegal activities, well that's a logical fallacy called 'petitio principii' or begging the question. And, once more, this is probably a personal problem I have with the neocon approach to logic; namely, that they run screaming from it.