Surveillance Nation

Last week the local Bar Association asked me to speak at Boardman High School on Law Day about the dangers of Facebook. During my research, it became apparent to me that the United States is walking down a dangerous path. The amount of surveillance of Americans appears to be non-stop. While each piece of the system may seem to be legitimate, the totality is an Orwellian nightmare. Freedom , the life blood of our nation, is at risk.

1) Most obvious and probably the least likely to be abused are the cameras placed everywhere from inside stores to parking lots to streets to sidewalks to garages. New York City is installing these cameras all over Times Square. It is creepy notwithstanding the security they provide. In the United Kingdom, London is completely covered with these cameras. Are we headed for something like this here? Do we really somebody watching us all of the time?

2) More problematic are traffic light cameras doing the job of law enforcement officers. Couple that with facial and license plate recognition technology it also is a little creepy…and a source of revenue for the political subdivision instead of a law enforcement mechanism.

3) Next there is the TSA and Homeland Security which has made invasion of privacy an art form. The recent pat-downs of young children hugging their grandmothers and old women in wheelchairs wearing colostomy bags is disgusting. X-ray machines that in effect do a strip search are in a class by themselves. Everybody wants safety on a plane…but this? Where is common sense? Or is political correctness strangling the breath of of the nation?

4) All American cars will now be required to have “black boxes”. I just found out that my current GM car has a black box. Monitoring what? The news stories I have watched say there are safeguards in the law protecting who gets access to this information, but I don’t know what the information is. Can my car be monitored by GPS system? Can my insurance company determine how fast I was driving? I understand that the content of the box belongs to me…but so did the contents of my client's safety deposit box and the government got access to that. Why is this black box needed?

5) Internet surveillance is out of control in both the private and public sector. Start with Google which probably knows more about me than I know. They watch every move I make on line even when I am not on their system. Google chrome provides a “privacy” mode…but there are so many exceptions it is an exercise in futility. Yet the government refuses to intervene and put limits on what Google can do with my information.

6) Legislation in Congress is currently pending to allow the free flow of information from companies to government if a security risk becomes apparent. That is obviously a good thing. The way our country operates today, if the internet is “hacked” we have a major problem and we are back to the stone-age over night. Our country would grind to a halt. But couple that piece of legislation with recent reports of the NSA gathering trillions of emails and telephone information from American citizens while constructing a mammoth facility Bluffdale, Utah, to handle storage and reading of emails…this is scary stuff.  All emails sent within the United States will eventually end up at this facility. This is way beyond the Patriot Act, which I was led to believe covered only emails going in and out of the country to certain locations and/or people. I am well aware that thosw who are making these privacy violation allegations may or not be credible, and that one of the sources was involved with the Wikileaks disclosures. Nevertheless, I think Americans have the right to know whether the allegations are true…and what is being done to safeguard our privacy in the future.

There is no argument from me that all of the above listed items were done with the best of intentions and with some safeguards supposedly built into the system. On the other hand, the old saying goes “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” As an attorney, I know how the laws can be twisted and turned. As an historian, I know how the ebb and flow of events can make something like this turn ugly.

I believe that the mindset of America since 9-11 has allowed these types of activities to develop in a way that in a different time would never been allowed. Security is important. Freedom is more important. There has to be balance. People cannot live under continual scrutiny and continue to function in a normal manner. It has a chilling effect on basic human behavior, which is not perfect.  It will lead to frustration in an overly complicated world, and ultimately violence from those who crack.  

It is freedom that makes us strong. Not this stuff. I hope that our elected officials will begin to analyze the totality of what has developed in America with the confluence of 9-11 and the digital information age. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. 

I am for security, but not at the cost of our freedom.