Security Nation

The seal of the U.S. National Security Agency. The first use was in September 1966, replacing an older seal which was used briefly. For more information, see here and here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The revelations published by the Washington Post and The Guardian that the United States government has been snooping into our phone records and Internet use for some unspecified reason other than wanting to keep us "safe" should come as no surprise.  After all, the American people are just children to them, to be talked down to when trying to justify matters that only they can understand.  Such as using drones to kill those big bad terrorists, invading foreign countries and pretending it's for national survival, and tapping domestic communications just for the heck of it.

So how come it took an IT guy named Edward Snowden, who had worked for only three months for a contractor named Booz Allen, to claim credit for spilling the beans on what the National Security Agency was really up to?  He now joins Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and Daniel Ellsberg as individuals we should either thank or blame for exposing some of the government's secrets.

It isn't just the government that takes advantage of gullible Americans through data mining.  It's also big business who tracks your online habits, whether intentional or not, then uses that information to either sell you stuff or embarrass you.

You can put on the latest and greatest security system on your smartphone or computer.  But they'll still be subject to hacking and snooping.  It also doesn't matter that government and big business has equipment that's far better technologically than anything sold to the general public.  Not unless cyberterrorists and amateur hackers can find a way around them.

Can anything be done to ensure whatever is left of our electronic privacy?  Don't count on it.  Congress passed the Patriot Act years ago without so much as having read it first, and they're too intimidated by all the intelligence briefings they're getting to change it now.

President Barack Obama, who once campaigned against the abuses of national security so prevalent in the George W. Bush administration, has softened his stance once he got into office.  Obama has maintained the status quo in his use of drones and in domestic surveillance begun by Bush, and has led to some successes in rooting out certain members of Al Qaeda while alienating countries like Pakistan.

The President's assurance that nobody in government has been listening to domestic phone calls is kind of hollow to those who already feel betrayed by his two-faced policy on surveillance.  This controversy could wind up damaging the remainder of Obama's presidency.

We wouldn't be talking about any of this if the Bush administration had been taking care of business in the days and months prior to September 11, 2001.  Since then, it has been one security nightmare after another.  Conservatives complain about the 'nanny state', but here they may not be crying wolf.

It was President Ronald Reagan who once coined the phrase "trust, but verify", which was in reference to his negotiations with the Soviet Union over nuclear weapons.  In this case, government and big business ask us to trust them, because they know what they're doing.  The thing is, we can't verify.  It's all classified.  If they can't trust us, how can we trust them?  It's a two-way street.