Eugene Robinson: An Ode to Privacy

[marmar]

from Truthdig:


An Ode to Privacy


Posted on Aug 7, 2007
By Eugene Robinson

WASHINGTON—Several times a month, a woman calls my office in the middle of the night and leaves long voice mail messages about how she’s the target of a vast, sinister conspiracy. I won’t give her name—obviously, she suffers from mental illness. The conspiracy she perceives involves the U.S. military, the CIA, interference with her brain waves and constant monitoring by the evil people who, for whatever reason, have decided that her thoughts somehow threaten their nefarious plans. Sometimes she disguises her voice and pretends to be a lieutenant in the heroic resistance against mind control.

She always seems upbeat and energized, and I think I understand why: This must be a great time to be a paranoid.

People with a tendency to imagine that they are constantly being watched now have actual evidence to support their delusions. This weekend, when Congress legalized the Bush administration’s practice of eavesdropping on citizens’ international phone calls and e-mails without first seeking court warrants, my occasional caller must have said to her imaginary lieutenant, “See, I told you so.”

My purpose here is not to endorse paranoia, and I’m not even going to blast the White House for further eroding our traditional guarantees of privacy. Well, maybe I’ll blast the White House and Congress just a little: I’m as anxious to catch terrorists before they strike as the next guy, but what’s wrong with having at least a fig leaf of judicial oversight? Why is it so onerous to have the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court continue to rubber-stamp eavesdropping requests, even retroactively?

Still, I’m having trouble getting as worked up over the new anything-goes snooping law as I should, because fighting for privacy as we once knew it is a lost cause. Our lives are public now.

What’s stunning about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of phone calls and e-mails is not just that it can now be done without a warrant, but that it can be done at all. If I were to pick up the phone and dial a terrorist suspect in, say, London, the call would have to be routed through some major telecommunications node. The NSA could somehow plug into that node and find my call amid all the countless others that happened to be passing through. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070807_an_ode_to_privacy/