I am befuddled by all the faux outrage in the online media bout the National Security Agency spying on us via our internet behavior and telephone calls. Should we really be surprised by any of this? After all, this sort of panopticonic staring by self-anointed government elites is nothing new.
Let’s take a quick Boles Blogs trip back through time to examine our intrepid reporting on this matter of the NSA spying on us. We begin on June 30, 2006 — You are an Electronic Jigsaw Puzzle:
It’s horrifyingly fascinating how this government effort to connect all our dots appears to be orchestrated in pieces using separate private companies to deter detection of a non-severed surreptitious intent — banks for banking records; conservative ownership of personal web portals for access to MySpace data; internet providers who reply upon government regulation to stay in business are required to help monitor and analyze internet traffic patterns and process email keyword triggers — leads the cogent among us to question who we really are and if we actually own a right to any sort of privacy whatsoever.
December 3, 2008 — Microsoft and the NSA and the Texas Cryptology Center:
I had no idea Microsoft worked so closely with the NSA to parse our email. We’re in for a reckoning as a total lack of privacy — in public or at home — is the new standard for ordinary behavior in America.
December 18, 2008 — Will Obama Watch the NSA?
Is the NSA returning us to the days of British soldiers stopping us in the streets and reporting our behavior for punishment?
Should an American government agency ever spy on its own citizens? Is there any irony in knowing we pay taxes so that money can be turned around against us in a Panopticonic gaze?
Do we have any right to privacy under the Constitution or is that terrorism’s biggest win against us: Less freedom, less choice and more punishable wants out of the public eye?
July 7, 2009 — The NSA and You: Guilty, but Uncharged:
When the government fails its sworn duty to protect its citizens from unwarranted incarceration by Panopticonic watching — every freedom and ideal is shot down the sewer as a once great nation bends and then breaks under the paranoid eye in the curdling possibility of the next terrorist strike.
The current NSA spy policy blanketing us — smothering us — is proof enough the terrorists have already won.
Our government lives in fear of the unknown and of the unhappened while dreamily — even wistfully — reflecting back on that day when the towers fell in order to perpetuate and excuse their imprisonment of our most delicate and fragile freedoms.
While I am delighted that we have sounded the alarm against the NSA since 2006, I am bemused by the current reaction of the populace to this “new” NSA scandal of watching us — because they’ve always been watching us and they will continue to watch us at will.
It’s too easy to just say, “Live a right life, and you won’t be in any trouble,” because we’ve all tumbled down the path of good intentions being paved in fire and glass shards. It really isn’t enough any longer to just “behave” and all will go well.
You need to start thinking about hiding a little bit more of who you are in the wild essences to take more of your personal blips off the national surveillance radar. You can’t totally disappear because that, in itself, will now raise red lights against you, but quieting your stream a little bit over there, and a little more over yonder, might begin to baffle your volume in the new echo chamber Panopticon that are these United States.