I promised earlier this week to write up some of my own thoughts on the whole NSA Surveillance leaks. And of course, as usual, I started thinking through it and writing about it, and saw that I need to break it up into two or three posts. So that’s next week.
Earlier today, I posted the best things I’ve encountered on these leaks. I hope you were able to partake in any of those. But, until I can post some of my thoughts next week, I thought I’d do the first poll this blog has ever had and get your thoughts on this issue.
Yes, there are a lot of options below; you can pick more than one option. They range from most freaked out by this stuff to least worried. I’m really interested in where you all stand on this. If you feel like there are any answers I missed, or if you have any comments and what to add what and why you voted like you did, feel free to share in the comments below.
the long way home 
The government has always done this stuff, to an extent, but now with everything being digital and online, its just easier so of course our government is going to utilize it. The government is for the government, not the people.
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I’m also surprised that people surprised (shocked) that this is happening. But part of that has to do with Hollywood and shows like 24. If movie-makers can come up with this stuff, I don’t think that reality is THAT far behind. It happens with science fiction all the time (though we’re still waiting for that flying car, in public availability anyway)… Just look at 1984 and so many modern parallels with the technology described in that book.
More seriously, it’s a door that’s been opened further with technological advancements, and I am not sure it will be ever closed. Wouldn’t this have all started with the Red Scare, if not sooner? As politics becomes more and more polarized, I think the wielding of surveillance will be more and more used as an excuse to “protect American freedoms” while keeping a watchful eye on those who would “destroy” it. I think it can be and will be done from both sides of the fence.
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Wow. I agree with you, but you took those thoughts further and made connections i hadn’t seen before. I can’t say you were very encouraging (haha), but you were thought-provoking.
I would ask this, though: I’ve sort of thought that we corrected after the Red Scare, corrected after Nixon, and now we’re on the edge of correcting from the War on Terror. Do you think we’ve had corrections, or that this has all been the same, singular technological movement in the halls of American Power (starting at the end of World War I, I would think), just with occasional moments of us actually noticing it? (Did that make sense?)
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Sorry to not be encouraging! I admit to being a little jaded when it comes to things involving politics. Not that I distrust the government to the point of rejecting it, as some do; I’m not an anarchist. I just look at it with caution and that there is more going on than what the general public is permitted to know. The government is, after all, made up of human beings. There’s some good things that go on, and there’s bad things that go on.
I think your question makes sense. I’ll take a stab at it, at least!
I think with the Red Scare, Nixon, there are certainly corrections that had been made. Like any kind of organization, the government would need to take a step back and assess what exactly should be fixed when bad stuff goes down, so they can maintain the trust of the people. I do have to wonder how much of that is on the surface, and how much is kept behind closed doors and we only get little glimpses of what’s really going on now and then.
As a side note, American history books for schools have been known to include information that only makes the US look good or being re-written (there’s an interesting NPR bit related to that, which I just found, here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6517854). It will be interesting to see what information about 9/11 and the War on Terror will look like over the next 50 years or so.
History has a way of repeating itself, even if people or governments don’t directly intend for it to happen. Maybe the development of surveillance technology in the government hasn’t been a continuous, singular movement in the halls of American Power. But I think it would be a stretch to say that it was destroyed or locked in a vault somewhere never to be used again. They could very well have only been using that kind of technology in the military to find targets or whatever in foreign countries. It would have been only a matter of time until someone came along and decided it would be useful to maintain order in the United States, especially as terrorism was being brought to our soil.
Additionally, I’m not surprised that this sort of thing would have been going on because the FBI has been known to bait potential terrorists in operations on American soil (more by the NY Times in 2012 can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-helped-along-by-the-fbi.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0). I find it hard to agree with these sort of operations, even though I get why they are doing it. For the FBI to even find these people and determine them as a potential future threat, I would think they would need some form of surveillance going on.
Sorry for such a long response. 🙂
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