March 23 (& 24) - Quote(s) of the Day(s)

Sorry about the delay. This post took a lot of thought and I am still not sure it consistently, unambiguously or completely expresses my thoughts. It is about things that have been concerning me for nearly six years, now.

232 years ago, Patrick Henry gave a speech that, I sincerely hope, most Americans remember. In speaking about the impending revolution, trying to encourage Virginia to join, he famously (again I hope) said "give me liberty, or give me death."

Another notable of the era, Benjamin Franklin wrote a very related quotation, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

When I've evoked these ideals in discussion against many of the legislative, executive and judicial events that have occurred since 9/11, with people who I know to be conservative, small government, personal responsibility types defend the events as necessary. These same have even used the same sorts of arguments that I've listened to liberal types use in favor of gun control for the last 20 years. The most common are that the founders never could have conceived the environment we live in today, history has never seen a condition like we face, today, but there are others.

By now, most of these folks, if they are reading, would be screaming "what events?" And when I would reply something like "The Patriot Act" or the suspension of Habeas Corpus, they'd mostly disrespect that answer as the usual un-reasoned argument of the left. But I am not a left-wing thinker. The Patriot Act has many disturbing qualities. For instance, its language is constructed as to make the new powers it contains for the purposes of preventing terrorist acts broadly applicable on the basis of premise without documentation. In fact, it is darn near impossible to see if the Patriot Act is being mis-applied because it is rife with gag orders that prevent knowing what is done under it, even after the fact.

The Patriot Act II is even more far-reaching. If it becomes law, it has in it the means to strip away the right of citizenship from naturalized and natural born citizens. The quick answer is that this would only happen to terrorists. Actually, the law is broader than that, it could happen to those suspected of aiding terrorists, even unknowingly. Give money to your favorite charity which then funds something you know nothing about and you could be in violation of the law as written. Never mind that that is a violation of the 14th amendment to the constitution. Where are the arguments for constitutional amendments in this debate? I hear them all the time in the Gay Marriage argument.

Jose Padilla seems to be a bad person, no doubt. Few people would disagree that a serious injustice is done to him by detaining him. However, when he is detained without charge or bail, when he is denied his rights as a citizen of the U.S. to representation, when these things happen within the borders of the country on an un-clear legal premise, then the greater injustice is done to us, the inhabitants of the country. One has to ask if there is any event that justifies the suspension of habeas corpus. Evidently there is, but, constitutionally, that right is reserved to the Congress, not the President.

Here's another quote, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely,"
- Lord Acton.

I am not especially concerned with the actions of the present administration, nor the actions of the next, Republican or Democrat. Nor do I think this administration is acting much differently than others in this regard. Shoot, the last administration fought a whole war without congressional approval. How's that for a power grab? Historically, nearly every congress has tried to extend the power of the federal government and nearly every president has tried to transfer power from the legislature to the executive. It is the responsibility of the citizenry to check this.

I am very concerned with is greater amounts of power being put into the hands of the government in general and the tendency that will have to make it more corrupt. I see no evidence that the people this country elects to office are becoming any less self-absorbed. No particular congress or president will make a concerted effort to develop absolute corrupt power, but we will creep closer and closer to that condition. A death of a thousand cuts, so to speak, nearly completely un-coordinated unless you are a conspiracy theory nut. If you doubt this, just look at the way the federal government in the last century abused the interstate-commerce clause of the constitution to vastly extend its power.

Here is one example of one of these cuts that we can already see growing organically. I am quite concerned with what it means in the long term that our governments have put up surveillance cameras at nearly every major intersection in every major metro area. What, you didn't notice?

At the time they were erected, they were described as being for traffic monitoring and that is probably so, not even a cut unless you take the long view which I am about to describe. Once the cameras are in place the natural tendency is to wonder what else they can be used for. Quite recently, technology has been released that enables cameras such as these to record every license plate that passes by and compares it to a database of stolen cars, suspect's cars, Amber alerts, etc. This has already been deployed for use in police car cameras. If it hasn't already, it will be in the cameras you see above every stop light before long. Now they are being used for surveillance, but not of you, right?

How long after that before the computers behind these cameras are used to analyze patterns of motion to look for suspicious behavior? What will constitute suspicious? What if completely reasonable patterns of movement looks suspicious to the hard coded filter used to rank and rate the data? How hard will it be to clear yourself of a mistaken charge. Legal defense costs money and time, after all. Here's a short story by David Brin about two such imaginary cities. Which one do you think we will live in ten years from now?

More steps are taken with examining communication that we probably should be able to consider private. Phones, long ago, were considered an extension of your living room and so extensive legal procedures were required to tap them. I believe the internet shares the same characteristic and should be treated the same way. This has not been the case. Recently, the federal government tried to get major search engines to turn over search data in order to research legislation. Some companies rolled over on this one, but Google fought it and ultimately won. The reason is, though the search data is anonymous, it was still tagged to unidentified users and Google thought that this provides way too much information about a person even if anonymous.

You might think that since it is anonymized there is no issue, but in between the subpoena and winning the suit, another search firm lent it's similar anonymized data to a research group at a university. That group did some minimal analysis and was easily able to match true identities with anonymized users, contacting some of them. At the very least, this should make you wary of using search engines. At the most, you should be able to see how much information can be learned about you from your searches. How much of that might be mis-interpreted. Suppose a parent did research on cannabis to figure out how to make or keep their child drug free and it was flagged? The parent was just trying to protect their child and be a good parent. In so doing they may have gotten their self in a defensive legal situation or even ratted out their child who they were trying to help.

These sorts of capabilities are all in our present and near future and, in general, we will accept them as necessary "in this day" for security. This isn't idle conspiracy theory. This requires no conspiracy to happen. It simply requires a natural progression. A lot of small steps until, one day, we realize that the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution no longer mean anything at all. It is possible that, someday, your lifestyle choices will be considered illegal. Perhaps someday I will find myself in that group for writing this article. Fortunately, not today.

If you think it won't happen (to you), here is another quote, poem, actually:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
- Martin Niemoeller

You may be familiar with it and you may think it doesn't apply. I truly hope you are correct.