In the years following 9/11, I accepted the rationale that surveillance programs like warrantless wiretaps were necessary to keep us safe. As recently as this year, I have found myself making the trite argument that if you have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. I assumed some kind of large-scale data-mining was going on—companies regularly sell their consumer data to political campaigns after all—but I trusted that that data would only be used in the context of potential security threats. My position on the matter remained unchanged for years, even after the transition in 2009 from a President with whom I agreed politically to one with whom I did not; this is America, after all, and the law is neutral no matter who lives in the White House.
If the NSA leak had come two months ago, I would have dismissed it as a pointless rehashing of information we already knew; a security breach that needlessly put lives at risk. Coming in the wake of another scandal, however, the information revealed by Edward Snowden gained a new sense of urgency. Revelations about the IRS targeting of conservative groups made me realize that, in the absence of oversight, the neutrality of the law was not something that could just be assumed. Whether the abuse originated in Cincinnati or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, someone took it upon themselves to use their power to punish political enemies. A malicious Administration or a group of misguided bureaucrats with the powers afforded by PRISM and other domestic surveillance systems could do far more than just delay 501(c)(4) applications: they could pore through a political opponent’s entire history and turn a number of minor or even accidental infractions into jail time and felon status. Between these two scandals I realized something I should have known all along: no authority with the institutional capacity of the state should have the kind of unchecked power we’ve seen revealed these last few weeks.
Before I get tagged as an anarchist, or worse, I would like to point out that I am not arguing for the complete dismantlement of anti-terror programs or of NSA data-mining efforts. The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution does not protect citizens from any search and seizure, after all, just unreasonable ones. If reasonable suspicion exists, there is no reason for a person’s Facebook profile or Google search history to be off-limits when their home or place of business is fair game for government investigators.
The danger of PRISM, then, is not in the government’s access to data but in the legal justification for such. Secret courts established by FISA issue blanket warrants and confidential rulings that cannot be examined by the public, lawmakers, or even other courts, meaning massive investigations, even inappropriate ones, could take place without any meaningful oversight. The very fabric of our republic, the system of checks and balances designed to maintain rights and protect political minorities, breaks down without a modicum of transparency, and with these systems in place we run the risk of a slow descent into something akin to the kinds of regimes we have spent the past century trying to eliminate.
President Obama is right when he says that the American people have to make a trade-off between privacy and security, but the American people can’t know what that trade-off is if the costs of security are a state secret. If the people consent, the government can do an awful lot, even implement programs like PRISM, but uninformed consent is no consent at all. The people of the United States deserve to know what their government thinks it can do to them so that they react accordingly. If we as a society are willing to stomach Big Brother in exchange for the uncertain protection afforded by these programs, they must be restructured for transparency but can ultimately continue. If we decide the costs to our liberty are not worth it, citizens have a right to full disclosure, so those responsible for these intrusions can be held responsible at the polls.