I've mentioned from time to time my personal insecurities over the omnipresent government surveillance that is slowly becoming the norm. This ranges from the wiretap scandal to the "enemy combatant" status, all alarming (maybe charming?) in their own peculiar way. Each week something new comes up. For example, this week in history brings us a FBI report on tapping VoIP communication systems (like Skype). All things considered, this should be generating some interest in the vast majority of the populace for social and civil reforms — except that it simply hasn't.
I find the situation perplexing. As the government becomes increasingly daring, we, the people, become substantially more docile. It's as if America just wants to be used and manipulated. I understand people are scared and they want safety. I also know the Department of Homeland Security was created and the Patriot Act passed with the promises of a more secure future. What I don't know, however, is why after both of them have generally failed to produce anything more than insubstantial returns, we as citizens still support them. I can understand trading in civil liberties for something, but not for nothing.
Obviously Time reads my articles (or more likely, follows the news, being a news magazine and all) and seems to have picked up on this. Recently, Massimo Calabresi published an article discussing the surprising lack of response to the current erosion of civil liberties. Among many subjects covered in his article, Calabresi brings up a good question: How do we know what is being accomplished with our loss of liberties?
The idea is if we surrender certain rights, most importantly the ability to know whether we are under surveillance, then how can we know if the measures are effective? If the FBI can perpetrate several offenses without having to put forward any records, then the end can hardly justify the means can it? What would you do if you found out phones had been tapped and people detained merely because of a supervisor's professional jealousy? The whole situation starts to eerily parallel the German film “The Live of Others.”
The list of atrocities committed in the name of "Homeland Security" (such an insubstantial phrase), but what can we do? A heck of a lot more. The fact of the matter is that we as citizens implicitly permit the actions of our government through our own personal lack of response. You can claim you didn't know, or weren't sure of what to do, but, to put it simply, you can never shirk personal responsibility. At this point I feel compelled Mario Savio's words from his 1964 speech at Berkeley:
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"
