Something I wanted to talk about that has garnered quite a bit of attention lately is the whole NSA “spying” issue. A lot of people are offended and perhaps even shocked. That said, all things considered, I really have to wonder why people should be surprised and even offended. People talk about their privacy being violated from a national security point of view as if they really had any sense of privacy. I value my own privacy but I can’t get overly mad at the government for doing this. Not in the way people are.
The whole thing to me is that pretty much unless you’re planning to do something against the government or some other illegal activity, the average person shouldn’t really care. Yes, there is the 1984 Orwellian aspect but I think that dystopian vision is only worrisome if the country becomes overly oppressive in handling its citizens for banal cases. There are distinct differences between a plot to slay a key political figure vs shooting from the hip and saying that you want to kill someone for pissing you off while you were driving.
Now, again I’m not a complete proponent for any form of spying but I think people are being somewhat impractical, looking at themselves as if they were criminals. The only thing I can think of where most people probably feel insecure about their own government (at least in the US’ case) of spying on them is the whole RIAA/MPAA downloading thing. In this situation, I really feel that if the corporate lobbyists from these scumbag industries are bribing the government to spy on citizens just for a few measly downloads, then the government should go fuck themselves for wasting taxpayers’ dollars on such a frivolous activity that only favors a few elite while true criminals that pose a real threat are on the loose.
The other case I can think of are private sex phone calls and related activities. Besides pedophilia and some cases of prostitution, I seriously doubt that the government cares how you fuck at your home or what kind of dog shit eating porn you enjoy. Again, most of these activities really are to look for people creating plots against the government or its citizens. I mean, you can look to Minority Report as an exaggerated version of how this can all be used, but that’s the case of where the government is abusing this power. At any rate, you have to look at the overall picture to correctly criticize how this works out.
Quite honestly though, I don’t get how people can be surprised by this at all. In fact, I pretty much expected this from the government. Now, whether or not companies like Google or Facebook are White Knights in all of this is the real question.