So the NSA is spying on us. This is my surprised face. Is the era of privacy dead? Many people think so. I recently published a blog post as a response to the Supreme Court’s opinion allowing for the collection of your DNA. We know the NSA is spying on us. We give out our information willingly to Facebook, Amazon, Google, and others. Google glass and the miniaturization of technology and cameras will allow us to conceal video equipment nigh anywhere. Should we modify our lives, and accept the fact that privacy is dead? I think not. I think privacy is alive and well, so long as we don’t concede the battle.
What we are in at this point is a technological arms race — I intend to win it. The NSA is snooping. Sam Fisher is in the corner with a bag of popcorn watching you have sex with your wife. According to American Hero and whistleblower Edward Snowden, domestic spying on our phone call and emails is expansive with almost no oversight.
So what to do? Some look to a political answer. Others, a legal one. Yet others, a violent one. They’re all wrong.
Political power consolidates. Congressmen are openly lied to by NSA administrators with no consequence. Those who lead the charge against our 4th Amendment rights, such as Dick Cheney, have called Snowden a traitor. Many of your fellow citizens, pathetic sheep fearful of terrorists, agree. The President, after attacking Bush for these tactics, has expanded them massively. The American political machine has developed it’s own consciousness, independent of all its parts, just as a human body has one consciousness despite consisting of billions of unique living cells. Just as you cannot uninvent the gun, so too can you not uninvent this snooping technology. As I’ve said before, power centralizes. The political leaders cannot stop this.
The legal route also will not work. The Supreme Court has eviscerated the 4th Amendment. Why would it protect it now? Even so, administrators lie. Presidents battle transparency in the name of “national security”. Those 4th Amendment wins we occasionally secure are bandaids. They are valuable for sure, as they dissuade the footsoldiers of tyranny (read: cops and other low level administrators) but they are a small part of the war for liberty.
The solution? We battle tech with tech. Just as a good citizen must know how to shoulder a rifle, so too much he learn to program. I don’t know what the answer is yet, but if I allowed my imagination to run I’d figure up something akin to a bracelet that emitted some sort of frequency that turned you into a blob on any pictures you may show up. Perhaps ways to pick up on when you’re being bugged. Targeted EMP used as a shield, rather than a sword. Encryption! We have it now. Learn it. Use it. You can encrypt your correspondence and give it greater security against the NSA than a spy on horseback with George Washington’s orders written in invisible ink had against the redcoats. Freedom is out there. Privacy is out there. You have to fight for it now, just as you did then. How private do you think the lives of those families in the 50’s were? They weren’t! We just socially allowed that the dad beat his kids, or that men took certain liberties with women. Spying has always existed, and it always will. You don’t give up the fight; you continue the technological arms race and fight for your freedom and your privacy.
You don’t think your privacy is well protected? Well, “We shall double our efforts!”
Fight! Win! You’re an American. Fucking act like it.
