When I was a 22-year-old, involved in protests
against the Vietnam War and in meetings of the local Vietnam Moratorium group
in Trenton, NJ, I wondered whether I had my own FBI file. There was talk about
the FBI keeping files on Vietnam War protestors. We later found out that these
rumors were true. The fact that I obtained conscientious objector status from
my draft board probably increased the likelihood that there was an FBI file on
me. However, I thought at the time that I was not important enough to warrant
one. I’ll probably never know if I had one.
But that seems like small potatoes compared to what
we’re hearing now about U.S. government surveillance of its citizens. Our home
phone provider is Verizon, so information about all our phone calls is being
collected. Through the
government’s Prism program, information is being collected from what we do on
Google, Facebook and Skype and through our use of Microsoft products.
On the Common Dreams website, I just read an article by Alfred W. McCoy, entitled SurveillanceBlowback: The Making of the U. S. Surveillance State, 1898 -2020. It’s a
long article but I think worth the read.
It’s scary to think about the amount of information being monitored and
collected, the large number of government employees involved in this activity
and the advances in technology that make it easier and easier for information
about us to be collected and analyzed.
There seems to be increased attention in the media to
all this surveillance. And, in a poll conducted by The Guardian newspaper, 66%
thought that the NSA’s activities need to reviewed by Congress and 56% agreed
that the NSA needs more Congressional oversight. Also, 50% of those polled
disagreed with the government collecting metadata (e.g., date of a phone call,
duration, phone numbers of two parties involved). The poll numbers seem to show
a majority opposition to the continuing collection of such data. However, we’ve seen many instances where
the President and/or Congress ignored the popular will of the people. I’m
inclined to believe that the people’s outrage will die out over time and the
extensive surveillance will continue (and likely increase). Maybe it’s time to break out that
dog-earred copy of Orwell’s 1984 –
as a reminder of what could happen.
