Privacy Succumbs to the Party Line...Big Brother NSA?

In the “olden days” our telephones were all connected on a “party line”. Your one-per-household telephone was attached to all the neighbors’ phones. Only one phone could be used at a time and anybody on the circuit could pick up the phone and listen in. It was a great gossip tool. 

History is back, and so are party lines—it’s just you, the guy on the other end, and the US government eavesdropping on your conversations.

A federal judge has ruled that privacy doesn’t matter and it’s legal for the National Security Agency to collect our phone conversations. US District Judge William H. Pauley III ruled December 27 that this collection of phone data is necessary in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He says it increases the NSA’s ability to find terrorists.

It’s ridiculous to believe that this program is legal. It kills our first amendment right of free speech—you aren’t free to say what you want if you know the government is listening. It’s not because you’re saying anything bad, it’s the intimidation of having no privacy. It’s the fear that the definition of “bad” may change in the future. Just one example: the word “gay” meant happy when I was a kid. Take that statement forward several decades. You tell people you are gay today and you get a very different meaning. That’s why you don’t want anyone recording and storing your conversations.

The judge’s ruling also destroys our fourth amendment rights. We are being unreasonably “searched” without probable cause. The vast majority of us are law-abiding people and we aren’t doing anything wrong, so it is unreasonable to search us. The Fourth Amendment says a search warrant must be issued before these searches can occur. That goes out the window, as well.

So, it the judge says this is necessary to help the government find terrorists, what happens when the definition of terrorist changes—like, maybe, a Christian as a terrorist? That definition change is in progress now—the Obama administration is reported to be rewriting government training manuals to include Christians as terrorists.

While this is insane, it is, unfortunately, real. Tweak the situation just a little and you have religious persecution—a looming possibility.  

This is an ugly example of the courts destroying the Constitution by rewriting our laws—something they have no authority to do. This judge is completely out of line and his reasoning is bogus.

It’s a scary world when we trade freedom for safety. Once we start down that slippery slope there is no stopping place. There is always something that makes us unsafe. Taking a bath is unsafe, swinging on a swing is unsafe, riding in a car, using a paring knife, climbing a flight of stairs—all are unsafe. Once you give government the right to make you safe it can step into the smallest details of your life to force you. We narrowly missed a major “hit” on our rights this past year when a United Nations treaty was defeated that could have required every household in America to install expensive safety equipment on their staircases in case a handicapped person came to visit. This is the end result of “keeping us safe”.

When a nation decides to put safety first it abolishes liberty. All of us are now losing our right to privacy to find the few rotten apples in the barrel. Benjamin Franklin said it well: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”