Surveillance and the Courts

Read: U.S. Defends Surveillance to 3 Skeptical Judges - New York Times

Currently the American court system is awash in a massive amount of litigious nonsense. But there are a few cases that may actually have an impact on your life: those challenging the Fed's secret wiretapping program.

There have been three such suits: The first, brought by the ACLU, was dismissed in Cincinnati last month. The other two are currently making their way through the US Court of Appeals, brought against AT&T and the US Government.

AT&T is being sued in a class-action suit for illegally providing a back door into their network for the NSA data mining and surveillance programs. When I read about this a few months ago I was dumbfounded; it reminded me of when Google resisted handing over search data to the Feds last year, when the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo didn't even put up a fight. I already hated AT&T for its various polyopolies that it shares with other wireless companies (Verizon, Sprint, etc) and cable providers (Qwest, Comcast, etc), because they are patently anti-consumer. But when I learned I was giving money to a company that knowing disregards the law in order to accommodate a government power-grab I was furious. This case has the best chance of the two to succeed because they have the sworn testimony of an AT&T whistle-blower who disclosed documents about the back door.

The US Government, on the other hand, is being sued by an Islamic foundation, which was mistakenly provided documents by the government that they had been under secret, illegal surveillance. This case takes the issue of government secrecy vs. transparency head on and is thus the more difficult case to win. Case in point: the documents provided to the charity were then reclaimed by the government and are now classified, meaning they cannot be used as evidence in the suit. This, of course, is the problem with any case challenging the surveillance program: all the evidence is classified. Convenient, no?

Here's why these cases are important: the NSA wiretapping program must be scaled back, or at least put under judicial oversight. (It is not. See here.) You cannot protect freedom by taking those freedoms away. I understand the need for a rigorous defense against terrorism and I that 9/11 was a terrible, terrible event. But you have to realize that in a free society, bad things are going to happen. They have to happen, just to prove that we really are free to make choices, even if those choices are whether or not to follow the law. No matter how many laws the government passes people will always break them, even if our cities are completely covered by closed-circuit television. (Like London. And is London crime-free? Of course not!)

Does this mean that we shouldn't try to prevent terrorism within our own borders? No, obviously not. The government should be working day and night to find and arrest terrorists (especially the home-grown terrorists). But we cannot sacrifice what America means in order to protect it. What good is fighting for freedom if we aren't even free?

I know it is hard to swallow the idea that we should expect and accept that there will be terrorist attacks on US soil in the future. But really, is it worth giving up your freedoms, inch by inch, to save a few thousand lives? In my opinion it is not. We risk our lives every day by living in a free society. Instead of wasting effort attempting to take away liberty at home we should be focusing on more effective, and less abrasive, foreign policy. The way to prevent terrorism isn't to listen to every call, read every email and record every website Americans visit. The way to prevent terrorism is work for, and create, a positive world; to make America a beloved member of the world community, a friend of the Muslim world; to reinstate a peaceful, humanitarian America. That way, fewer people will have any reason to kill Americans and we can live safely in a free country.