Big Brother is Watching You

By: Jared M. Grifoni, Esq.

The battle for privacy and freedom from constant government intrusion in our lives is never-ending. It has gotten to the point here in the United States where privacy means you have something to hide and therefore you deserve even less of it than you had before. Our lives have become an open book for the world to see. Websites like Facebook and other social networking tools allow us to provide up to the second details on our whereabouts, our physical appearance, our biographical details, our family, and our political leanings. This type of sharing and openness can be wonderful in some instances like connecting with relatives or meeting new, like-minded friends or connecting with a stranger from halfway across the globe. Social networking also played a large part in communications and coordination during the Arab Spring revolutions over the past 8 months or so. The positive impacts of free association and unfiltered communication are not just limited to individuals on social networking sites but those principles are the bedrock foundation to what has driven positive growth for entire nations throughout the world: free trade, peace, and by extension, prosperity. Thomas Jefferson, who was one of the main inspirations for this blog, was a great advocate for those principles. In his first inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1801, President Jefferson expressed what he believed to be the essential principles of our government,

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.”

Like with most other aspects of freedom, liberty, and personal responsibility, the openness fostered in individuals and nations who accept these principles at face value can also lead to abuse and perversion of purpose if we do not remain careful. Even Jefferson, who wrote so much of the protections of our civil liberties into our founding documents realized this when he advised that,

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

While we have embraced freedom and openness on the internet as we enjoyed all of its benefits (technological and otherwise) it may have led to many of us having let down our guard, our vigilance that Jefferson warned us about many years ago. The enemies of freedom and individual liberty, in many cases solely in the name of security theater, have been utilizing the free flow of information and technological advances in order to rapidly deploy a surveillance state here in America that would not have been possible 10 or even 20 years ago. In the last year alone, the state of Florida made $63 million dollars selling people’s names, addresses, dates of birth, and a list of the vehicles they drive to data mining companies like Lexus Nexus and Shadow Soft. Under what auspices does Florida justify this gross invasion of privacy? Public safety. Lexus Nexus having access to my personal information assists public safety how? Luckily, our court system designed to be a bulwark against legislative or executive tyranny, will surely find this behavior unconstitutional and put a halt to any further sale of information, right? Not according to a Florida judge who has already rubber stamped this action.

Who is going to protect us from these blatant violations of our Fourth Amendment rights? We know that we would be foolish to hope that executive or legislative branch would step into the breach as those branches long ago lost their way but now we consistently see the judicial branch foregoing their responsibility as well. The media? When the First Amendment was drafted the Founding Fathers envisioned a strong, free, and independent press that would act as a watchdog to hold government, elected officials, and others responsible for their actions. Instead of the watchdog envisioned by the Founders the media has become a lapdog to the corrupt big government surveillance state. The media has even gone so far as to exploit the horrific murder of a small boy in New York City as a reason to introduce more and more surveillance camera systems on our public streets. Of course the politicians can’t resist getting involved in situations like these so they have proposed tax incentives to businesses to install more cameras. Pay no mind to the fact that Britain, a nation with one surveillance camera for every twelve people, has seen no reduction in crime since the cameras have been utilized.

In Massachusetts, the state plans to create a “Big Brother” database to map each drivers location history (stored indefinitely, of course) by collecting thousands of license plate data every hour by police cruiser mounted surveillance systems. These systems don’t just store license plate data from suspected criminals but from all citizens (I guess we are all criminals now) so that in the future the data may be referenced just to make sure you weren’t in any unapproved locations or meeting with any domestic terrorist supporters of Ron Paul or libertarianism. As if cameras and license plate scanners weren’t enough, more and more police departments are getting ready to utilize facial recognition and iris-scanning devices that can be attached to the Apple iPhone in order to accurately identify subjects quickly and easily.

If it weren’t enough that the government is obsessed with spying on your every move they are now looking for you to do some of their work for them by ratting out your friends, neighbors, and coworkers if they exhibit any suspicious behaviors like using a video camera, talking to police, wearing dark hooded sweatshirts, or using a cell phone to record video. The Department of Homeland Security “See something, say something” video is embedded below if you can stomach it.

With much of the public lulled to sleep, a lapdog media, and a government with a clear interest in monitoring virtually every aspect of its citizens lives we are going to continue to see more and more outrageous assaults against our privacy like in the above cases. In order to stop these gross violations of our rights we need more individuals, groups, and parties to stand firm in their support and advocacy of the rights recognized by the Fourth Amendment to be secure in our persons, homes, and property. But we no longer have the luxury of sitting back and waiting or attempting to solely rely on others to protect us from these violations. Individual actions will inevitably inspire more individual actions. Once we accept that we need to stand up for ourselves and refuse to submit any further we will see that it is not long before we are no longer standing alone.