Because I'm the type who calls shit when I smell it, regardless of whether it came from the anus of an elephant or a donkey. Fake outrage is fake outrage is fake outrage, and it sounds silly no matter who's getting frothy about it. In this case, it's privacy. Or the illusion thereof.
Ever since some guy named Edward Snowden showed us what's been common knowledge to anyone paying attention for almost 20 years now, many on the left have gotten a lit stick of dynamite shoved up their collective asses about privacy. The reason I call this fake outrage is because privacy as we know it has been hanged in the village square since approximately 1995, when the internet and cellphones started becoming affordable and accessible to people who aren't the Koch brothers. It's especially dead now when cellphones and VOIP service have been pushing the landline into extinction since at least 2011.
See, when you make a call on a cell phone, your message is not confined to one very tiny physical space that you need some know-how to hack into (a practice called "phreaking"). With a cellphone, especially in the smartphone age, there are a shitload of apps out there that do all the work for you and allow you to listen in on live calls without the other person's knowledge. And this is not just limited to intentional spying. "Spying" of the accidental type (called "crosstalk") can also happen due to signal interference, especially in large cities. Which is why if you're doing telephone banking on your cell, enter the numbers on the keypad if you can instead of speaking them. And also why many banks and other services no longer have the IVR speak your entered information back to you.
And we haven't even gotten to the internet yet. This is just your phone.
With the internet, you're even more exposed because you're already going through a couple of middlemen to communicate at all. The first is your ISP, of course. The second is the server supporting whatever website or e-mail you use.
See, the internet is little more than a shitload of computers all over the world talking to each other. Every website you visit is another computer. Your e-mail address is another computer (two, actually; one for incoming mail and one for outgoing). A computer that someone else owns and has full access to. Sending an e-mail is not like sending a letter; when you send a letter, there is exactly one copy of your message that gets physically delivered to the recipient. When you send an e-mail, your message is copied to your e-mail provider's outgoing mail server, then sent to the incoming mail server for your recipient, which he or she then downloads the message from or views the server copy depending on the provider.
These servers (basically gigantic monstrosity computers) are maintained by a team of people who, by agreeing to the terms of service, you give permission to access anything on them, anytime. This is why it's never ever recommended to send important shit like credit card information or passwords through e-mail; there are way too many people who could potentially get their hands on it.
Even on social media sites that allow filters, such as Facebook and Livejournal, anything you post online is already in someone else's hands by virtue of how the internet works. That post gets copied to another server.
But let's pretend you're one of those technophobes who has no computer or cellphone or tablet or whatever, and you're reading this because one of your friends printed it for you. Your worry is those evil gub'mint cameras at busy intersections that are watching you, not unlike those two creepy statues at the entrance to Cirith Ungol. Your outrage isn't fake because how dare The Man invade your privacy like that, right? You're just walking down the street!
Well...yeah. You're walking down the street, in public. If you think you have an expectation of privacy at a busy intersection, your outrage is actually more fake than anyone worried about their phone calls or e-mails getting snooped on. Because you are literally within view of hundreds of people, and there's a good chance half of those people are carrying a high-definition zoom camera with a constant internet connection in their hand.
That camera on the traffic light or street lamp? The guy behind it doing the watching doesn't give a shit about you. He's not going to notice you unless you're doing something that camera was meant to catch (speeding, running a red light, driving like a coked-up ostrich, etc.).
That's really the part that makes this outrage so baseless and sad. Not only can private citizens snoop your calls and e-mails and surreptitiously snap your picture far more effectively than the federal government and with far more malicious intent (see: creepshots, Scientology), but nobody in the government cares about your day-to-day activities unless they are illegal. Yes, I realize that people want their privacy and they don't like the long arm of the government getting all up in their Kool-Aid. But let's be realistic here: you've likely been spied on by private companies working on federal contracts for the last 15-20 years. What terrible injustices have happened in your life in that time that you can directly and verifiably attribute to government surveillance?
The problem is that people like feeling significant. Being snooped on is flattering in a stupid, twisted way because it means they're important enough to pay attention to. And they have a real problem with someone taking the wind out of their sails and being told that no, really, the Feds don't care how long you talked about the Game of Thrones finale with your friends last week. Or where you went for lunch on Tuesday. Sure, they can listen to your calls, watch you at an intersection, read your e-mails. And they're going to be bored out of their collective skulls because you aren't doing anything that warrants a second glance. Sure, it may be a violation of the 4th amendment, but 1) this isn't going away, and 2) it's petty and insignificant compared to shit like TSA digitally removing your clothes and groping you at the airport. You don't have to like it, no. But there's something to be said for picking your battles wisely rather than succumbing to knee-jerk reactionary bullshit.
Privacy as we've always known it is dead. Whether you're buying coffee, banking, taking the bus, talking to your friends online or on the phone, texting your significant other, or even just walking down 5th Ave., you are likely being recorded in some fashion. And if you hadn't even noticed it until Edward Snowden pointed it out, it's not likely to make any difference whatsoever in the rest of your time on the planet, either.
Why? Because your life is not a Will Smith movie. Except maybe for that part at the end of Men In Black II where we're the mold in some alien's locker room.
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