Listen up, NSA — we want to be heard

It’s been a lively couple of weeks here in Cringeville, all hush-hush/cloak and dagger in the light of the ongoing revelations regarding the NSA and our nation’s industrial surveillance complex. I feel like I’ve written 347 blog posts about the topic, and there’s still more to talk about. But I promised my readers they’d have their say, and now it’s their turn.

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I’ll start with Nina, who found herself dejected by the leaks coming from Edward Snowden:

I am about beside myself with what is occurring and it seems to me we have no recourse to rectify what appears to me to be an impending train wreck. Yes, every person counts but unfortunately too many I believe are scared and can excuse away the erosion of our freedom to privacy, the individual and personal information. I seriously think we are on a whirlwind tour from the home of the free and brave, to the scared, watched and paranoid. That is definitely not something I want to sing to.

I’m not exactly warbling myself. But here comes reader J. A. with a different point of view:

I don’t think we should tell the US Government [to] sit back while bad guys, whether they be thieves or enemy countries, are actively cracking into other people’s computers and trying to milk as much information out of the Internet as they can and sometimes selling what they find. Our government HAS TO be aggressive in using electronic data to try to catch or at least slow down the bad guys.

There you have the two opposing sides of this argument, which you’ll find repeated about a billion times across the Internet. Cringe fan G. J. echoes that last viewpoint. When I asked if NSA data mining makes you feel more secure, he responded:

Great question, but the WRONG question! The real questions for U.S. citizens is How does America have real FREEDOM without REAL SECURITY? Do citizens want to go to bed at night knowing that their safety & security is provided by those patriots doing their jobs secretly? Don’t you believe that other foreign countries are performing the same analysis on the U.S.? Or does U.S. want a nano second Perl Harbor?

(I think he meant “Pearl” and not Perl, but I can’t be sure.)

Technology alone isn’t the answer

For reader J. B., the government’s intent to identify terrorists before they strike is a worthy one, but it’s going about it the wrong way. He compares the NSA’s PRISM program to the TSA: a lot of technology being thrown at a problem with very little to show for it.

You and I and everyone else knows there are better ways to do airport security than the random groping TSA does (billions served, but no terrorists yet!). Israel could give us lessons. But when the TSA is questioned, any alternatives are always too hard, especially when put next to shiny X-ray vision machines….

It’s too hard, and besides … Ooo look at this shiny PRISM we have over here, or rather, pay no attention to the sparkly, shiny database of everyone and everything.

Just seems since Al Gore invented the Internet, government workers of all types want the next shiny more than they want to do their jobs.

Reader D. D. found my reaction to the NSA leaks “rather subdued” and offered a long and eloquent rebuttal to my claim that “blanket surveillance is not by itself evil,” but “it does open the door to evil.” Here’s an edited snippet:

Data itself is neutral; it doesn’t have a social “face.” The act of data collection is not neutral; it implies first the power to intrude and second the power to use and disseminate the data without regard to the target.

You could easily say that a stone is neutral, but David was able to topple a giant. In the gun debate, the often-recited mantra is that “gun is neutral.” And of course it is; so what?

Blanket surveillance is an act — not a collection of benign bits; it is intrinsically evil in a free society because it implies unbridled power…. Even if they never do anything with the data, the threat is implicit.

They don’t have to kill you to abridge your freedom to be an active citizen.

On the other side, frequent correspondent T. B. accuses me of being hysterical and exaggerating to make a point. In his emails, he wrote:

I know the hysterics will all spout the old saw about those who trade freedom for security will have neither. Are you kidding me? Since when is someone knowing what number you call a violation of your freedom, unless of course, you want freedom to make calls without paying the bill?

After 9/11, a lot of people asked why we didn’t see this coming. People have spent decades dismantling U.S. security efforts and have the unmitigated gall to ask what is wrong with U.S. security? The next person who asks me that gets bitch-slapped….

I believe that 99% of people working for the three-letter agencies are good, honest, hard-working people doing their best to stop the next 9/11. Certainly I don’t see you out there doing what you can to make sure there’s no reoccurrence.

Totally agree about the 99 percent part. It’s the 1 percent that worries me.

Meanwhile, Cringester J. S. draws parallels between the NSA and some recently deposed regimes that also liked to keep a close eye on their citizens:

You know that Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator, tapped every phone in the country. And he had handwriting samples from everyone.

But that would never happen here, would it?

Uh-oh. Now they know what I think.

You and me both, brother.

It is, as I noted in one of my many posts about the topic, a conversation that has been long overdue. I appreciate the efforts my readers have made to take part. Let freedom ring.

Have we missed anything? Have your say about the NSA below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Listen up, NSA — we want to be heard,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.