A typical response to those opposed to the surveillance state is to say, "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide." Here it is in its most-naked form, but related responses include "You're safer when someone's watching over you" and "Why do you hate America?"
This "just don't do anything wrong" response is based on flawed views of human nature and privacy. Humans naturally do things wrong. Everyone, every day. The only way this isn't true is when we respond to our failures to meet our ideals by reducing our ideals. As pointed out in Jedediah Purdy's For Common Things, many people have a false understanding of hypocrisy which leads them to abandon all ambitions beyond their current capacities lest they be considered hypocrites. Think of the standard TV-character Christian: he says he's for morality, but he does immoral things! Hypocrite!
I contend that not only is it not hypocrisy to advocate behavior you don't meet yourself, but it is proper. This is how you become a better person. For instance, a smoker will never become a non-smoker without first recognizing that being a non-smoker is superior to being a smoker, and then trying repeatedly to become a non-smoker. Along the way, the person is a smoker who says non-smoking is desirable. To many this is hypocrisy. In reality, this is improvement taking place in real time.
When we refuse to reduce our ideals, we will spend time doing things wrong. And the next problem comes from a misunderstanding of the proper role of government vis-a-vis wrong-doing. It is improper for government to seek to end wrong-doing. Not even God does that; He expects us to reduce it ourselves. Government does not exist to make us better people, but to protect us from damages caused by others' wrong-doing. If I cook my own food with poison, that's one thing. If I cooked food for others with poison, that's quite another. Because of expanded socialism, nearly every decision is now the proximate cause of someone else's harm. Me poisoning myself is now seen as within the purview of all fellow citizens, as it will raise my medical bills, which they pay. Abdicated responsibility for the self comes with loss of freedom for the self.
So now we think the fact that everyone is doing something wrong should change, and we think it's within the proper scope of government to bring about that change. This is how we end up thinking the surveillance state is a good thing. But that still leaves the issue of privacy for the preservation of intimacy. In the abstract you're all aware that I have sex with my wife (four kids and all), but I've never invited any of your over to watch. (Yet.) Removing my ability to control what I share with whom forces a standard level of intimacy for all interactions: there's nothing I can share with only my closest people, and there's no one I can keep from my most intimate experiences. It is a misapplication of democratic equality, making me be as close to anonymous government observers as I am to my wife. It places government at the pinnacle of my relationships by allowing it to horn in on any relationship I have which I might have otherwise placed higher. Verily, the government your god is a jealous god, and will brook no slighting.
Privacy is not un-American, nor is it the mark of someone doing something wrong that requires outside correction. It is necessary to preserve the logical framework for self-improvement and to preserve a hierarchy of relationships that does not place government at the apex. The preservation of both being desirable, the surveillance state is undesirable.
via oneofthebest
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