When I began following free speech controversies, I was a First Amendment absolutist. Now I’m something less comfortable. I still think free speech is a good idea, certainly better than alternatives I’ve come across, but I’ve learned that everyone has a line that can’t be crossed, a word that sticks in the craw, an image that feels like a kick to the gut. The First Amendment, bless its little heart, always eventually lets us down (self-protection is innate, tolerance an acquired taste), so how can I not be bothered by its limitations?

This is a running log of arguments over free speech – some silly, some funny, some hard -- because free speech is all about argument. Being able to speak our mind makes us feel good and it's essential to real democracy and fairness. Yet, in the end, one of the best reasons to keep our speech rights intact is that we miss them when they’re gone.

Friday, June 7, 2013

I spy with my little eye

Strangely, the pile-up of news about the government's intrusive domestic spying (a redundancy, probably: is any domestic spying not intrusive?) stirs a bit of optimism in me.  I mean, this has been going on for a while, even if most Americans have been either ignorant of it or ignoring it.  I wrote about the offending clause in the PATRIOT Act -- the dreaded article 215 -- in my last book and since it takes me forever to finish a book, that's got to be a looong time ago. (I'm pissed off about the IRS bullying tea partyistas too, but that's a different kettle of govt intrusion & overreach.)

The concern then was the FBI demanding records from libraries and bookstores.  Not to worry, said then-Atty Gen. John Ashcroft, we have better things to do than track who takes out what from the library.  Whereupon, the FBI proceeded to demand records of who took out what from the library and, in the bargain, gagged librarians from even acknowledging it was going on.  Four librarians in Connecticut sued and the FBI eventually backpedaled, but you can bet that didn't stop similar fishing expeditions.  When PATRIOT came up for reauthorization in 2011, what had been dubbed "the library records provision" -- which is apparently what the feds now claim allows then to gather records on who Googles or Netflixes what -- was tucked safely in place.

Technology has outstripped the legislation, as it always does, so we're now finding out about reams of usage records of Verizon customers stored somewhere in the government's vast and secret data mines and the phones of AP reporters being tapped after they embarrassed the government, which, to my way of thinking, is part of their job.  The spy stories will no doubt continue to grow in the coming days, weeks, months....as long as someone keeps paying attention.  Which is my point.

Maybe now that we are paying attention, there will be enough outrage that government spying on citizens with no cause for suspicion will be dialed back.  (I'm not so optimistic as to think it will be ended.)  It's happened before, post-Watergate, for instance, and the government can occasionally be embarrassed into doing the right thing.  Here's hoping.  And complaining.  And cheering for those -- Glenn Greenwald take a bow -- who bring this crap to light.  It's what we've got going for us.
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