A new national survey by the Cato Institute finds that a pretty shocking
percentage of young Americans are totally fine with the government of
the United States, installing literal surveillance cameras in every household in
an effort to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.
Look, before we get to the depressing numbers,
it's worth breathing in a sigh of relief as we take a broader view of how Americans
in general feel about the government monitoring us.
The exact same survey reveals that three in four Americans luckily
oppose installing government surveillance cameras in all homes.
So you can take a look at that pie chart, and it shows you that while 75%
of Americans oppose such creepy big government measures, Big Brother measures
only 14% of survey takers are in favor of installing the cameras in people's homes.
10% apparently haven't thought too much about it and
answered that they don't know.
Okay, now, once the responses from the survey takers were divided by age,
things start to get worrying, to say the least.
Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984 style
in home government surveillance cameras.
In fact, three in 1020 9% of Americans under the age of 30 favor
the government installing surveillance cameras in every household in
order to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.
Support declines with age dropping to 20% among 30 to 44 year olds and
dropping considerably to 6% among those over the age of 45.
There were other pretty shocking findings in this
survey when the responses were broken down based on race.
For instance, those who have been most concerned with systemic racism
are actually the most receptive toward home surveillance by the very government
they accuse of creating systems of oppression.
It just doesn't really make much sense.
Cato found that 25% of Hispanic and 33% of black respondents favor
the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to
reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.
Only 11% of Asians and 9% of whites feel the same way.
Now, I remember the outrage liberals expressed after discovering that
the Bush administration was engaging in warrantless wiretapping on Americans.
They were similarly outraged when Edward Snowden blew the whistle on
the National Security Agency indiscriminately spying on Americans.
But today's, liberals are apparently different,
because among various ideological categories, they happen to be the most
likely to support government surveillance in our homes.
Take a look at this 19% of liberals and 18% of moderates approve of
government cameras in our homes, meaning that combined put the numbers together,
37% of liberals and moderates would greenlight the surveillance.
[LAUGH] That's insane.
Those who are very liberal or
conservative are actually the least likely to support it at 9%.
So look, even Ryan Grimm, who was a reporter over at the Intercept,
sheds light on this phenomenon by sharing a personal anecdote.
On Twitter he wrote the following, just anecdotally when we at the Intercept,
do these kinds of stories on civil liberties that have been our bread and
butter since the founding of the site.
They just don't land or travel with readers like they used to.
Look, I totally get that tons of people have grown accustomed to intentionally
oversharing details about their personal lives on social media.
But however misguided that behavior might be, it's behavior that people
are opting into and perhaps being watched and filmed endlessly by our neighbors,
businesses, and local governments while we're in public spaces
has lulled people into normalizing, indiscriminate surveillance.
Look, neither I nor
the Cato Institute really know why there's a growing number of Americans who
think that Big Brother watching us in our living rooms would somehow keep us safe.
But look, not to get too harsh, if your brain has rotted so severely that you're
under the impression that the government filming Americans in their own homes would
somehow fight crime, maybe you should consider that there are plenty of crimes
captured on camera in public spaces that maybe should be dealt with first.
Also consider the panic that set in among large swaths of the electorate in
2016 as it became clear that Trump won the presidential election.
Would the pro surveillance squad be down with Trump or
Gollum spawn Stephen Miller spying in on what you're up to at home?
That's the thing about Americans stupidly giving up their freedoms over promises
of government protection.
They tend to forget that their favored political party won't be in charge
forever.
And their role in concentrating power among government officials only helps to
fast track us toward authoritarianism.
And learning about history is important because it's the only way we can
prevent repeating the same mistakes.
You don't even have to go back far to see how our federal government has abused its
power, especially when it comes to surveillance.
The Bush administration was able to increase its power while decimating
the civil liberties that we were enjoying through the Patriot Act following the 911
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
Americans were terrified of another attack, and
the Bush administration exploited that fear to pass the Patriot Act.
But Bush went even further with warrantless wiretapping,
meaning that the government could spy on Americans without probable cause and
without obtaining a warrant from a judge.
In fact, back then, ABC News had reported on this.
This is a piece from October 8 of 2008, and
back then they wrote this despite pledges by President George W.
Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US.
Citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on, as they called, friends and
family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked
at the giant National Security Agency center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.
Now the piece also highlighted the two individuals who were blowing
the whistle on this.
One of them you're about to hear about Adrienne Kinne,
a 31 year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military
program at the NSA's backhaul at fort Gordon between November 2001 to 2003.
She said that US Military officers, American journalists, and
American aid workers were routinely intercepted and collected on,
as they called their offices or homes in the United States.
This was taking place as they were traveling abroad and calling into
the United States to connect with their family members and their loved ones.
Now, Kinne described the contents of these calls as personal,
private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape,
or form associated with anything to do with terrorism, that is what she said.
But by the way, it gets worse.
Let's get to the other whistleblower.
Another intercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist David Falk, says he and
others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared
salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting officemates
to certain timecodes of cuts that were available on each operator's computer.
Hey, check this out.
Falk says he would be told there's good phone sex.
There's some pillow talk, pull up this call.
It's really funny, go check it out.
It would be some colonel making pillow talk, and we would say, wow,
this was crazy.
And you know what he's right, it was crazy.
It was crazy that the government was able to spy in on all Americans
indiscriminately without even obtaining a warrant from a judge.
In other words, these people unsurprisingly abused their power, and
they did so under the false pretenses of keeping Americans safe.
We have to look to history in order to learn valuable lessons from our past.
The 14th amendment to the Constitution makes clear that Americans should not be
subjected to unreasonable searches.
In fact, let's read from it right now.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and
seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but
upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation describing
the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
I mean, it's pretty clear there needs to be probable cause.
Bush administration threw that out the window during his time in office, and
the Obama administration, of course, did nothing about it once he came into power.
But let's put all of that aside, the politics of it aside,
the real issue here is that when you give the government too much power,
when you give away your civil liberties because you believe that
the government's gonna protect you, it's gonna backfire.
Luckily, there are wonderful protections for Americans in our Constitution, and
we have to protect our civil liberties.
Trading our freedoms for shallow promises of safety didn't make sense in the past,
and it definitely doesn't make sense today either.