Very Strange Bedfellows...

 

 

"Sometimes you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet"

 

 

Glenn Beck and Michael Moore? Really? Bill Kristol and Bill Maher? Double really? If nothing else, the recent NSA disclosure has (as the expression goes) "really shook things up." Truthfully, this is a discussion the nation should have had a long time ago. This morning, Howard Dean said something I actually agreed with (very rare). He said "The American people don't need to know the details that would compromise the program, but they certainly have the right to know they are being surveilled, {sic} even though metadata."

If the truth be known, we have been surveilled for quite a while now, to some degree or another. And it is not just by our government. One of the shows my wife and I liked to watch last season was Person of Interest. In that show, a very smart computer geek developed a "machine" for the government that was a wiz at facial recognition, and could predict behavior by trends. Cameras were everywhere, and the "machine" could easily keep track of everyone. In fact, the "machine" knew just about everything about everyone. Yes Mr. Orwell, we have taken your 1984 and raised the stakes considerably.

Many that "geek" this kind of stuff know there have been previous programs such as Echelon and Carnivore that also had the potential to be intrusive. Those programs, like PRISM, are run by our government. What really frightens me is this - with the technology being developed at a breakneck speed, could someone besides our government obtain metadata on us? All our data is out there right now, and with data sales, data sharing, data mining or whatever going on, I am afraid the only thing transparent right now is us.

Someone brought up a very good point yesterday - how secure is the data in the cloud? Very good question. My hunch is not very. In fact, it has been said the only secure method of communication is fiber optic. Everything else used for transmission or storage is vulnerable. Truthfully, it is probably only a matter of time before somebody figures out how to tap (undetected) into fiber optics.

The thought I had when listening to the 24x7 rehashing of Mr. Snowden and the NSA yesterday is this - this is the gun debate all over again. One can take the most sophisticated killing machine in the world, along with 10,000 rounds, and if there is no malice in the heart, it is just a machine doing no harm. Like with our guns, our technology today is here to serve us or imprison us. This amazing technology used by the wrong hands will be very harmful to us as well as our liberties. However, if this technology is used for non-truculent purposes, it remains just wonderful technology.

So, let the national debate continue. Let the strange bedfellows, who may agree on nothing else, form alliances due of which side of the divide they come down on. History is being written every day on this issue. This is important stuff. We all need to keep paying attention.