Why You Should Be Skeptical of the Surveillance State

This is a letter sent by the FBI to Martin Luther King Jr. urging him to commit suicide.

 It's been said that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior; if this is true, then we should be very concerned about our government's surveillance programs.  In nearly every case when intelligence agencies are given the tools and very limited oversight these programs are abused. 

Perhaps one of the most notorious abuses in American history of the surveillance state was that of civil rights organizations and the anti-war movement between 1963 and 1968 by the FBI, NSA, CIA, and local law enforcement. The program was named "COINTELPRO" and was used by the FBI to gather intelligence and disrupt the activities of groups deemed "subversive" by J. Edgar Hoover.  If you combine irrational fears and/or malicious intent with the ability to gather large amounts of information with little or no accountability, you have a system ripe for abuse.  Abused it was, as seen above in the infamous "suicide letter" sent to Martin Luther King Jr. 

People tend to be ambivalent to surveillance as long as they're not the ones being watched.  The common refrain is "I've got nothing to hide so I've got nothing to worry about"  Let's analyze that:

• By your own logic, you can't keep a secret.  If you are keeping a secret then you are hiding something.
• Have you seen a therapist, doctor, lawyer, or priest?  Do you want those conversations public?
• What do you say about your boss and coworkers in private? Do you want those conversations getting out?
• Are you sure you're not breaking the law? According to the Library of Congress, we don't even have a count of how many federal laws there are, let alone state and local.  I wouldn't be so sure that you're not committing a felony right now.
• What weird porn are you watching?  Do you really want me to know about it?
• Even assuming that you do have nothing to hide, your data can be used in unintended and sometimes idiotic ways. There are a number of reports saying that drone strikes have been based on an analysis of meta-data. 

I'm probably one of the most boring people to the NSA and CIA.  However, I might not be so boring to local police or my employer, particularly if I'm politically active.  The rapid proliferation of technology means that soon local police departments, employers, and others will soon have the ability to collect, store, and poorly analyze tremendous amounts of data.  The technology will be here for better or worse, what is needed now is clear rules for the gathering, storage, and analysis of this information, because if history is any indicator, it will be abused.