What Have You Got to Hide?

1: centralized control by an autocratic authority

2: the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority

What have you got to hide?  Don’t you want to be safe?  Those are the justifications for an ever growing immense government oversight of our every day lives.  I will answer with the same questions – What did the Jews have to hide in Nazi Germany?  What did the intellectuals and religious figures have to hide in China under Mao?  What did people have to hide in Cambodia from Pol Pot?  What did the Chinese have to hide from the Japanese in prior to and during WW2?  The list of atrocities that started with gathering information on citizens in a database or file system under the guise of national safety is endless.  Did any of those people end up safer as a result of their government’s efforts?

Freedom means having your own privacy and decision making, irrespective of whether you have “something to hide” or not?  The United States was founded on the priniciples that government derives its power from the people, not the other way around.  As in the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, or Thomas Paine’s rallying cry in Common Sense, that government must serve the people.  When it stops, we not only have the right, but the obligation to rise up and stop it.

In America every phone call, financial transaction, movement or communication you have is monitored.  It is increasingly difficult to hide your location, your activities or even your image.  Cameras are everywhere.  GPS in your phones, cars, even credit cards or grocery store discount cards often track your location.  The IRS has been caught targeting people who disagree with the government philosophically.  Private information was released by the EPA on farmers and their families to environmental groups that hate them.  People with guns had their locations printed in the paper and online.  The NSA maintains a data base of every electronic imprint you have, including social media and phone calls.  All financial transactions are tracked electronically.  Satellites, even civilian ones like Google Earth, can watch you in addition to traffic cameras.

It is not just the United States.  In other countries women are not allowed to appear in public, to get an education, drive a car, or even claim rape.  Children are turned into soldiers for their governments.  100,000 Christians are killed each year for their religious beliefs.  The high hopes of writers like Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry of a utopian future are nowhere in evidence.  I am a positive person, yet increasingly I see very little way to turn back the hands of time as we march inexorably to totalitarian world government.

I am tired of hearing about the evil private sector or the rich, who have to “give their fair share” to the government.  Government should be limited and serve the people, but instead, we all serve to provide taxes for ever growing bureaucracy.  Government is like Jabba the Hutt, growing immense in fat while we serve as slaves for its amusement.  Government wastes money then blames a lack of funding for poor oversight.  It lies to us, but then tells us not to worry, that there are secret safe guards in place – to trust them.

I never thought in America the President would be able to kill any American without trial or due process with a drone strike.  That any American suspected by the government of being a danger can be arrested and held offshore in secret for life with no review or appeal.  That all our personal information is taken and in some cases used against us or given to our enemies by our own government, even though we are not the subject of a valid investigation.  That reporters and their families and friends would be subjected to wire taps and investigation based on doing their job.  That terrorists would attack on a military base and it would be called “workplace violence.”  That people in our embassy would ask for help and we would stand down for an entire day and let them all die.

I served proudly in the military but I am ashamed of our country today.  We spend more time and resources spying on our own citizens than we do real threats.   We spend more time and resources helping countries who hate us than we do helping our own citizens.  For the first time in my life, I am publicly ridiculed for my religious beliefs.  The IRS is asking people to justify what they say in their own prayers, asking them why they pray, and exchanging tax approval for curtailing freedom of speech.  They are now running ads on TV for seniors to “keep watch and inform on each other for Medicare fraud.”  Wow.  Never thought I would see the government asking for us to watch each other and inform.  It is starting.

Absolute power brings absolute corruption.  People are imperfect, especially in government spending other people’s money, and they have to be reined in from time to time to limit abuses.  Instead, the “Arab spring”, the resurgent nationalism in Russia, the rampant flood of immigrants to Western Europe and America where they do not share common values, and other moves all are leading to more government control, not less.  We used to see the proletariat rise up against abuse.  Now they rise up to seize power so they can do the abuse themselves.

I hope that this trend reverses.  As a futurist, I can only imagine the dark future mankind faces if governments grow too powerful and control all resources, and labor.