Say No to Mass Surveillance

This is another, in a long line of similar articles that I've read throughout the decades, that totally misunderstands the issue. Their premise that mass surveillance undermines or is incompatible with democracy is fundamentally flawed and shows a fundamental misunderstanding.

A secretive government that seeks to keep what it does and the information it collects private is what undermines a democracy. The phrase, "it's not the camera it's the database" really sums up this idea. It's this kind of secrets that are kept about the public which are the problem. When the default position of the government is that any information it collects is secret and private and you must go through an onerous process to request public records, that is the problem. When those public records request get denied by default because it is classified or it is potentially sensitive information. That is where the problem comes in.

Because when your default position is that all information collected by the government is freely available and any databases it's stored in and any search tools that government employees have are accessible to the public at any time for no cost, this changes what we consider as what is acceptable information for the government to collect and retain. This doesn't exclude the idea of extremely limited circumstances where highly sensitive information can be classified for a time, but those times should be short and reasonable.

When you hear the argument of, we have to keep this information secret because we don't want the criminals to know that they're being investigated. Do we have a presumption of innocence in this country? Because if we do then that would support the default position of you absolutely want to know when free people's are being investigated. If the goal is to stop criminal activity, then having this information be public on who is being investigated and what they're being investigated on serves that purpose.

What we should be saying no to is the government keeping secrets from its citizens. The rest will work itself out.