It is really tragic that we have reached a point where something so wonderful as Groklaw cannot effectively function.
Nearly 200 years ago, de Tocqueville asked why the American experiment in self-government succeeded while its French counterpart led to the guillotine, mob excesses, and ultimate tyranny and he gave a complex answer whose core was that private moral restraints in the populace served to check the unbounded passions in people that lead to oppression. In other words, the private life that each of us leads will hugely influence the way we are governed.
Governments are always ready to grab the greatest degree of power that the people will give them. That is the default because it is hard-wired into the human condition. And this is the major factor not grasped by those today who assume that society is evolving to a point that, if only right-thinking people with good motives are given enough power over our lives, they will somehow magically transform society for the good through government action. In reality, if any persons - right-thinking or not - are given largely unchecked authority over our lives, abuses will inevitably follow. As they gather huge amounts of power, their purpose in life becomes to guard that power jealously and to increase it as opportunities permit. No bureau has ever abolished itself. Farm programs from the depression era thrive today as ever, though the logic for their existence has long since vanished. Politicians of all stripes promote expanded budgets for their own areas of preferred government expansion and spend money they don't even have in vast quantities with little or no accountability to the people they supposedly serve.
This is why it is vital in a free society that its people be educated and morally grounded to value their rights as individuals and to resist and distrust unchecked authority in the state. Do we have that today? Perhaps, but only in a very weakened form. Many people today do not even give pause over the idea that the government claims huge amounts of unchecked power, whether it is to fight terrorists or to expand social programs. There is very little residue in our society of the old-fashioned principled belief that it is wrong to have vast centralized power with very few checks upon it. In her sign off piece, PJ notes: "Not that anyone seems to follow any laws that get in their way these days. Or if they find they need a law to make conduct lawful, they just write a new law or reinterpret an old one and keep on going. That's not the rule of law as I understood the term." This is lamentable but it is a mere symptom, and not the cause, of our ills. Politicians make the law as they go, with no accountability, only because they are allowed to do so by those whom they govern. And, if someone already has vast power over you, it is but a small step to extend that power in a technological age by using technology to spy upon, intimidate, and control people. Why, when these leaders are allowed to lord it over us as they see fit, should they suddenly develop scruples in gathering information that only serves to enhance their power to do what we are already letting them do without so much as a peep of principled opposition?
Privacy is in significant peril, and it is a serious loss when Groklaw goes down over this issue. But assaults on privacy are but a symptom of a deeper malady as modern society increasingly believes that it can hand over massive forms of unchecked government to its politicians in the naive belief that such power can be used wisely if only we have right-thinking leaders at the helm. The answer, as de Tocqueville noted years ago, is not to place faith in leaders but rather to take personal responsibility in our lives and to curtail the powers of those who govern. I guess we shall just have to wait and see if this is possible today.
In the meantime, we can praise those who fight the good fight, and PJ has been a supreme example of this. Tireless, talented, and astute, she has been a wonderful force for good over the past decade. May she find a powerful new outlet for those talents as she moves forward, even in a difficult environment.
Last night Thom Hartmann interviewed Ron Paul in his Conversations with Great Minds segment. Paul's take on all of this is that what's happening is already illegal according to the constitution, but that we aren't able to enforce the law because corporations, special interests and political lapdogs write their own laws. I'm still not sure what my stance on Paul is but I like his core political belief of nonintervention. It's similar to the golden rule but for politics, so for example if you spy on americans, you infringe their property right, in this case by stealing their privacy. An individual should be able to sue the NSA for that and win, setting a precedent for the rest of the population. The fact that they can't shows just how corrupt the system truly is. I'm not a libertarian but he made me stop and think:
The efforts aren't illegal, in the Constitutional sense (U.S.), so long as the searches are deemed reasonable. Two branches of government (Executive and Judicial) have generally been in agreement that searches for the purposes of National Security (very broadly defined) are reasonable. And Congress has not passed laws to the contrary. In fact, Congress has been exceedingly pliant on these issues. They've been passing laws that not only make these searches legal, but exempting Telecoms from any lawsuits for their cooperation. A different Executive (say, Rand Paul) could effect many changes on his own. But history suggests that, when given War Powers, Executives of both parties have been very careful to relinquish that authority. And Rand Paul will have a hard enough time in his own party.
> And Congress has not passed laws to the contrary.
Congress did, in fact, pass the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 "to the contrary", expressly prohibiting (and criminalizing) many of the types of searches (both physical and electronic) for the stated purposes of "National Security" that had been done prior to the Act.
Of course, the executive was successful in getting Congress to remove many of the restrictions in FISA in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, including retroactive immunity for private firms that had cooperated in the executive's violations of FISA, but then, if the scope of the surveillance in violation of FISA was as broad as current surveillance appears to be, it may well have been the source of the leverage to get the change through Congress.
Sorry, by "Congress" I wasn't referring to the version in place 35 years ago in the post-Watergate Era.
As you note, the Congress of today has rolled back FISA and added new, more pliant laws (e.g., Patriot Act).
We are in a different era where all three branches are gladly pushing the reasonable clause far beyond the intended use. That's the result and it is Constitutional because all three branches say so.
> Sorry, by "Congress" I wasn't referring to the version in place 35 years ago in the post-Watergate Era.
I am not sue that the "version" of Congress has changed as much as the attitude of the people toward the government. While abstract anti-government rhetoric is perhaps even more common now than in the post-Watergate Era, specifically directed outrage at particular abuses like the (far more pervasive today than in the Watergate Era) use of national security resources for surveillance of the population (and not just foreign communication) is far more muted.
So why can't, let's say, German citizens sue Google and alike in Germany? I am pretty sure many foreigners feel that some NSA programs are unconstitutional according to other countries' constitution.
What if many foreign citizens from many countries sue internet companies for assisting the Big Brother in spying on these foreign citizens?
> Many people today do not even give pause over the idea that the government claims huge amounts of unchecked power, whether it is to fight terrorists or to expand social programs
These are vastly different issues. Providing social programs doesn't infringe on anyone's rights except by taxation, which the government is constitutionally entitled to perform to any degree it wants. In contrast, the tactics employed to supposedly fight terrorism often impact rights which are protected by law.
The funny thing is that they aren't. They're all about power. Power given to the few to control the many. Social programs just have that sugary coating that voters like to swallow, but the rotten corruption of power is at the center of all and its effects inevitably dominate.
That's the opposite of what's happening. Money (power) is flowing from the few (the rich) to the many (the poor who actually use government services and social programs).
Bam! ... and there you demonstrated exactly how they fool you. You're thinking about the social programs themselves - the bait or the distraction.
I'm talking about governmental power: the power to control vast amounts of money, the power to reward your friends and relatives, the power to snoop on your innocent citizens and punish your enemies through the force of law and perhaps physical violence.
They offer you trinkets, you vote for them, they gain power, they spend money they don't have, they abuse their power, they live like kings, they blame others for their eternal failures to implement utopia, they claim that if only you would elect them again and give them more of the money of the evil rich, they could solve all of society's problems... wash, rinse, repeat.
"Doing good things is how they get you! They get re-elected by doing good things, and that gives them the voter support to do bad things. Down with good things!"
Promising good things is not equal to "good things". Doing a few good things is really easy when you have shitloads of other peoples' money to work with - but even then, they fail over and over to deliver what they actually promise.
Detroit's city managers promised and did a whole lot of good things, didn't they? They were a regular Santa Claus with the handouts.
Having more people on the government dole actually makes the problem worse. We need less government, as little as possible, and more self reliance. Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient be rid of it.
If you give a person / family just enough money to live off of, in exchange for their promise not to productively contribute and achieve (with the pride, joy, and happiness that can go with that) ... you have effectively turned them into slaves.
A permanent welfare mentality = mental slavery. And tell me: are the people who are being "helped" happy, in the end? Do they live in peace? Travel their neighborhoods, talk to them in person, and you'll see the answer yourself. Yet sadly, they're convinced if they can vote for a little more money, and vote to take it away from certain others, then they'll be happy.
The system does little to truly help them. That's why it's disgusting.
Yea, it's really annoying how libertarians always conflate the government's abuse of military and police powers with its role in moderating the excesses of capitalism. As a lefty political activist it makes it hard to form alliances on issues that we agree on.
Can you comment on the difference between the 1st and 4th Amendment? It seems the current issues we face are reducible to the broadest interpretations of "reasonable" searches under National Defense claims from the Executive branch. It's hard for me to see how the Public has much recourse here. Even if they were to convince their representatives to pass new laws, this still seems like a fight between the other two branches. The Executive branch could ignore those laws under Executive privilege claims. And the Court seems more than willing to abide by that use of Executive power.
Am I missing something? Short of a generational movement to move the Court on civil rights toward information privacy (akin perhaps to medical privacy claims), I really don't see an alternative. The Executive branch has every incentive to maintain their power here (and argue as such under the War Powers). And the Court seems all too willing to cede that authority.
While the parent post is the #1 comment right now on this article, it is clearly hyperbole.
Blatant Intimidation and Control is not what the US Government does. If you want proof, compare the US handling of the Washington Post to the British handling of The Guardian. The Washington Post and New York times have been free to publish everything. The Guardian however, just had spooks smash their computers this past weekend.
The US affords the press freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of debate. There are no spooks here that are trying to shut anything down, anywhere. At worst, we have some secret conversation that happened between Lavabit's owners and the FBI. No one forced anyone to shut anything down however, most certainly not in this Groklaw case.
Abuses that have come to light are all under-the-table sort of affairs. Metadata collection is not technically data, and therefore isn't afforded 4th amendment protections. (See Smith v Maryland). Information gathered from the NSA technically can't be used in a prosecution case, so the DEA unofficially changes the story before it gets told to a judge (see Parallel Construction).
Some laws are working, but there are cracks in the foundation which is leading to an overall breakdown in trust. If anything, viewing the news recently has shown me that these agencies are very interested in following the _letter_ of the law, although not necessarily the spirit of the law.
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History of the US is a sobering example, of the Government constantly giving up powers in favor of its citizens. Need I remind people of the Office of Censorship in 1940s, where Government agents read every single mail that was going across the mail system? Need I remind people of COINTELPRO in 1960s, the program the FBI used to spy on Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr ?
The US Government has historically listened to the pressures of its citizenry, and changed. It is not the time to lose hope, but the time to make your voice heard. FBI and NSA, as intimidating as they are, are run by US Citizens first and foremost.
> History of the US is a sobering example, of the Government constantly giving up powers in favor of its citizens. Need I remind people of the Office of Censorship in 1940s, where Government agents read every single mail that was going across the mail system? Need I remind people of COINTELPRO in 1960s, the program the FBI used to spy on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr?
Imagine you're in a relationship with someone, and they abuse your trust. You call them out on it, and they agree to stop. Then later they start abusing your trust again, in a different way. You call them out on it and they stop. And this keeps happening.
Would you praise them for continually "giving up" their power over you when asked? Or would you consider yourself to be in an abusive relationship?
I just think it's a bit strange to view a succession of abuses of power as the government continuing to "permanently" reduce its power. How many more scandals do we need before the government has "permanently" reduced its power to the point where we won't need any more "permanent" reductions?
Governments are composed of people. The people who ran the government in the 1940s no longer did by 1960s... and the people who ran the government in the 1960s no longer do today.
Your example is fallacious to begin with, because you assume a single entity is responsible for PRISM, Office of Censorship, and COINTELPRO. No, they are different: different governments of different eras... facing different problems even.
As new people enter and leave government, they will be prone to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. And it is the citizen's duty to continue to step it up and hold it in check. It takes work to keep the country together, everyone knows that fact.
If you cannot see the collection of people working together here, then you will fail to make progress. It is important to know who is making the mistakes and where additional oversight needs to be placed.
EDIT: In particular, Office of Censorship does not exist anymore. It has been completely shut down, the agency is dead period. COINTELPRO was an FBI program, shut down in the 1970s. Today, NSA is under criticism of PRISM.
Different agencies, completely different groups of people, are under criticism. Not a single person shared any criticism across the eras, let alone "repeated" the mistake.
> Governments are composed of people. The people who ran the government in the 1940s no longer did by 1960s... and the people who ran the government in the 1960s no longer do today.
This is a fair point, but I also think it can be useful to consider the perspective of government as a unified, evolving entity, much like it's useful to consider a forest as more than just individual plants that grow and die and are replaced by new plants.
> As new people enter and leave government, they will be prone to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. And it is the citizen's duty to continue to step it up and hold it in check. It takes work to keep the country together, everyone knows that fact.
I agree with this point. Perhaps the issue is why these abuses keep arising; is it just human nature, or are there institutional factors at work (factors that transcend the revolving door of individuals entering/leaving government)? I don't know the answer.
Regardless, we seem to agree that the NSA abuses are troubling and need to be pushed back on, so I suppose we're basically on the same page.
I think my disagreement was mainly with the notion that the government was continually "giving up" power in a linear, cumulative fashion. Every time one of these programs is shut down, are laws passed to ensure they can never arise again? If so, that would be reassuring.
Because there is an inherent mismatch in privacy concerns and law enforcement / defense concerns.
Office of Censorship was created to counter the German / Japanese threat of spies during World War 2. It was seen as a necessary measure to help unite the country. The successful use of the Atomic Bomb is credited to the Office of Censorship, who helped keep the project secret. Quite possibly... the Atomic Bomb's details would have been leaked in WW2 if it weren't for the Office of Censorship.
COINTELPRO was then created in the 50s to counter the Soviet threat. In the 70s it was revealed it was being used for more than just that, and the project dismantled. In fact, FISA protections were supposed to prevent any large-scale domestic spying. The entire point of FISA was to stop future projects as they rose up.
As PRISM came up, despite FISA protections. Its important to realize how it happened. If you've been paying attention to Congress, FISA has in fact worked: Senator Wyden and Senator Udall have been criticizing these programs for a very long time. No one seemed to care in 2007 however, so the programs continued. I guess Edward Snowden has made things far more dramatic, and easier for the Press to talk about... but these are facts that have been discussed for some time now.
If there is a fault in FISA, its because Americans don't like listening to Senators. So no matter how many Senators you put in charge of watching the Intelligence Agencies, apparently no one will care unless a giant controversy is brought up by a non-politician.
Every few decades, peacetime makes us forget that the world is willing to attack us. Eventually, we as the citizenry work to dismantle the annoying and invasive defensive measures we give to law enforcement. (see Clinton Era in the 90s, where he reduced the size of Intelligence Agencies by half)
Then, an attack happens. The US returns to "war mode", and everyone is willing to trade privacy for security... at least for a few years. And that is when these new programs find their way into the system once again. The creation of Patriot Act led to the authorization of PRISM.
The important issue to see here, is that these programs are 100% legal. These agencies are always willing to follow the letter of the law. So... all we have to do is petition Congress to change the law. Section 215 of the Patriot Act: "Business Records Provision" is the law that legalizes the collection of Metadata. If it dies, the program dies with it.
> Every few decades, peacetime makes us forget that the world is willing to attack us. Eventually, we as the citizenry work to dismantle the annoying and invasive defensive measures we give to law enforcement. (see Clinton Era in the 90s, where he reduced the size of Intelligence Agencies by half)
> Then, an attack happens. The US returns to "war mode", and everyone is willing to trade privacy for security... at least for a few years. And that is when these new programs find their way into the system once again.
I appreciate the contextualization. For some reason it's a bit less scary to conceptualize these abuses of power as an autoimmune disorder rather than some kind of intrinsic cancer that never seems to go into remission. Probably because it makes this seem less like an inevitable slide into totalitarianism and more like a simple overreaction to a perceived threat, an overreaction which becomes increasingly malignant. The proper response is to correct this overreaction and work to put in safeguards to prevent future overreactions.
I hope your observation that "peacetime makes us forget that the world is willing to attack us" is not implying this is a bad thing; on the contrary, it seems like the closest we'll get to rationality.
> I hope your observation that "peacetime makes us forget that the world is willing to attack us" is not implying this is a bad thing; on the contrary, it seems like the closest we'll get to rationality.
Not necessarily. It comes with good and bad.
People have already forgotten that it is the NSA's job to investigate the Nasdaq and Google Hacks of last year. Chinese hackers were spying on Americans... hacking into gmail accounts and so forth.
And yet you read through this thread, with Groklaw closing down and everything. You have to remember: you may feel that the NSA has violated your privacy, but they are also the organization responsible for protecting it from other nations.
But peacetime makes us quick to forget these events. The Google-hack event was only 2 years ago, the Nasdaq hack is currently ongoing, the RSA hack was in 2011. Someone hacked Verisign in 2012. All are being treated as international hacking events.
The balance of "privacy" and "security" is more complicated than "destroy that program" or "remove funding" from a certain agency. Overreactions happen both in peacetime and wartime. Now, more than ever, as other countries spy on Americans, is the time for agencies like the NSA to step up and help defend.
You see how easy it is to turn an argument into anything? There are no easy solutions in politics. A lot is going on in this country, and its far more complicated than "totalitarianism" vs "privacy concerns".
"The war on drugs is now 30, 40 years old. There have been a lot of unintended consequences. There's been a decimation of certain communities, in particular communities of color."
-- Eric Holder, 2013
The Attorney General is responsible for the Department of Justice, which is in turn in charge of the FBI and DEA. Also, the FBI does not handle most drug related federal offences. That is the DEA. Get your agencies right!
Anyway, this would be the Attorney General bending the law. Legally, they are supposed to arrest you for smoking Marijuana. However... if the Attorney General bends the rules, and "fails" to arrest you on the charge, then the law is as good as broken. An official order from the Attorney General can stop the DEA from prosecuting Drug users, even without any changes to law.
And thus, the power of the executive branch. They can't change the laws, but Eric Holder is in a position to change the enforcement of laws. That is about as good as he can do, a future Attorney General / President may roll things back.
To Eric Holder, the Drug War is an anti-African American symbol. So it seems like he's doing what he can to stop it. He probably will crackdown on the obvious illegally operated Pot centers in California, but he's probably going to ease up the Drug War as much as he can.
>Governments are composed of people. The people who ran the government in the 1940s no longer did by 1960s... and the people who ran the government in the 1960s no longer do today.
No, governments are composed of institutionalized sets of behaviours and response guidlines; colloquially known as "Laws" - the architecture of governance.
The "people" in these organizations are agents of these systems. They behave exactly how the institutionalized archetypes are designed to make them behave.
You're perpetuating the same illusion that "elections" perpetuate: "This human, named 'Obama' will change everything!"
No he wont. He will fall into the role and archetype of the office of the president.
Sure, if you wanna be a defeatist. But IMO, that viewpoint is lazy, and unacceptable to the hacker.
Governments change, be it to external factors (9/11 -> passage of Patriot Act -> PRISM), or internal factors (Erm... the Civil Rights Movement)
We, the Millennials, have a good shot at becoming the next greatest generation. We grew up during the rise of the internet. We witnessed 9/11. We fought in two oversea wars, we've returned to the greatest economic recession since the great depression. We've elected the first African American President. We've defeated SOPA. We've created Reddit. We've created Google. We've created Wikipedia.
The air of political change is growing... not shrinking. Don't you see? Millenials are beginning to take over the country. Its our time to shine!
Sure. Gen X caused the wars, and we fought in it :-) Gen X was old enough to vote Bush into office, while Millennials were too young to vote but old enough to go to wars afterwards.
I looked up the technical definitions of Baby Boomer, GenX, and Millennials. Baby Boomers end at 1964. GenX ends in 1984. Millennials (GenY) end 2004. The current generation is Generation Net (GenZ), and will end 2024.
So I guess we Millenials haven't really done much yet... but GenX (Today, ages 28 to 48) are just getting into political leadership. Obama is still a Boomer, but GenX candidates will certainly be up for election this decade. A GenX President is unlikely for another decade or so... but surely House / Senate members are beginning to be filled with GenX. So I guess you guys have first dibs on fixing all of these issues, eh?
Don't mess things up too much before we Millennials get there!
>The US Government has historically listened to the pressures of its citizenry, and changed
While they may have changed tactics and methods they did not stop the nefarious activity.
I think you're naive to think that protesting the USGs actions have led them to stop any of it - actually it has only led to to their attempt to obfuscate their actions.
Do you recall when "The office of total information awareness" was railed against? Where it was said to be a Very Bad Thing - and it was supposedly shuttered?
Well, what do you think PRISM is a program of. The NSA IS the office of total information awareness.
Does the US Government do this anymore? No, it doesn't. Period.
Historical facts fight against your argument. The US Government has permanently given up powers to respect the privacy of citizens. I can come up with more historic examples if you wish.
Maybe we don't we eye-to-eye: I find your comment ridiculous.
Does the government do what exactly? You are aware they are slurping 100% of digital communications? In light of what has been confirmed by Snowden's efforts - I can't take your comment seriously.
Office of Censorship would delete and manipulate documents to aid in the war propaganda effort in the 1940s. Its pretty different than what is going on today.
You're confusing the walking back of an extreme overstep with a fundamental change in direction.
You can't cherry pick a couple of examples of where extreme power grabs were curtailed and say, "See, the government is giving up power!" You're looking at local down trends in an overall upward curve and declaring the whole thing to have a negative slope.
In order to make your case, you'd need to start with the Constitution and the strict limits that it placed on the Federal government and map that to the authority it exercises today. The trend is in the opposite direction you're thinking of.
Do you think citizens have more, or less rights today than in 1789? When the Bill of Rights was first drafted?
I believe we have more rights today, as a historical fact. We can easily create Corporations. Almost anyone can vote, Black, white, or women. The original 13 colonies drafted their soldiers into militia, while today the Draft has been completely eradicated. (ditto for the Civil War). Before 1960, freedom of press is compromised if there was a "reasonable tendency" to endanger society. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_tendency)
Are you seriously telling me, that we were "more free" in 1790s than today? If we were still operating in 1900s era law, we wouldn't even be allowed to talk about strikes, due to the "bad tendency" measure. (A man was in-fact arrested and put into jail for inciting a strike in the 1910s)
And yes, I'll call you "boy" until you understand simple US History. "Boys" believe in the ideal past, a past that _never existed_. Boys are unable to see how much this country has grown, and how much better it is today than before.
> Blatant Intimidation and Control is not what the US Government does. If you want proof, compare the US handling of the Washington Post to the British handling of The Guardian. The Washington Post and New York times have been free to publish everything.
The Post and the New York Times were free to publish this material. It has consequences of course, but none of them were levied against the Washington Post or New York Times.
The US Government does not punish the press for receiving, discussing or talking about that sort of information. Instead, it goes after the leakers. Discussion, and freedom of speech is much respected.
If anything, your link is but one more example that supports my point.
Fair enough. Although I still argue my point: the Press is free to publish what it wants. Judith Miller was charged with contempt of court for failing to reveal her source. She was not charged with what she wrote.
If the best example of US Government censorship is Judith Miller, then my point remains very strong. No one in the US is stopping freedom of speech. At best, you can get arrested for failing to uphold a subpoena, which is a known fact anyway.
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Furthermore, despite the whole affair, not a single report of Spooks coming in to destroy computers, or otherwise try and stop the publication of those events. (As has been seen in the UK right now, with the whole Guardian thing going on).
You are right, US is not there where UK already is. But unless people (and I don't mean 0.001% that hangs out on HN and like, I mean 99.999% that don't know what it is but vote) take serious interest in privacy and limiting government powers, we're moving in this direction, and moving there pretty fast. The fact that we have a president with which about 90% of the press are in deep and unquestioning love doesn't help either.
The "letter" of the law means nothing if the citizens are not ready to defend it. The congress can pass new laws, and as long as SCOTUS is ready to allow it - and experience teaches us when it comes to surveillance SCOTUS is ready to give a lot of allowances to the government - there's nothing to stop them but the citizens themselves. But if the citizens are more interested in voting in more government handouts for themselves than in liberty, then there's nobody else to stop it.
I have been thinking that appointing Congress/Parliament by random selection from the population would be a good idea. Who do you think would be more likely to want to want power, for example?
I agree with everything here and in the original post. What isn't clearly explained is how/why the government's behavior is prohibiting the continuation of Groklaw.
Apparently Groklaw runs on private email messages between her and her readers. If people cannot be assured of the privacy of their messages, then what they say is necessarily constrained. Given the nature of the topics on Groklaw, having privacy to discuss and subsequently post on it, is essential to the running of it.
Nearly 200 years ago, de Tocqueville asked why the American experiment in self-government succeeded while its French counterpart led to the guillotine, mob excesses, and ultimate tyranny and he gave a complex answer whose core was that private moral restraints in the populace served to check the unbounded passions in people that lead to oppression. In other words, the private life that each of us leads will hugely influence the way we are governed.
Governments are always ready to grab the greatest degree of power that the people will give them. That is the default because it is hard-wired into the human condition. And this is the major factor not grasped by those today who assume that society is evolving to a point that, if only right-thinking people with good motives are given enough power over our lives, they will somehow magically transform society for the good through government action. In reality, if any persons - right-thinking or not - are given largely unchecked authority over our lives, abuses will inevitably follow. As they gather huge amounts of power, their purpose in life becomes to guard that power jealously and to increase it as opportunities permit. No bureau has ever abolished itself. Farm programs from the depression era thrive today as ever, though the logic for their existence has long since vanished. Politicians of all stripes promote expanded budgets for their own areas of preferred government expansion and spend money they don't even have in vast quantities with little or no accountability to the people they supposedly serve.
This is why it is vital in a free society that its people be educated and morally grounded to value their rights as individuals and to resist and distrust unchecked authority in the state. Do we have that today? Perhaps, but only in a very weakened form. Many people today do not even give pause over the idea that the government claims huge amounts of unchecked power, whether it is to fight terrorists or to expand social programs. There is very little residue in our society of the old-fashioned principled belief that it is wrong to have vast centralized power with very few checks upon it. In her sign off piece, PJ notes: "Not that anyone seems to follow any laws that get in their way these days. Or if they find they need a law to make conduct lawful, they just write a new law or reinterpret an old one and keep on going. That's not the rule of law as I understood the term." This is lamentable but it is a mere symptom, and not the cause, of our ills. Politicians make the law as they go, with no accountability, only because they are allowed to do so by those whom they govern. And, if someone already has vast power over you, it is but a small step to extend that power in a technological age by using technology to spy upon, intimidate, and control people. Why, when these leaders are allowed to lord it over us as they see fit, should they suddenly develop scruples in gathering information that only serves to enhance their power to do what we are already letting them do without so much as a peep of principled opposition?
Privacy is in significant peril, and it is a serious loss when Groklaw goes down over this issue. But assaults on privacy are but a symptom of a deeper malady as modern society increasingly believes that it can hand over massive forms of unchecked government to its politicians in the naive belief that such power can be used wisely if only we have right-thinking leaders at the helm. The answer, as de Tocqueville noted years ago, is not to place faith in leaders but rather to take personal responsibility in our lives and to curtail the powers of those who govern. I guess we shall just have to wait and see if this is possible today.
In the meantime, we can praise those who fight the good fight, and PJ has been a supreme example of this. Tireless, talented, and astute, she has been a wonderful force for good over the past decade. May she find a powerful new outlet for those talents as she moves forward, even in a difficult environment.