Officials Abuse Power – In Other News Pope Catholic

Florida police officers repeatedly misused the state’s Driving and Vehicle Information Database (D.A.V.I.D.) in 2012 according to an Orlando Sentinel investigation.  At least seventy-four officers used D.A.V.I.D. to look up potential love interests, investigate celebrities or just peruse for private information.  Given the police code of silence and the tendency of any bureaucracy to play down internal issues, these numbers are likely orders of magnitude lower than the actual number of officers abusing the system.

If police officers abuse this somewhat innocuous database – which contains phone numbers, addresses, pictures, demographic information and other relatively limited data – imagine the field day government bureaucrats will have with the richer data sources coming into existence.  The NSA is building the world’s largest data complex in Utah, with one million square feet of storage and computing space, allegedly set to begin storing Americans’ phone, email and business records in 2013.  Tens of thousands of drones equipped with advanced recording equipment, some small enough to fit in your palm, are taking to the skies for personal, governmental and law enforcement surveillance.  And the Department of Homeland Security has shown a strong interest in audio recording devices, placed in public buses and street lights, to record citizen conversations.

Desk jockeys from DC to Deschutes will have the ability to read your email, check out your weirder purchases, scrutinize your phone records, watch you through the windows of your home and listen to your personal conversations.  There will undoubtedly be safeguards set up, but does anyone doubt that people will abuse this system?  Latter-day Lotharios will check to see if that secretary on the third floor is single; Spurned lovers will read for evidence of infidelity; Unscrupulous day-traders will sneak a peek at sensitive business correspondence; and Perverts gon’ perv.

This is to say nothing of the huge potential for state-sanctioned blackmail.  Jestingly call your white friend a cracker-ass-cracker?  You’re a dangerous racial nationalist.  Joke about taking a toke?  You’re a drug dealer.  Reveal details of a closeted homosexuality, illicit affair, criminal act or extreme political opinion and you can bet that the ABC boys will be more than tempted to use it.  If the FBI did it to King, they’ll do it to you (provided you’re powerful enough to present any sort of threat).

Americans are thus left with a choice: acquiesce to government intrusions and naively accept pronouncements that the new surveillance state is manned by unassailable patriots taking aim squarely at terrorists.  Or, acknowledge the inevitable fallibility of human nature and demand strong restrictions/bans on the insidious surveillance technology that is weaving itself into this nation’s fabric.