hi j-t,
i am not sure you noticed, but i was using the same method you are using. argument from the extremes. something i try scrupulously to avoid in normal circumstances.
you are george dubya bush in this instance. or at least indistinguishable from him. argument through fear. you pull the same trick as condi did to justify something bad. the means is okay because - unless we use them - the ends just might be sooooo bad.
yes, but.
the fact is, there's a close approximation to zero risk of al qaeda launching a full on nuclear bomb in the usa. the risk exists. it is very, very small.
anyone who is capable of creating that kind of calamity knows that the us is performing electronic surveillance. we know this. bin laden was using physical couriers to receive and deliver messages. he did not use the internet. he avoided mobile phones. so guess what? the nsa is not going to stop the catastrophic problem your argument depends upon. they already know the programme exists.
so there is no certainty that universal surveillance diminishes the likelihood of a nuclear disaster in the us. it may actually enhance it. folks kinda get ornery when you spy on their emails, kill their children using drones etc. you give angry people a motive to do nasty things back to you. you make the terrorists' case for them.
why is it that they keep printing new al qaeda members? it is partly because the us keeps giving aq new material to sell.
so no one has said there is no chance of a nuclear event. everyone wants to avoid it. but that doesn't mean whatever you wish to do is justified. or even wise.
i have said that freedom is worth the risk of harm. i said that explicitly at the beginning of this conversation. freedom doesn't mean wrapping yourself in cotton wool. it can expose you to risk. but freedom has some useful benefits of its own. the benefit of providing a useful example of a different way to do things. and it was the notion of individual liberty that began the process of ending slavery. eventually, even in the us.
so turning off the spigot of individual freedom itself actually denies potential benefits and causes harm.
freedom doesn't exist in a surveillance state. if you study the origins of english law - which is where us law originates - you will find that individual freedom (ie innocent unless proven guilty, my home is my castle, my body belongs to me and property ownership rights) along with the notion of a monarch being subject to law are the essential features of liberty. there is no freedom without habeas corpus and probable cause.
you say, hey it doesn't bother me. i'm innocent.
you cannot have a conception of freedom if you are comfortable with being continuously observed by the state. you are not a free man. you are a drone operating in a framework the state defines for you. and you don't get to pretend your approach is also called freedom. a surveillance state is not a free one.
i get it that you are okay with the surveillance model. but the history in which freedom was born is all about getting out from underneath exactly that. whether it is the baleful influence of the church over science, or the dissolution of the monasteries, or the regicide, or the enlightenment - freedom means the absence of the eye of the state or the church over our private lives, so long as we stay within the fences the law makes for us.
so you choose serfdom in a surveillance state as the solution to the problem of terrorism. and i choose liberty and the risks it contains.
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