Sometimes the Internet makes a mistake.
The other day, one of my favorite websites embedded a Fox News video about NSA spying. Fox News entitles their video “Citizens Treated As Suspects.” At the site showcasing Fox’s story, though, the headline reads: “The NSA Grabs Information from Non-Suspects; Ninety percent of those spied upon are under no suspicion.”
Can this be right? When you’re treated as a suspect, you are a suspect, aren’t you? You’re being suspected of something. At least of being somebody who might be up to something worth snagging in an all-embracing fishing expedition. If you’re not guilty, somebody else leaving comparable data traces is, surely.
On the other hand, no matter how innocent you feel, you gotta be guilty of something for which the government could come after you, right?
I do not say you have done something actually wrong. Only something some policeman or bureaucrat could hassle you for. We live in an era when parents get arrested for letting their kids play in the park 
Fox News reporter Shephard Smith says that most Americans caught up in the particular NSA surveillance net discussed in his story are just ordinary, everyday blokes — not reasonably suspected of anything NSA-spy-worthy. This is unsurprising given all we’ve been learning from the NSA documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden (see ProPublica’s revelation-chart).
These days, in the eyes of our government we are all suspects. Continuously.
And there’s something very suspicious about that.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
5 replies on “Yes, You Are a Suspect”
What is insidious about this is that many will say, “I’m not guilty of anything, so why worry about all this enhanced government surveillance?”. That is what the perpetrators of the information gathering want you to argue. However, imagine being politically active on the opposite side of the current “Party” in power. Then imagine all the past information they’ve kept on you over the years. None of us are perfect, right? How many mistakes have you made in your past? And, imagine how easy would it be to build a case against you to shut you up?
Every American should rise up against government surveillance and information gathering of its citizens in absence of a warrant.
“Suspicious”?
How about Ruthless, Criminal or Fascist?
There ARE so many laws on the books that you are guilty of something, somewhere, sometime. So in their mind, if they track us through life and someday we become a problem politically or whatever other reason, they they just rewind the tape and put a bureaucrat on it until he uncovers one of our misdeeds.
What i’m afraid of is that the IRS is now just a defacto branch of the NSA, just one of it’s enforcement divisions. That the NSA probably OWNS Congress, or a big part of it because they can politically torpedo a Congressman by revealing their personal secrets, and we just don’t know it yet.
The antithesis of the 4th Amendment, rubberstamped by the FISA “court” which approves and provides a cover of legitimacy to everything the feral government asks.
Iheartdagney, you hit the nail on the head. Total surveillance — with government knowing all we do — will mean the death of freedom. Freedom and total surveillance are antithetical to each other. The police state is rapidly growing up around us, installing invisible bars for the ultimate prison. Hitler could only dream of what we’re becoming.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, they who give up liberty for security will have neither.
Liberty always has, is and always will be paid for with treasure and blood.