God may watch over us; the government shouldn’t

By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

CHULA VISTA, California — Most rabbinical students attribute omnipresence and omniscience as qualities befitting a Creator. Only God is called, “The Knower of Thoughts,” and “The Searcher of the human heart.” Rabbinical wisdom has long taught, “Always keep in mind these three things, and you will never come to the brink of sin: know what is above you—a watchful Eye, an attentive Ear, and all your deeds are recorded in a book.” ( Mishnah Avoth 2:1.)

What if somebody—other than God—is recording our deeds in a special book or databank that can be shared with any part of government, not to mention hackers and other unscrupulous people?

One of the great battles of our time is the fight for to keep our privacy sacrosanct, as promises by our Constitution. What if the “watchful eye” observing our behavior happens to be a new supervised databank device that every state and government agency will soon have access to? We could also ask: Do we want drones flying above our cities, silently watching our every move? What if the “attentive ear” listening to us happens to be some government agency monitoring our telephone conversations, or our every movement?

More to the point: What if God wasn’t the only one monitoring human thoughts and inspecting hearts? What if the State possessed this kind of God-like power?

The latest news story regarding the whistleblower[1] Edward Snowden raises many ethical questions. Although our government is hell-bent upon arresting Snowden, it is quite possible he has performed a value service for our country—especially at a time when privacy rights are being assaulted. The most celebrated whistleblower of modern times, Dan Ellsberg, who brought the United States government to a near standstill with his report of top-secret revelations about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, considers Snowden a hero.

Maybe we should too.

Most liberals, I know, tend to associate totalitarianism with repressive conservative states. Since the 18^th century, we have come to regard liberalism as the champion of the common person’s rights. However, today, we are discovering a dark side to liberalism that aims to control the masses through fear.

Fortunately, for every American, the ACLU has often functioned as the vanguard for freedom from autocratic and draconian policies that threaten the civil liberties of every American.  Sometimes I agree with their positions, other times I find their behavior and attitudes.

Over the past several years, I have watched our privacy rights slowly erode under the Obama administration.

For several years now, the Obama administration has been quietly waging war against investigative reporters and whistleblowers in the name of national security.

The President has often invoked 1917 Espionage Act to eliminate governmental leakers, truth-tellers, and whistleblowers whose disclosures do not support the president’s political ambitions. One such whistleblower named the NSA official Thomas Drake, who in 2010, was indicted for alleged retention of national defense information 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), when he leaked information to the Baltimore Sun and Diane Roark of the  House Intelligence Committee as part of his attempt to blow the whistle on several issues including the NSA’s Trailblazer project. Drake’s reaction is memorable and he criticized Obama’s attack in unflattering terms: “This makes a mockery of the entire classification system, where political gain is now incentive for leaking and whistleblowing is incentive for prosecution.”

To date, Obama’s administration has charged more people under the under the Espionage Act for the alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined.

What would the ghosts of George Orwell and Richard Nixon say?

Under President Obama, the United States is “a nation governed by fear,” the American Civil Liberties Union says in an open letter that echoes the criticisms Obama has made of George W. Bush’s national security policies. “[W]e say as Americans that we are tired of seeing liberty sacrificed on the altar of security and having a handful of lawmakers decide what we should and should not know,” the ACLU writes in a statement circulated to grassroots supporters and addressed to Obama. “We are tired of living in a nation governed by fear instead of the principles of freedom and liberty.”

Amen.

I think I will renew my ACLU membership this week; I encourage you all to do the same. President Obama promised us a transparent government; this cannot occur unless investigative reporters be allowed to tell their story to the American people. The New Yorker Magazine Journalist Matthew Hollister may have said it best regarding the Edward Snowden debacle:

• Thanks partly to Snowden, and partly to others, such as the journalist James Bamford, the American public now knows a good deal more about what the intelligence agencies and their supposed overseers in the FISA court and on Capitol Hill have been up to. From Rand Paul to Jon Tester to Al Gore, various players in the political arena are already reacting to this information. Can that really be a bad thing? In all whistle-blowing cases, there is a trade-off between the breach of trust that the person has committed and the damage that may result from his or her actions, on the one hand, and the public service that is done by making the information available, on the other. In this instance, where there is little evidence that national security has been undermined, the balance surely comes out in Snowden’s favor.[2]

The issues concerning privacy are very serious—especially in light of the Obamacare changes, which will drastically make the fight to safeguard our privacy even more difficult. By mid-December, the federal government is working upon consolidating personal information regarding every citizen, in what is definitely the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic. The potential for abuse is      staggering and mind-bending.  Such information—if untapped by some unscrupulous agency or individual will make identity theft a much more serious problem. Should we allow our government to mind such information about its citizens? Given the dangers of human corruption and incompetence, I would have to vote a resounding no! If security is the real issue here, knowing that the government  has god-like power to investigate every citizen’s private life does not inspire security.