The conversation that Snowden began is necessary for another

300 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS The conversation that Snowden began is necessary for another reason. The relentless growth of data-collection technology had come to endanger personal privacy. Smart phones in our pockets, GPS recorders in our cars, fitness bands on our wrists, CCTV moni- tors in stores, and network-connected devices in our homes leave a digital trail of every move we make. The government can subpoena as part of an investigation, as we know, our personal data, including our Internet searches, social media postings, electronic communica- tions, and credit card records. In addition, the government has its own tools of surveillance. Snowden, by disclosing that the govern- ment was vacuuming in phone billing records and Internet activi- ties, hit a sore spot in the public’s consciousness. How far did the surveillance state extend? Did an Orwellian government intercept private conversations of American citizens? Should Apple, Google, and other Internet giants use a doomsday system of encryption to prevent court-ordered searches for data? Were there adequate safe- guards against government snooping? In popular culture, surveillance is often associated with the sin- © ister measures taken by a totalitarian government to suppress indi- © vidual dissidence. On television we see government agents in black vans operating arrays of tape recorders, following people on the street, and breaking into homes to steal files and tap telephone lines. In the 2006 Academy Award-winning film The Lives of Others, for example, East Germany’s Stasi police use listening devices to gather information to blackmail intellectuals to assist in the eradication of dissent. East Germany was not the only place in the Cold War era using surveillance to suppress dissent. Even in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI bugged the phones of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr, to root out suspected subversive elements. Most Americans viewed this as a reprehensible use of government surveillance, and the very men- tion of the word, even before Snowden’s disclosure, evoked disquiet among the public. But what Snowden exposed was not any sort of rogue operation but programs authorized by the president and Con- gress and approved by fifteen federal judges. If one accepts that the nation’s security remains a legitimate function of government, the | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.indd 300 ® 9/30/16 8:13AM | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019788