Republicans are returning to the surveillance fold for the same reasons everyone is, worldwide. Last year, Angela Merkel warned the German Parliament that her country’s trust with the United States would have to be slowly repaired. “But the cooperation never really stopped,” as The Washington Post reported. “The public backlash over Snowden often obscured a more complicated reality for Germany and other aggrieved U.S. allies. They may be dismayed by the omnivorous nature of the intelligence apparatus the United States has built since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but they are also deeply dependent on it.”
Aren’t we all. Online, we lack the kind of robust self-defense culture that led, in meatspace of yore, to constitutional protections for those bearing arms. Helplessly dependent on government spies to combat enemies we cannot see, we have little choice but to opt in to one form or another of surveillance state. Since Snowden’s revelations, a Pew study reveals, the NSA’s approval ratings have cracked 50 percent. And in a sign of what’s to come, just over two-thirds of respondents aged 18 to 29 gave the NSA the A-OK. Fifty-five percent of those aged 30 to 49 did too.
A lot of self-esteem is on the line, here, and a lot of comfortable illusion. Surely a people resigned to data serfdom must not have their libertarian self-identification taken away, too. If the Constitution can be a living document, why can’t liberty be a living doctrine?
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