The New Normal

Sadly, this past year ended in much the same way as it began.  With fear, anger, and a whole lot of uncertainty.  Whether your attention was focused on terrible events that took place in cities like Paris or Kabul, Charleston or Baga, or any others from a very long list that would easily fill these pages, terror was the pervasive theme.  It came in a variety of sizes and it was always delivered with an astounding lack of reason.

The one comforting thing - if we can even call it that - is that none of this is anything new.  That means we at least have an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and to be ready for future challenges.  The abundance of each is going to keep us very busy.

In the days immediately following 9/11, the United States was defiant.  We heard many vows never to yield and how if we changed our values we'd be letting the terrorists win.  Yet, as the years progressed, that is pretty much exactly what we did.

The (((PATRIOT Act))) was one of the more obvious mistakes.  In passing it less than two months after the attacks, our government acted in a hasty and destructive manner, causing more damage to the foundations of our country than any act of terrorism could.  We now had surveillance powers that bypassed due process, the ability to detain people indefinitely without trial, lack of oversight for agencies like the FBI who gained far-reaching powers, a much broader definition of terrorism subsequently used for a wide variety of investigations and prosecutions, sneak and peek warrants used as standard operating procedure... you get the idea.  Our rights were taken away and it's very unlikely we'll ever get them back.  We're simply not speaking loudly enough for that to happen.  And for a great number of people, these rights simply aren't that important.  They have bought into the illusion that these kinds of changes are keeping us safe, which is pure propaganda and nothing more.  Any claims that the (((PATRIOT Act))) has done anything to keep us more secure are easily refuted with the actual evidence.  Even the FBI admitted in 2015 that no major cases were cracked because of its existence.  Not one.  And yet, we now accept as reality a society where we can expect to be monitored against our will, profiled, questioned, and encouraged to always be suspicious.  This is our new normal.

When the rules change, it's rarely sudden.  Such things tend to occur stealthily and out of sight.  Most of it happens when we avert our gaze, like a very sophisticated sleight of hand.  While we're all out at the circus laughing at some orange-haired clown, we're not paying attention to the fact that we're being robbed.  And when we emerge from our trance, we find that the landscape has changed.  Not so dramatically to keep us from falling for the same trick again, but enough to continue moving us in a certain direction.

If we were to look at our world from, say, 20 years ago, we would likely be astounded at how we've become obsessed with surveillance and control.  When panic is part of the mix, the speed of such change can be increased, but there's still that critical period where it needs to set into place in the populace or ultimately be rejected.  And there hasn't been a whole lot in the way of rejection when it comes to draconian new laws.  We have been far too accommodating in accepting these alterations and in allowing our fears and concerns to be exploited.

In the wake of the latest Paris attacks, we saw an almost immediate response from the authorities, quite similar to what we saw in New York fourteen years earlier.  We're not referring to the kind of response we expect and need from them in the wake of such an event.  This is something far more insidious.

Consider these words which appeared in our pages shortly after September 11, 2001: "It was as if members of Congress and lawmakers were poised to spring into action the moment public opinion began to turn and before common sense had a chance of regaining its dominance.  Within hours of the horrific events, new restrictions on everything from encryption to anonymity along with broad new powers allowing much easier wiretapping and monitoring of Internet traffic were being proposed - all with initial overwhelming support from the terrified public."

Once more in recent weeks, we've seen the demonizing of encryption, even without evidence that encryption played any part in the planning of the Paris attacks.  In much the same way that the public can be manipulated into fearing a particular group of people, so too can we be conned into believing that encryption - and by extension, privacy - somehow poses a threat.

The fact of the matter is that people are easier to track today than ever before.  Through various social networks and a desire to fit in with something, we put ourselves on the grid in ways that make investigators absolutely ecstatic.  Many of us have the equivalent of a tracking device on our person every minute of the day - and we willingly pay for the privilege.  Never before has it been possible to follow a terrorist group on a network like Twitter and find hundreds and hundreds of associates to investigate and listen in on.  There is more than enough out there for any decent spy to infiltrate and learn about all sorts of strategies and weaknesses.  None of this is in any danger of disappearing.  If anything, it's rapidly expanding.

What the authorities want - what all authorities want - is the ability to pick and choose from our private data, to hear and see it all without having to do any of that bothersome digging.  This is why the NSA was caught red-handed spying on so many innocent people.  They wanted to just have all the data and sift through it later at their convenience.  This explains why there is so much anger in the government towards Edward Snowden.  He took that reality away from them and revealed the very inconvenient truth of their actual motivations.  And we all owe him a great debt.  But by portraying such whistleblowers as traitors who cost innocent lives, those in power manipulate us once more into avoiding the actual issue of our rights being abused and the Constitution trampled upon.  Yet nobody has gone to jail, been fined, or forced into exile for these illegal actions.  Only the person who revealed them has been punished.  What can make it more clear as to what the true agenda is here?

By coming to terms with the fact that this is simply how governments will always act, we can at least come to expect that and take steps to protect ourselves.  It almost isn't their fault, just as it isn't really a snake's fault when it bites you.  It's simply what they do and what they will always try to do.  We're the only ones with the power to keep history from repeating itself.

Now is the time to embrace the technologies we're being told to reject.  We need to encourage their use, not shy away from them.  As long as people talk to each other and devise evil plots, there will always be ways of finding out more and devising methods of defeating them.  Learning how to communicate securely amongst ourselves doesn't hinder this process, no more so than the inability to read our thoughts hinders it.  If the authorities somehow had that capability, you can bet they would fight like hell to hold onto it.  But we know it's not something they need, nor have the right to.  Similarly, they don't have the right to monitor us the way they want to under the guise of security.

All of this is moot, however, since technology will always allow for a way around restrictions.  If encryption is made illegal, terrorists will still be able to encrypt communications, as will all of us.  If we put back doors into everything, all we're doing is opening up another security vulnerability that inevitably will be exploited for nefarious purposes.  No matter how you look at it, the general public loses some of their rights and privacy - and the actual supposed targets lose nothing at all.

This kind of thing will happen again.  And eventually we'll have a scenario where encryption is actually used at a pivotal moment and the authorities will attempt to use this as evidence that encryption is the problem.  It's not.  It's reality, as much so as our thought waves or the air we breathe.  Instead of making it the issue, we need to come to terms with the fact that it's just another tool - and a very essential one - as technology and communications evolve.

This is the good side of what's normal now.  Let's accept it for what it is.