Kerby Anderson

The news over the last year has been about the surveillance of the Trump campaign and administration. But there is another more personal issue. How much surveillance has the federal government done of your life? John Whitehead (Rutherford Institute) was on my radio program recently to talk about the threat we all face from government and business surveillance. We began by quoting from Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. In a case back in 1966, he warned, “We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.” How right he was. The government has become expert in finding ways to sidestep what it considers “inconvenient laws” aimed at ensuring accountability. For example, the National Security Agency has been diverting Internet traffic overseas. This helps them bypass Fourth Amendment and other constitutional protections and allows them to conduct unrestrained data collection on each of us. I asked John Whitehead about stories of the government hacking into Google and Yahoo data centers. He responded that they really don’t have to do that since these entities and others willingly turn over such data. He estimates that on any given day, the average American is monitored, surveilled, tracked, and spied upon in more than 20 different ways. We also talked about the recent column by John Kass who wondered whatever happened to liberals concerned about civil liberties and government surveillance of American citizens. He concluded that since it was happening to Trump officials, those who used to be concerned about such issues now turn a blind eye to it all. We shouldn’t ignore what is happening. And, that’s why I have written a Point of View booklet on Surveillance and Privacy to warn citizens about what is happening.