Peter Sachs Collopy · @collopy
10th Feb 2014 from TwitLonger
@JonahMatranga I kind of agree, Jonah, but I kind of don't. And I definitely agree this is important, so here's another take:
People sometimes distinguish between the government and the state. The former consists of political leaders and organizations: the President, the Cabinet, Congress, judges. The state, in contrast, is administrative: police, the military, the IRS, the EPA. In theory, the state does what it's told by the government. And in theory, in a democracy the government does what it's told by the people (or, even more ideally, the government is the people). The United States is not such a democracy, but at our best we aspire to be.
I think the biggest thing we've learned about state surveillance over the last eight months or so is that the state often isn't accountable to the government. The NSA misleads FISA judges, for example, and lies to Congress. (This wasn't the first opportunity to learn this; the Pike, Church, and Rockefeller Committees in the 1970s, for example, also found such illegal behavior on the part of the NSA, CIA, and FBI.) The government also often isn't accountable to the people, as donations and promises of jobs, for example, corrupt the work of Congress. So, short of just disbanding the NSA (which I support but recognize is one of those things on which reasonable people can disagree) there are two points at which accountability should be improved.
There are a lot of ways to do this. One is certainly joining the government, running for office or working for politicians we respect. Another is organizing outside government and making demands. In either case, though, it really helps to recognize that neither government nor the state is actually very accountable right now, and that this is a serious problem.
Corporations like Google and Facebook are also not very accountable. They also have more to gain by exploiting our personal information than respecting our privacy. And while I agree that they have a lot to gain by focusing our anger on the state instead of on them, in reality the NSA is only able to surveil us with their assistance, voluntary or involuntary. Since corporations and states constantly aid each other, the public/private distinction is never a black and white one.
I don't believe the question should be whether to focus our critique, anger, and activism on corporations or the state. We have to concern ourselves with both, with making all institutions more accountable, and particularly with what happens when corporations and the state work together, as in "public-private partnerships" or "the military-industrial complex."