Government's wicked ways

IN THE NEWS
I noticed, after commenting on Armchair General's escapade with his car insurance, that he had updated his original post. The General feels better that the USAA representative assured him that the extra information the company requested was purely for their own records, and that they wouldn't possibly share private information with the federal government.

Uh, right. Much like the gigantic database of phone calls won't be used to retaliate against reporters and their sources. To quote Peter Cushing's character (the consummate bad bureaucrat, Grand Moff Tarkin) in Star Wars, "You're far too trusting."

I know the General was trying to make the best of a bad situation, but this anecdote illustrates how far Americans have come from their political roots. Clearly, the Bush Administration's MO is, Trust us as much as humanly possible. However, this country was founded on the principle that government is inherently untrustworthy. Even the most well-intentioned policies are subject to abuse.

Rather than use an example you might expect (say, something to do with the NSA's warrantless wiretaps), I'll cite welfare as a good example. Back in the day when conservatives were people who were skeptical about big government, many conservative thinkers, such as William F. Buckley, said that welfare programs were corrosive to the spirit. They had a point: being on welfare meant opening everything about your life—what you owned, who lived with you, what you did with practically every moment of your time—to the scrutiny of a government employee. Where did you get that radio? How did you pay for it? Who is this man living with you? Is he contributing to the rent? How much time did you spend looking for work? Can you verify that you made these job applications? Etc. Naturally, this approach made many welfare recipients resentful of this intrusion, and resistant to the, er, helpful suggestions they received from agents of the federal government. Clearly, these officials were trained and rewarded to be distrustful of their subjects, putting the representatives of the US government immediately at odds with a certain class of American citizens.

If you believe in this sort of critique of welfare, it's hard to see where widespread surveillance is much different. You might say that the professional busybodies who poked and prodded into the lives of welfare recipients were just protecting the taxpayer's investment in social welfare. How different is that from protecting the taxpayer?

James Madison used terms like "wickedness" to describe the realities of human nature that the Constitution needed to take into account. The Framers were well aware of the potential abuses of government, particularly when these abuses could be framed as necessities for public order and national security. The original Articles built a system of shared powers and overlapping responsibilities to make the tyranny of the majority or the dictatorship of a single man impossible. Since they felt they weren't clear enough on a few key points, the Framers added the Bill of Rights, in which the federal government is barred from indefinitely imprisoning criminal suspects, forcibly quartering troops in citizens' homes, and declaring monopoly control of the weapons needed to maintain a "well-regulated militia."

The government might claim exigent reasons for all these abuses. For example, during the Whiskey Rebellion, the government might have thrown suspected rebels into prison until prosecutors could find evidence against them. Government troops might have demanded they be quartered immediately in the homes of local residents, while the wagons containing their tents caught up with them. Officers might have ordered the immediate seizure of all weapons in the area of the rebellion. National leaders might have claimed all these steps were necessary, since the "first new nation" was so new that an uprising might fracture it. To their credit, the first generation of American leaders were confident that they could handle challenges like the Whiskey Rebellion without reverting to British methods, the policies that inspired the American War of Independence in the first place.

If empowering government busybodies in the name of national security is a bad idea, enrolling corporate busybodies in the same campaign is worse. Civil servants are at least accountable to some measure, and their activities can be swiftly regulated or de-funded if things get out of hand. It's inherently harder to monitor people outside of the government, and it's more difficult to police their actions. Just as mercenaries are no substitute for US soldiers, insurance agents and customer service representatives at companies like USAA are no substitute for the FBI.

Even the most self-consciously villainous people will cite good reasons for their villainy. The Framers, whose jaundiced view of human nature recognized this fact of life, built a system of government to keep power out of the hands of accidental or deliberate villains.

Comments

[J.]

"To quote Peter Cushing's character (the consummate bad bureaucrat, Grand Moff Tarkin) in Star Wars, "You're far too trusting." " Yes but at least I'm with the Rebel Alliance...

No, you're right, I am spinning it in the best possible light, because what else can you do? Rant and rave? The USAA rep was very nice in explaining what was going on, and although I know that the govt could probably subpena their records and get that data, what the hell, I've been in the military, they know where to find me. It's the cost of the effort and the stupidity of it that annoys me, and the Big Brother vibes just don't go away.

[Steven Taylor]

I need to look up the story, but along the same lines there were some reports a few months back that anti-terrorism legislation (I think it was USA-PATRIOT) that flagged customers who made unusually large payments on credit cards or such--to the degree that it could hold up the transfer of funds.

Along similar lines, there was a proposed law in Georgia (that I don't think passed) that would have required businesses like Western Union confirm the legal status of persons seeking to remit cash to Mexico.

The notion that grocery store clerks should be engaged in what boils down to law enforcement strikes me as ludicrous, but so it seems to go these days.

[Steven Taylor]

Here's the original wire story:

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=RAISEALARM-02-28-06

The story states the law in question was the Bank Privacy Act, but the following blog post notes that it dealt with a banking provision in the Patriot Act:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/the_terrorist_t.html

Given that these stories often aren't what they appear to be, I didn't look into it all that heavily. However, the ACG's experience makes one wonder.