Big Brother is watching: What happens online stays online

If all goes as expected with this column, the National Security Agency will open a file with my name on it. No one outside the NSA may ever know about it, including me, but it will probably be there.

At least that’s what the adventurist, conspiracy theorist side of me fully expects. The reality, however, may not be anywhere near as exciting.

One of the advantages of being in print and online is that the NSA and most any group or agency tasked with trolling the Web for information will have their bots crawling all over my words, looking to see if I pose a threat or am a potential customer for whatever they’re selling.

If I were to write something absurd like “kill President Obama,” “bomb Congress,” or “join Al-Qaeda” you can bet a little red light will go on somewhere and agents both foreign and domestic will start to probe this column and other writings of mine with a higher degree of scrutiny.

The same thing would happen if I said I plan to buy a house and a new car later this year. It may not be true, but I will not be surprised to see spam in my inbox for bank loans, insurance, car offers, and real estate ads. All of this is because some computer algorithm out there detected certain words and caused an alert.

For the record, I have no desire at all to see any harm come to the President or any member of Congress and I am adamantly opposed to Al-Qaeda. I do want to see Obama and many members of Congress removed from office, but that’s another story for another day. It has nothing to do with the point of the column.

The point is that we have no realistic expectation of privacy on the Internet or with any technological gadget of this modern age. It used to be if I went to the record store and bought the most recent album by Journey, the only ones who knew that were me, my friends that I told, and the person at the store who sold me the album.

Today, not only do multiple sources know I bought an album by Journey, they can track what songs I play, when I play them and how many times I play them and the places I play them. I can then expect to get offers to try music similar to Journey or to buy devices different than the one I listened to the music on.

The metadata information from every action I take with my computer and every app I use on my phone is tracked by governments and businesses around the world. It’s not me specifically. Everything that is transmitted electronically by anyone can be captured, tracked, stored, reused, and misused.

While this has been going on much longer than most of us realize, we are now aware of it because of the likes of Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers. While it’s true that the NSA started spying on Americans under President Bush right after 9/11, most of us had no idea the degree to which it was happening. That the power has been expanded under the Obama Administration is outlandish.

I recently watched a pair of TED Talks, one by Snowden and the counter point by Richard Ledgett of the NSA. I would like to believe what Ledgett said about how the agency doesn’t care about the day-to-day humdrum activity of our normal lives. Using a different analogy, he basically said that to catch the sharks you have to troll the same waters as the fish.

Snowden cautioned that this is an unchecked and secret government power with the potential of being used against its citizens at a future time. That really scares me. I’ve read stories that said some law enforcement agencies not only have the power to hack into our computers, but they can also secretly turn on our camcorders and record us without our knowledge.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I know the technology is there and that the NSA and other agencies probably have that capability. I’m really not worried about Big
Brother watching me in that way, at least not now. I am bothered, however, that my digital information could someday be misconstrued and used against me.

I find there is no small coincidence that at about the same time Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA’s domestic spying operations that news also broke about the IRS targeting Tea Party activists and members of other conservative groups. I’m convinced the government can, will, and is misusing its spy data against its own people.

That is why I am certain that the NSA will have a file on me after this column is published online. It may come back to haunt me that Big Brother will read the words “kill President Obama,” “bomb Congress,” and “join Al-Qaeda” and see that I am a conservative who wants the President out of office and deem me a threat to national security.

I hope they also see that I am a Christian, Eagle Scout, community volunteer, and a hard working husband and father who loves his country and fellow man. Otherwise this column has been one huge act of futility.