Robert Samuelson January 5, 2014

There is more than a little hypocrisy to the outcry that thegovernment, through the National Security Agency (NSA), issystematically destroying Americans’ right to privacy. Edward Snowden’srevelations have been stripped of their social, technological andhistorical context. Unless you’ve camped in the Alaskan wilderness fortwo decades, you know — or should — that millions upon millions ofAmericans have consciously and, probably in most cases, eagerlysurrendered much of their privacy by embracing the Internet and socialmedia.

People do not open Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagramaccounts because they wish to shroud their lives in secrecy. They do not use online dating services or post videos on YouTube because theycherish their anonymity. The Internet is a vehicle for self-promotion,personal advertising and the pursuit of celebrity.

The Pew Research Center’s surveys confirm that these behaviors are now entirely mainstream. In 2013, 85 percent of Americans used the Internet. Of these, almost three-quarters (73 percent) belonged to social media sites (the biggest: Facebook). Almost one-fifth of adult Internet users have posted personal videos, many hoping, says Pew, that “their creations go viral.” Among people “single and looking” for mates, nearly two-fifths (38 percent) used online dating.

If Americans think their privacy is dangerously diminished, there areremedies. They can turn off their PCs, toss their smartphones and smashtheir tablets. Somehow, this seems unlikely, even though another Pew survey finds that “86 percent of adult Internet users have taken steps . . . to avoid surveillance by other people or organizations.”

To these conscious sacrifices of privacy must be added murkier, collateral losses that are orchestrated by the world’s Googles, Facebooks, service providers and “data brokers,” writes Alice Marwick of Fordham University in the New York Review of Books. They scan users’ digital decisions(sites visited, products and services purchased, habits and hobbiesfavored) to create databases, often merged with other socio-economicinformation. These target advertising, improve political appeals —President Obama’s campaign excelled at this — and influence hiringdecisions, as Don Peck notes in the Atlantic.

The NSA’s damage to privacy is dwarfed by the impact of market activity.The sensationalism surrounding Snowden’s revelations obscures this. Case in point: The disclosure that U.S. telephone calls are open to NSAmonitoring. Suddenly, Big Brother looms. In our mind’s eye, we see theNSA’s computers scouring our every phone call. We’re exposed to constant snooping and the possibility that the government will misuse theinformation it finds.

The reality is far more limited. The NSA is governed by legal restrictions. It does not examine the full database.It searches individual numbers only after it has determined there’s a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” that a number might be linked to terrorist groups. In 2012, there were288 of these findings. After one is made, the NSA can retrieve threeitems about the number: the dates of calls made and received for fiveyears; the other phones’ numbers; and the calls’ length. The NSA is notentitled to listen to conversations, but it can order similar searcheson the other numbers involved. Thousands of calls are caught in thedragnet, but the total is puny compared with the untold billions ofannual calls.

Whether these searches are effective in fightingterrorism is disputed. The NSA says they’re valuable. A panel of experts appointed by Obama concluded that the monitoring “was not essential topreventing attacks.” But more important for civil liberties and privacy, the panel found that present practices don’t approach past abuses.During the Vietnam War, the panel noted, the CIA investigated 300,000anti-war critics. The government also sought to “expose, disrupt, andneutralize their efforts to affect public opinion.”

By all means, let’s debate the NSA. Some policies seem suspect, spying on the headsof friendly governments topping the list. It’s also important torecognize that government can coerce and punish in ways that privatemarkets cannot. The potential for abuse is greater. But let’s also keepthe debate in perspective.

In a digitized world, spying must bedigitized. Then there’s cyberwarfare. Our electronic systems remainvulnerable, as the recent theft of data from millions of credit and debit cards at Target demonstrates. Government and the private sector need to collaboratemore closely to protect vital systems. But these “efforts are as good as dead for the foreseeable future,” says Dmitri Alperovitch of CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm. The NSA controversy has “significantly damagedthe trust between the private sector and government.” This may be theSnowden affair’s most insidious (and overlooked) consequence.

Vilifying the NSA — letting Snowden dictate the terms of debate — promotes badhistory and bad policy. It’s bad history, because the most powerfulassaults on privacy have originated in markets. It’s bad policy, because weakening the NSA leaves the United States more exposed tocyberattacks.

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