Apologies. Fell behind on emails. Missed this reflection from my friend Pasquino on a piece that ran 1A in the Monday Strib.

Does this story make you feel safer? Or does it make you uncomfortable? How about this quote:

“People can’t find out that they are in the database, they can’t do anything if something happens to them because they think they are in the database. To me, its antithetical to the way we think about how a democracy ought to be run. That’s police-state crap.” Don Gemberling, former director of the state’s Information Policy Analysis Division

Or this one:

Mudd said the agency is evolving away from the law enforcement/prosecution model toward a prevention model. “I could care less whether we ever do a terrorism prosecution…I don’t care. I am worried about whether we know who these folks are.”

The problem is this: without prosecution there is no defense, there is no evidence, there is no law, there is no legal, judicial or constitutional restraint on what the security people can do. They can do anything. Without the goal of prosecution there is no need to abide by any legal rules. These people are private, they are secret, they aren’t above the law they are outside it. They may be good judges of security matters but suddenly they are also their own judges, their own juries. Do we want this? Did we know this was happening?

We have already gone into this realm with the president ordering mass surveillance without warrants. It isn’t even a gray area, it is a black area. It’s invisible. Who decides who should be surveilled? If the spy decides who he should be spying on and no one asks any questions, what prevents spying on political enemies, or neighbors he dislikes, or people who annoy him or annoy his boss, or someone a friend has a problem with? Nothing prevents that. In fact this system encourages it. And no one would ever know.

What political party does the spy belong to? In the case of a private contractor, what party do they prefer? Which candidates do they like? Which candidates like them? It isn’t a matter of whom do we trust, it is a matter of whom do the spies trust. Who are they cozy with? Who are in their private club? Who is paying them? Who is pressuring them? Who are their friends and who are their enemies? And how do we know?

Pasquino is the nom de plume of Minneapolis writer Eric Hanson.