Black Holes For Public Trust

We're already smarting from the Benghazi scandal, from the IRS scandal, from the Justice Department's crusade against various reporters, from the EPA's differential handling of requests from conservative and eco-fascist liberal groups, and from Kathleen Sebelius's well publicized attempt to raise private funds to drive the implementation of ObamaCare. That anyone anywhere in these United States should retain even a shred of willingness to trust the integrity and evenhandedness of the federal government might be the eighth wonder of the world. But wait: there's more!

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.

The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley.

Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: "Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple."

(I find myself wondering how the barons of the National Security Agency, which was at one time virtually a secret division within the U.S intelligence-gathering apparatus, feel about having been made into front-page news by one of the most highly respected newspapers in the world. Time was, "No Such Agency" didn't even admit to its functions, much less their size and scope. Time was.)

The article continues in a somewhat ominous fashion:

In a statement issue late Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said "information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats. The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans."

But the corporate targets of PRISM want you to know that they have -- or have had -- no willing part of it:

Several companies contacted by The Post said they had no knowledge of the program, did not allow direct government access to their servers and asserted that they responded only to targeted requests for information.

“We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers,” said Joe Sullivan, chief security officer for Facebook. “When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.”

“We have never heard of PRISM,” said Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple. “We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”

Someone here is lying. Someone here is being deceived. Given the Administration's record on civil-liberties issues to date, who would you place in each of those bins, Gentle Reader?

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There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith -- personal, national, and international -- is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace. -- Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914 -- 1946

Dr. Anderson wrote the above words in speaking of the great and dishonorable convulsion inflicted upon the American financial system in 1933 by Franklin D. Roosevelt: the seizure of Americans' gold and the cessation of specie redeemability for the American dollar. Yet it speaks to far more than that one betrayal of the nation's trust.

The scandals of recent weeks have elicited a common reaction from observant commentators unblinded by partisanry: "The fish rots from the head." Though government malfeasance is inherent to government and has often seemed as common as hydrogen, malfeasance on the scale we see today is near to unprecedented in Western history. Indeed, the entire executive branch of the federal government has been tainted one way or another. Even Veterans Affairs, long viewed as an island of rectitude in a sea of corruption, has come under fire.

If there's anyone among my Gentle Readers who maintains that we should still trust "our" government, I recommend that he see his brain-care specialist at once.

The evaporation of trust is working its way into ever more of our society's public institutions. It rings a death knell for our political order as stark and indisputable as the nuclear destruction of New York. And I can see no clear way to halt it...nor any rationale for attempting to do so.

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A thousand truths do not mark a man as a truth-teller, but a single lie marks him as a damned liar....Lying to other people is your business, but I tell you this: once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind. [Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy]

At this point, the old maxim "Never believe anything political until it is officially denied" is near to irrefutable, at least as it applies to our current regime and political class. It's never been far from that, of course -- the quintessential political skill is to divine what the audience wants to hear and then say exactly that, irrespective of any inconvenient facts -- but for Americans of today, keeping it in mind at any encounter, however brushing or fleeting, with any agent or organ of any government at any level has become a matter of survival.

My great fear is that the perfusion of our society with distrust of government appears to be metastasizing into a general distrust of everyone by everyone. Common citizens, who ought to be able to go about their daily lives in Dr. Anderson's spirit of "confident cooperation," are beginning to suspect one another of hidden agendas and ulterior motives even in the most routine of transactions. Deals once concluded with a handshake today involve legions of lawyers and weeks of negotiations. Chiseling at the edges of the agreement is commonplace, even actively encouraged. Often, the litigation begins as the contracts are signed.

Our "Society of Contract" (Isabel Paterson) cannot withstand the loss of trust. It will devolve into the "war of each against all" (Thomas Hobbes) that pre-existed the emergence of ethically based social organization and cohesion we call civilization.

No, I'm not begging you to trust in defiance of your gut. I'm exhorting you to discriminate: to separate those categories of men who don't deserve the presumption of honesty from those who do. Having recognized those categories, I beseech you to treat them according to their respective deserts -- and to encourage them to do the same.

I don't think anyone who can comprehend the material here needs more direction than that.