In fact, I would say that I'm very laid-back and chill. Lacking the energy or dedication for hypervigilance I tend to have a little bit of a 'Shit Happens' attitude towards crime. I'll make little adjustments to my life to avoid dangerous situations, but I'm going to accept that the reality is most of it is random, and as long as I don't make myself a sitting duck, I'll just have to accept it as part of the way things go if something bad happens to me. After all, the only time I've been robbed was when someone broke in in Iceland, which at the time at least, had a crime rate, of ohhhh, as close to 0 as you can get. (Read about some strange happenings of late with people getting punched in the face so hard they're in critical condition, but I will say that chances are both men were very drunk, and thus willingly and knowingly increasing their risk of becoming criminals and/or victims). I lived in New York City, Brooklyn, Atlanta, D.C., no witnessing or personal knowledge of crimes. Go figure.
Where was I? Oh paranoia. I generally laugh at the conspiracy theorist, have shook my head at the government is out to get us folks, and I've shrugged at the internet privacy folks. Aside from banks and shopping sites (which have quite a lot to lose if their security systems are hacked), for which I use separate iterations on passwords than I use for any other sites, I enter no personal information aside from my e-mail address (well, one of 7, I didn't do that on purpose), and thanks to my job, if you google my name you don't even have to click on the webpage, my e-mail address is right there. So, that cat is out of the bag.
Two things have changed me very recently.
One, the governments subpoenas to Twitter etc. on Wikileaks peeps, which the government requested to be served without the knowledge of the people whose records were being subpoenaed. And the recent stuff about Facebook, which has been at the forefront of figuring out where Americans draw the line on their privacy online. I don't put my phone number or address on my facebook page anyway, but it made me remember the fact that if you're logged into facebook its watching every step you make on the internet and saving it for 90 days. I knew this at one point and religiously logged off whenever I wasn't using facebook, but I got lazy. I do not want facebook to have a record of the websites I go to that have nothing to do with it. So I've tried to be good again.
Now, I thought to myself, why am I so worried about facebook having my browsing history? I mean, no one's going to go hunt up little me's browsing history, why would they care. And from a deidentified research purpose, even if its being used for better targeting of advertisements, meh, go for it. So why do I care? Government. Who might go and look at specifically my browsing history, the government. Now, I'm not a criminal. I've never even got a speeding ticket. The only things I have done that were against the law are, well, rather common. Underage drinking, speeding, and one time I broke an inane city curfew which was quickly repealed. (It was actually accidental, the curfew was D.C., we were in Virginia and going to Maryland, person driving had no idea where he was going, and I failed in my job of getting us on the Parkway, dumping us across the river and into D.C.) Oh, and I had one parking ticket. So, given this level of law-abiding citizenship, why am I afraid of the government?
Because, we've had quite a bit of evidence of late that should government agents, for whatever reason, decide they think you might have done something, or that you know something about someone who did something, even if its not clear that what was done was actually illegal, they can go over your life with a fine-toothed comb, Wikileaks being case in point, and they may be able to gain all this information without me even knowing they have it. And while they're not going to find any evidence of wrong-doing in my life, that doesn't mean I want anyone going through everything I look at, everything I write down. Let's face it, my life is pretty lame right now. Okay, my life has always been pretty lame, thus, much of it is conducted online. You would know a lot about me if you got hold of my viewing history. And yes, my laptops are encrypted and password-protected. I know I'm at some danger of getting hacked, because everyone is. That base level of risk is something we accept as internet-dwelling citizens. If you think you're at no risk you're a farmkid from Nebraska who's been plunked down in Hell's Kitchen.
I wonder if in their hurry to attempt to punish Wikileaks for embarassing them, the justice department has considered the effect their actions can have on everyday citizens. Even if you believe that what they've done is wrong (and hey, I'm the first to admit I think Assange is a smarmy narcissist, but that doesn't mean that what he did was morally wrong and it certainly doesn't make it illegal, it just makes him an asshole, which is not punishable under the law) do you want the government to have blanket ability to gain access to your online history (and through it, your offline history) without your knowledge, mostly because hey don't like what you did because it was embarrassing? The taking of the information and giving it away was illegal, it's not illegal to publish what you've been given. Otherwise our press would be in serious trouble, and a significant tool in holding both the government and potentially companies responsible for their behavior would be gone.
Obviously all of this is old news, right? We've moved on, the next news cycle and many more has passed, no one cares much about facebook privacy or Assange/Wikileaks anymore, we're really worried about Tucson and guns and the ridiculous responses we have to gun violence in this country.
The sanctimonious 'Guns don't kill people. People kill people.' Yes, but guns make it a hell of a lot easier. Why do women attempt suicide at a greater rate, but men complete suicide at a greater rate? Men are more likely to put a gun to their head, they're more likely to have a gun. Women find a bottle of pills or a knife. There's just more possibility to save them. Take away the guns, more men survive to get some help. Suicidal men are also more likely to commit homicides at the same time than are women. Again, guns more lethal.
And..... way off topic. My point, if there ever was one in there, was just supposed to be that even if we aren't focused on something anymore, it doesn't mean that it doesn't live there in our brains and gradually seep in deeper and affect our perceptions, then our beliefs, and then our behavior
As I said, I'm really not paranoid. So, as a non-paranoid, happy-go-lucky, trusting person, its kind of alarming to discover that I've become kind of afraid of my government.
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