My Family Story of Love, the Mob, and Government Surveillance | The Atlantic

Source: My Family Story of Love, the Mob, and Government Surveillance | The Atlantic, by Jack Goldsmith
adapted from Jack Goldsmith’s new book, In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth

the government’s surveillance power has grown unfathomably since the 1960s. The “frightening paraphernalia” from six decades ago are toys compared with the redoubtable tools that allow the government to watch and record our movements and communications, and that enable it to store almost limitless amounts of data on its own or to piggyback on the masses of data that we volunteer to private firms. … Congress has ratified and legitimated what were once legally tenuous surveillance techniques. It did so after the executive branch convinced legislators that the techniques were necessary for law enforcement and national security, but it imposed various legal constraints on their use.

The result of these developments is yet another “new normal” in which the government is constrained in certain respects but citizens are far more exposed to lawful government surveillance than before. This latest new normal, like earlier ones, will not prove stable. … If history is a guide, the government will perceive a security advantage in using these and other tools in new ways to watch us and to predict and preempt our behavior. … Congress will legalize the surveillance practice on the condition, mainly, of new procedural restraints. And we will adjust to our more naked selves.

This is a depressing conclusion for many, but it is an inevitable one. The executive branch does what it thinks it must, including conduct robust surveillance, to meet our demands for safety.