In “Secrets and Lies” (2000), I stated:

It is detrimental civic health to implement technologies that might one day enable a police state.

This was a sentiment shared by many of us at that time, particularly regarding the extensive surveillance capabilities of the NSA.

I have been reflecting on that statement frequently as I follow reports concerning President Trump’s dismissal of the Director of the National Security Agency, General Timothy Haugh.

A few weeks prior, I noted:

We are unaware of the pressures the Trump administration may be applying to align intelligence services, but it is not unreasonable to be concerned that the NSA could resume monitoring domestic communications.

The NSA already conducts surveillance on Americans through a myriad of methods. However, this has always played a secondary role to its primary objective: eavesdropping on the global populace. Once Trump appoints a loyalist to replace Haugh, the NSA’s extensive surveillance machinery could pivot its focus towards domestic operations.

Endowing that agency with all of those capabilities in the 1990s, during the 2000s post-9/11, and throughout the 2010s was consistently a miscalculation. I worry that we are on the brink of realizing just how significant that miscalculation was.

Here’s PGP inventor Phil Zimmerman in 1996, articulating it even more explicitly:

The Clinton Administration appears to be striving to implement and solidify a communications framework that would inhibit the populace’s ability to safeguard its privacy. This is troubling because, in a democracy, it’s possible for undesirable individuals to be elected—at times, exceptionally undesirable individuals. Typically, a well-functioning democracy has mechanisms in place to oust such individuals from authority. However, an inappropriate technological framework could enable a future government to monitor every action taken by those who oppose it. It could potentially be the final government we ever select.

When determining public policy concerning new technologies for the state, I believe one should consider which technologies would most effectively bolster the power of a police state. Subsequently, those technologies ought to be prohibited from government use. This is fundamentally a matter of maintaining good civic health.