PRIVATE LIFE: PUBLIC USE

PRIVATE LIVES MADE PUBLIC INFORMATION The growing discussion about the governments overreach into private communications is something I’ve given thought to long before Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. None of what’s being uncovered is all that shocking to me – the scale of it gives me pause, but the substance is consistent with what is already in history books and novels. It is commonly understood that the US Government uses wiretap as a tool to entrap law breakers. The government has stopped and copied personal mail before releasing it to the intended recipient. The government has planted a spy and or provocateur in organizations suspected of violating a law or some rule of conduct. Now with the aide of electronic data retrieval and storage systems and the unlimited access to huge deposits of personal information – school records, medical records, insurance records, credit records, court records, marriage records, divorce records, military records, phone records, email records – the government is capable of creating a profile on virtually any American, whether born here or not. This level of surveillance is now being extended to include other countries. I have a personal concern about a profile that might be drawn from data collected on me. As a writer and actor I live what I consider to be open life style. What you see is what you got – I love America because it’s my home; because daddy and mother and grandparents and ancestors worked, bled, and died to establish that fact; because I maintain that right by way of my citizenship. I don’t ask anyone for permission to be an American – I am an American because I say I am. My concern about electronic surveillance is that profiles are open to flawed interpretation. If I communicate with a prostitute, an illegal drug user, a felon, a gay person, a dissident, etc., or if I communicate with a person who communicates with any person with these attributes: it could be concluded that I support or am complicit in such behavior. Having relatives and friends in each of the above categories you might understand and even share my concern as it relates to our government’s expanding surveillance. When a government turns on itself it ultimately destroys itself.