First they came for the morons…

I don’t have much to add about the recent revelations of NSA collection activities, or the news media’s feeble attempts to investigate further. However I would like to draw your attention to what may be the stupidest thing written about it so far: Why I Just Don’t Give a Shit About PRISM (Or Any Other Spying).

I’m not naive enough to think that this information can’t or won’t be abused, and PRISM’s merit as a legalized threat deterrent is for other, boring people to decide. People who own suits, people whose other decisions similarly have zero bearing on my life. As far as walking down the street or through a grocery store, I’d bet PRISM has less impact on the average American life than a corn subsidy does.

Well, that’s doubleplusgood enough for me!

Beyond the obvious narcissism and apathy, Mr. Wagner’s pensées seem rooted in the belief of a one-way relation between policy and technology. The “boring people” who decide identify a need, and then people go off and implement systems to address it. The process is not unlike ordering a pizza.

What he misses is that any technology opens up new avenues of policy by virtue of its very existence. Sometimes, “needs” are invented as soon as a technology becomes available. Donald MacKenzie makes this point in Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. “Needs” often get invented along with technologies. Today, nobody needs an antigravity device, but if one were invented, this “need” would suddenly be everywhere. In MacKenzie’s terms, the need for such a device is “latent”, and will not flower until the solution to it is invented.

If Prism is a solution to some problem, what other “problems” will the policy wonks want to solve?