I Have Nothing to Hide

Dispatches from the Panopticon

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“Sir, you got me at a bar in a social situation. This is me talking shit at a bar. If you think that’s news, it is what it is.”

-Matthew Rosenberg to James O’Keefe, released March 9th, 2022

When I signed my enlistment paperwork in 2005, my recruiter told me there was a very good chance they’d make me an interrogator after I finished language school. This was a lie. The fact that I could not tell it was a lie was, in retrospect, a pretty good screener for the job.

This is how, for the next few years, I found myself in basements both foreign and domestic, operating machinery that cost millions of dollars and did things I’m not supposed to talk about. I’ve taken that last part a lot less seriously since Edward Snowden stepped forward in 2013 and revealed every secret the Army taught me.

At the time, it was genuinely shocking to discover that three-letter agencies keep records of all our Internet activity and metadata from all our phone calls (who we called, when we called them, how long we spoke, and exactly where we were when we did), no warrant required. If they decide you are of interest later, they can go back through their massive databases and learn everything about you.

I knew America was capable of these things. I did not know that we did them indiscriminately to American citizens. Alongside other outraged activists, I…