No, let's not trap ourselves

Today, while conferencing with my Eng106 students, the topic of government surveillance came up. One student is going to write her position paper on "full body-scanners" at airports. Her position is, that we should consider it a sacrifice we should pay, in order to be safe (from terrorists). I tried to talk about what the opponents would say. She agreed to some of such arguments, but I don't think she will change her mind. One student commented across the table, that if we are not doing anything wrong, we shouldn't be worried or concerned about government surveillance. Someone talked about the government having access to people's facebook entries and emails. Then, said-- I don't worry, since I don't write anything important. I don't do anything wrong. If you are a good person/citizen, why the worry? It's to keep us safe. Okay kids, so being safe is important. But have you considered how this is also intruding upon everyone's privacy? They said, yeah, but we have to give something, right? Hmm. Security and safety is really in their brains. But what if the definition of "you are a good citizen/person" change? What if suddenly, your dating a person with different skin color becomes a huge problem? What if someone suddenly decides without your knowing, that to major in engineering and thinking about the ills of the method American corporations extract gas from below is wrong, is a major problem for them? What if one day, someone decides that all vegetarians are radicals who threaten the security of the nation? It sounds all very extreme, but it could happen, it had happened in different ways in the past, there is no guarantee that it will never be that way again. Don't trap yourself in the discourse of security and patriotism without at least thinking about these. ... I wanted to say all this, but I didn't have the time or energy to do so. I will bring it up for debate tomorrow in class- starting with a youtube clip, to trick them into thinking, Oh, we're watching a clip, cool! I'll let you guys know what happens tomorrow. I might just end up being sad, but hopefully, at least a handful of students will say smarter than stuff like "we've all got to give a little..." Come on, you don't want to be treated as a potential terrorist. Or, is it really okay, as long as you are kept safe from those "terrible terrorists"?
Let's find out tomorrow.

2. 20. 2013