Joseph Ippolito Post #4

Timothy Burke’s The Slow Poison of the Covert Imagination argues that the “surveillance culture” created by the U.S. government only serves to enable those in power who want to chase their unrealistic vision of a future where terrorist attacks can be predicted and stopped based on the mountain of data collected and analyzed by intelligence agencies. Burke’s argument raises several valid points about the act of data collecting (as opposed to the particular data collected) infringing on the personal rights of Americans. However, it loses steam when it characterizes the government as agencies that view data collection as as way to justify its “grandiloquent, self-flattering imagination of its own power.” This argument isn’t based on facts, but rather burke’s personal view that intelligence agencies have overstepped their bounds with their data collection tactics, creating a culture in the government based around secrecy and a too-intimate knowledge of its citizens habits, whereabouts, etc.

Based on the accounts of those interviewed in The Watchers, I am of the opinion that data collection initiatives such as TIA cast too wide a net in their quest to be the hub of all personal information available. It appears that 99% of this information is useless to these informations agencies; they probably don't care where I was last tuesday. However, Burke makes a valid response when he opines that it isn’t the nature of the data that’s the issue, but the idea that it can be accessed anytime, anywhere that’s the issue for most Americans. If Burke had rooted the rest of his concern in the what the government could do by preying on this public fear of a surveillance state, I would have supported the rest of his concerns about the affect it has on American democracy. However, by turning this into an attack on the American government’s “character,” I find his argument too philosophical and opinionated.