As always, the mission of the Christian Mystic is not changing the world, but changing the self.
It’s the same principle with things you own or use, including your computer. Most of the work I do in my computer tech support ministry is teaching compsec. I’ve always warned people that expecting policies “out there” to protect you is just plain silly and immoral. The Internet is a virtual war zone and you have to be ready for the worst.
To be honest, not a lot changed in my ministry when the Snowden files began spilling into the news. Now we simply have full evidence of what I already suspected in many ways, and I’m hardly alone. All it did was give us a more specific threat to assess and counteract. Instead of guessing, we can see some of what they’ve been doing.
You should not imagine that bugging your congressman will make things any better. Let’s get real; it would require several things to change what the NSA is doing. First, defunding, then confiscating their equipment and evicting them from facilities. Finally, it would require summary execution of a significant number of upper level management and some contractors. Then things might slow down just a little bit. You are more likely to see the US government collapse completely before the NSA stops spying on us, and maybe not even after that happens.
You see, this is all tied together. While the alphabet agencies do engage in turf battles, it’s not across the full range of their activities. Sometimes the FBI willingly does the dirty work and lets the NSA see the results. Sometimes the CIA gets involved or other agencies. They don’t obey Congress or the President, only pretend to obey the courts, and sure as hell don’t care what you and I think. They work for other people, and their whole mission is to justify their agency and keep it alive against all threats. You and I are considered threats simply because we aren’t part of their agency.
So if any part of this tangled mess wants inside your computer, they are there. You cannot stop them simply because the entire system of hardware production itself has been compromised and there are backdoors you and I could never close. The reason it’s a problem is that criminals will eventually find those backdoors, as well. No agency is so overwhelmingly competent to open a door that somebody somewhere won’t find sooner or later. So it’s a real problem, not so much the loss of privacy, but the loss of control. We have gotten to the place where some of the most essential functions of daily life are online and we have no choice in the matter. Your entire credit record, identity, bank accounts and our electrical grid are all vulnerable to eventual computer cracking.
On top of that, corporations are also spying on you in ways even the NSA wouldn’t bother. You can’t buy enough bullets to stop that kind of spying, because the marketers outnumber the government agents, and marketers have even lower morals. Hey, there are church officials I’ve met that are just as bad. Stop trusting people.
Once you adjust your expectations to better match reality, it’s not a question of stopping their crap. It’s still the same question it always ways: How to get on with the mission? It’s not paranoia, it’s assuming the worst. How much defense can you afford to engage before it interferes with your mission? Your computer activity is not the center of your life. Mine certainly isn’t and I spend more time at the keyboard than anyone I know personally. This is just the current means to the mission. Take it all away and I’ll just find another way to do this. Don’t let yourself be trapped into letting computers and the Internet represent much more than just another manifestation of a very ephemeral world.
Change your attitude. Do what you can to secure your computer and reduce your tracks online. You can read plenty of posts here about that. In the back of your mind keep a clear understanding that at some point your efforts are likely to fail and bad things will happen. If you are faithful to your mission, you can be sure God has it all under control and He cares about what really matters.
Don’t get wrapped up in the stuff of this world.
