Who's the Boss?

     An employer hires an employee to manage some of the
employer's interests.  The employee appears trustworthy and
reliable.  Still, caution is always warranted.  The employer
installs cameras and recording devises to monitor the employee
on the job.

     The employee doesn't trust his employer either.  Besides,
the employee would like to keep his misdeeds secret.  If the
employee can dig up some dirt on the employer, it could be
useful to the employee if his misdeeds threaten to get him fired.

     The employee sets up his own surveillance.  He even
hires a detective to spy on the employer.  The employee goes
through his employer's private files.  Then the employee steals
some of the employer's cameras and batters a camera technician
in the process.

     Someone is in big trouble.  The employer orders the
unfaithful employee to leave and quit spying and otherwise
violating the employer's trust.  The employee refuses to leave or
mend his ways.

     Instead the employee files a complaint against the
employer.  The prosecutor files charges and the employer is
arrested for violating the employee's privacy.

     Some may consider this hypothetical to be silly,
ridiculous and outrageous.  Outrageous it is. Silly and ridiculous
it's not.  It is ridiculous that it is happening every day.  It is silly
that so many people don't seem to care.

     The teachers in government schools tell us about
government of the people by the people and for the people.  We
are supposed to believe government works for us.  Government
and its agents are our employees.  Laws and union contracts
made possible by laws make it all but impossible to fire those
teachers, no matter how disloyal or incompetent they may be.

     In some states it is a crime to photograph police working
in public.  Elsewhere the police merely beat up photographers
and take the cameras.  Who is the boss, we the "employers" or
our "employees?"

     Politicians, bureaucrats, and their minions have hissy fits
if we the people ferret out some of their secrets about their
misdeeds.  In their eyes they, the employees, have been wronged
by the employer's misdeeds.  Under laws enacted by the
"employees" the "employers" must be punished.

     Meanwhile government endlessly invades what used to be
our private lives.  Nothing is private from government.  It steals
E-mail, phone calls, and anything else it can get it mitts on.  It
puts a tracking device in your cell phone so it can track your
every step.

     If you have an interactive television, government has
software for secretly turning on the camera and watching you in
your living room, bedroom or any place else you have an
interactive television.  One reporter said he was going to put
tape over the camera anytime he wasn't using it.  Expect
government to make it a crime to tape the camera.

     Naturally the first and foremost purpose of laws made by
government is to protect government.  Thus, we the people have
no privacy or secrets.  If we somehow violate government's right
to keep its misdeeds secret, we are criminals.  Sorry, I forgot for
a moment.  Government makes the rules. Thus, by definition,
there is no such thing as a misdeed by government and it agents,
unless that deed is somehow detrimental to government.

     The idea of government secrets is troublesome.  Servants
don't have the right to spy on and keep secrets from the master. 
Masters aren't punished for checking up on their servants.  The
mere existence of the right of government to punish citizens for
violating government's secrecy puts the lie to the idea that
government serves the people.

     Government secrecy should be limited to a few narrowly
defined instances.  Even in these cases no one should be
punished for discovering and publicizing government secrets.  It
should be a crime for anyone to try to keep government
wrongdoing secret.  Government secrecy undermines any chance
we have to protect ourselves from out of control government and
hold it accountable.

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Copyright 2013
Albert D. McCallum