The Rogers Doctrine: More Transparency Creates More Privacy Violations, Since You'll Find Out About Them

from the we-deserve-better dept

We recently wrote about the absolutely bizarre claims of Rep. Mike Rogers, the man supposedly in charge of “oversight” of the Intelligence Community, claiming that there can be no privacy violations “if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” This has resulted in plenty of mocking, including with satire so good many people believed it. It’s also been picked up, somewhat, by the bastions of pop culture, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Stewart covered it on Wednesday’s episode of The Daily Show, though it feels like he sort of underplayed the absolute ridiculousness of Rogers’ statement. Colbert’s version, however, was quite well done, and gets better as you go along (and, yes, I know, that video can’t be seen in many regions, but if you can’t watch the video, you can see the animated gif version instead:

The key lines from Colbert, after playing the tape of Rogers’ shocked statement at the idea that anyone’s privacy could possibly be violated so long as they didn’t know about it, followed by Stephen Vladeck’s comment that “if a tree falls in a forest, it makes a noise whether you’re there to see it or not,” Colbert explains in his usual satirical manner that it all “makes perfect sense if you don’t think about it” and also notes that when someone lies to you, “technically they’re telling the truth, so long as you never find out it’s a lie”:

Let’s say, instead of falling in the forest, the tree is standing outside your house and I’m hiding in it watching you shower. So far, I’m not violating your privacy. But the second you see me through the window, suddenly I’m the criminal? What about my privacy? I’m trying to masturbate here. Come to think of it, there are all sorts of victimless crimes like this. We know people getting assaulted because they call the police. But I’ve never heard of anyone calling the cops because they were murdered. Therefore, clearly, no one was killed. By the same logic, folks, I have not insulted Mike Rogers as long as he never hears me say: The reason Mike Rogers uses circular logic is because his head is jammed up his own ass.

Of course, obviously, I do not mean a word of that. I admire what historians will now call “The Rogers’ Doctrine”: when it comes to privacy vs. security, we can have one of them, as long as we don’t know which one it is. That way, we can maintain our constitutional rights. Or, if they do take away our rights, just don’t let us find out. That way, we’ll still have them.

Meanwhile, over at Slate, Will Oremus has also written about Rogers’ comment, and also come up with a name for it. He calls it “Rogers’ Paradox,” noting that it’s a variation on the historical concept of “what you don’t know can’t hurt you,” and how this is “an age-old excuse for people in power to trample on the rights of those without it.”

But, Oremus makes an even more pertinent point. If Rogers’ statement is accurate (and it’s not), then it would actually mean that greater transparency itself would harm people’s privacy because they’d find out about it. Think about that for a second. Under the logic of Mike Rogers’ twisted mind, the more transparency there is about privacy violations, the more those non-privacy violations become privacy violations — and thus he must fight against such transparency at all costs to protect our privacy.

And this is a guy in power.

Filed Under: mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy, transparency