This film is about a lawyer who gets trapped up in a government conspiracy. The director of the NSA is involved in killing a man and he was caught on camera. The man who filmed it is found out through NSA spying and runs the video over to his friend who is a lawyer before jumping into traffic. The lawyer now is on the run from the NSA hit-man and cleverly gets the mob involved to “kill two birds with one stone.”
Robert Dean, the lawyer, in the film is having a conversation with his wife about the NSA. He assures her that they aren’t as dangerous as the conspiracies say. I love when he says, “You have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide.” This phrase epitomizes the false justification of the NSA and its spying. This is the common defense those who preach the NSA’s importance spit. The fact is, if you have nothing to hide then you should not have to be watched. The idea that “they” only watch the “bad” guys is non-sense. Fact is the NSA is proven to be completely inefficient at the job it was originally meant to perform and extremely efficient at violating our basic human rights to privacy.
When these things come up, though, I tend to stop blaming the government or its bureaucracies. Peoples’ fear and logical fallacies have not only allowed the creation of these programs, but have reinforced their power and have done mental gymnastics in order to fool themselves and believe these things are necessary and good. Has fear ever lead you to be willing to give up liberty for security? Is it justified? Are you like Robert Dean or his wife?