Spy Agency to the Rescue

Congressman Mike J. Rogers, at a hearing last week over the latest National Security Agency scandals, non-ironically disseminated this beautiful piece of sophistry: “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.

If the NSA snoops on everyone, and no one knows enough to complain, does it still make a stink?

It’s unsettling to note that Congressman Rogers is a former FBI agent—but not unsurprising. It’s a little worse to note that Rogers is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee—one whose response to reports that the NSA had monitored 70 million French calls was that that French citizens should actually be “applauding and popping Champagne corks.”

But bewildering understandings of privacy are all too common in Congress. In a hearing over the disastrous roll-out of the federal health care exchange website, Representative Joe L. Barton wondered, “How in the world can this be HIPAA compliant?”

His colleague, Representative Frank J. Pallone, noted astutely that the patient privacy component of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act “only applies when there’s health information being provided. No health information is required in the application process. And why is that? Because pre-existing conditions don’t matter!”

When Barton pushed back, Pallone called the hearing a “monkey court.”

If I may offer a modest proposal to calm the partisan clamor: It appears that the great problem of our times is that some parts of the government are too technically advanced and others are decidedly less so.

So why not put the NSA in charge of healthcare.gov?

Think about it. Instead of a shoddy registration system so inept that only six people were able to sign up fully on the first day, nothing of the sort would happen with the pros at the NSA running things. You could just plop in front of the computer and the NSA would have all your information already inputted for you (which means more time for aimless browsing)!

The NSA already contracts its intelligence work through the startup firm Palantir, named after the seeing stones in Lord of the Rings that Sauron and Saruman use to coordinate their malevolent plans to massacre basically everyone in Middle Earth.

And the spy agency, amply funded with $10.8 billion, already appears to have time on its hands, allegedly spying on the papal conclave, obscure Venezuelan economic officials, and climate change conferences.

Instead of infuriating European leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose cellphone we had been lovingly looking after since 2002 when she was just the chair of the Christian Democratic Union, we could offer them entry to our exceptional healthcare system instead.

Giving the gift of healthcare to world leaders we want to keep eyes on (what could be more useful to intelligence than a real-time plot of Francois Hollande’s heart rate?) would be a boon for otherwise strained diplomatic relations with Europe. It would certainly beat Russia’s idea of gift giving: The country recently distributed memory sticks and mobile chargers in gift bags to world leaders, spyware included free of charge.

It could also be a smart political move for President Obama, whose aloofness on both the NSA’s excesses and his signature achievement have not done much to ease the “What did the president know and when did he know it?” attitude of Republicans on every scandal, real or fictional (Benghazi-gate still hasn’t quite fizzled out).

Instead of reinforcing his image as automaton-in-chief, the president could appease his liberal supporters by making sure Obamacare actually improves the sorry state of healthcare for too many Americans. Conservative support would be ensured since the NSA is a security institution and to oppose any act or operation related to security would be unthinkably unpatriotic.

Maybe then we can move on from the temporary website problems and onto the larger aim of providing less costly healthcare for more Americans—a goal that remains attainable even after Republicans’ 40-something repeal votes and government shutdown intended to suffocate it. Put the NSA to work for the good of the country.

Also, I hear that there’s a very talented programmer who was recently put out of work. You may just redeem yourself yet, Edward Snowden.

Idrees M. Kahloon '16 is a Crimson editorial writer in Dunster House. Follow him on Twitter @ikahloon.