In this Essay, I have three principal aims. First, I reconceptualize what is really at stake in the debate over the collection and storage of the personal information of Internet users, particularly in the context of the large-scale surveillance of Americans by the U.S. government, recently revealed by former National Security Agency (“NSA”) contractor Edward Snowden. I am suggesting in this Essay that privacy is not an adequate paradigm for understanding what is at stake in the question of government electronic surveillance. Instead, I believe what is really at stake, if the NSA spying program goes unchecked, is nothing short of the American commitment to equality itself. Second, I endeavor to frame the risk, thus identified, in terms of a historical and continuing technologization of oppression in the name of national security. Finally, I outline some strategies for intervention and resistance. While I use the particular dangers posed to Gays (the people about whom and for whom I always write) to prove my argument, the insights I provide here are relevant to all vulnerable minorities, all of whom have much to lose as the State’s oppressive capabilities increase exponentially via the Internet.
