Oh wow, interesting providence! Where did you see it? The concept is fascinating and has many applications. I started thinking a lot about it when reading critical theory and postmodern literature, mostly Michel Foucault. I think too many people are willing to be watched without ever thinking of the long term consequences.
There is also this slow-coming, subtle subversion that we have become accustomed to. The argument that our phones and our Alexa devices are watching anyways… well I don’t want that anymore either. But how do you get out of it now? How do you rebel against the internet when you can’t even keep a doctor’s appt anymore without doing the online check in beforehand? How could I be a real estate agent in this day if I didn’t use a smart phone? I guess this is similar to the Canadian govt freezing people’s bank accounts. Small acts of rebellion (and is it even rebellion??) can keep you from feeding your family, even if you’re well within your constitutional rights.
Thank you for the informative and biblical take on this issue. Certainly watching it unfold which is concerning and sometimes wonder who else sees the potentially nefarious side of it.
Thank you, Jessica. It’s a great example of people being more than happy with something that they think benefits them…until it doesn’t. There are many examples of this pattern throughout history.
OK, I’m gonna be an outlier here. I agree with the general sentiment, but I wonder when it comes to things like the patriot act and safety where that dividing line between security and freedom lies. In an extreme case like that of violating the constitution or liberty prevents a massacre, is it not worth it? I’m not necessarily saying that this is my well-thought-out opinion just a situation that I’d like you to clarify for me.
It’s a great question, and certainly something all of us living in relatively free societies have to think about. I'm first driven by the observation that the Bible does not treat safety as a trivial good. Paul says the magistrate carries the sword as God's servant for our good, "an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer" (Rom. 13:4). A government that doesn’t have some sense of responsibility in protecting its citizens from massacre has failed at one of the very few things it’s actually ordained to do. I believe the role of government is extremely small, but protecting its citizens is one of its roles.
The hypothetical of “preventing a massacre” actually smuggles in the idea that there is foreknowledge of the massacre coming. If that’s the case, the assumption is that a measure that violates the Constitution (in American law) and liberty will stop the coming massacre, and the known cost is that violation (a supposed “single exception”). That would mean officials must decide in advance, under uncertainty, then build an apparatus, staff it, write procedures, train individuals, and eventually turn it into a department (e.g., Homeland Security). I think the challenge to the preventing-a-massacre exception is that it assumes knowledge you would never possess and then uses it to justify a permanent structure that operates without that knowledge. A good example is the TSA’s over-intrusive and ineffective functions. Since they were established after 9/11, they have a grand total of zero instances where they thwarted any kind of terrorist activity. I just did a quick search to make sure my facts are correct. I found that in 2015, DHS Inspector General red-team testers got mock weapons and explosives through checkpoints in 67 of 70 attempts. That is a 95% failure rate. A 2017 follow-up was described by members of Congress as “disturbing,” with sources putting the miss rate around 70-80%. Later detailed results, including a November 2025 OIG covert-testing report, have been classified. Lawmakers have publicly accused TSA of over-classifying detection rates precisely because they are embarrassing. So the security ritual everyone goes through at airports with the body scans, pat downs, rifling through baggage, throwing away unauthorized deoderant and fingernail clippers…it’s all theater, giving up liberty for the mirage of safety.
On a larger scale, the NSA's bulk telephone records program was presented as the very hypothetical you raise. In 2014, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded that it "ha[d] not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation.” So millions of Americans had their data stolen, unknown to them and never suspected of anything for over a decade, and nothing useful resulted from it. Liberty was traded away for a supposed safety measure that never produced an actionable outcome.
I think the Constitutional answer to your question is that law enforcement already has legal authorization to act when there is a legitimate, known threat. The framers of the Constitution gave one narrow suspension power, for habeas corpus, limited to invasion or rebellion. They (rightly, in my opinion) refused to allow for a general warrant. That’s one of the very things they escaped, and they weren’t about to go back to it. They really understood the nature of power in the hands of men. Provisions that allow for suspending the fourth amendment protections ultimately leave decisions to the discresion of whoever has the tools, which leads to what I pointed out in the article, things like a police officer searching his ex-girlfriend’s travel patterns over 2000 times.
I think it’s worth thinking about what Israel asked of God. They asked for a king so that "our king may...go out before us and fight our battles" (1 Sam. 8:20). God granted their request, and then told them it would cost their sons, daughters, fields, and a tenth of their grain, “and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you” (1 Sam. 8:17-18). They got the security they wanted, but they paid dearly for it in their liberty. I think it’s also important to understand how God designed His world to pursue true justice. For example, nobody could be put to death on the testimony of a single witness (Deut. 17:6; 19:15), or a false witness bore the penalty he sought to inflict (Deut. 19:19). Of course that means, at times, guilty people will walk free, but I think we have an important principle that violating the liberty of innocent people is a greater evil than a process that occasionaly fails to convict the guilty. God says, “Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and the righteous” (Ex. 23:7). The concept of due process is from the law of Moses and I think many of the latest efforts to provide supposed security are a direct violation of the principles God has built into the very definition of justice.
Literally read the word “panopticon” for the first time this morning and the second time just now.
Good timing. It’s all so very troubling.
Oh wow, interesting providence! Where did you see it? The concept is fascinating and has many applications. I started thinking a lot about it when reading critical theory and postmodern literature, mostly Michel Foucault. I think too many people are willing to be watched without ever thinking of the long term consequences.
https://rocanews.substack.com/p/what-an-ai-takeover-would-really?r=3h6pnt&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
I think this will take you to the article…
There is also this slow-coming, subtle subversion that we have become accustomed to. The argument that our phones and our Alexa devices are watching anyways… well I don’t want that anymore either. But how do you get out of it now? How do you rebel against the internet when you can’t even keep a doctor’s appt anymore without doing the online check in beforehand? How could I be a real estate agent in this day if I didn’t use a smart phone? I guess this is similar to the Canadian govt freezing people’s bank accounts. Small acts of rebellion (and is it even rebellion??) can keep you from feeding your family, even if you’re well within your constitutional rights.
Thank you for the informative and biblical take on this issue. Certainly watching it unfold which is concerning and sometimes wonder who else sees the potentially nefarious side of it.
Thank you, Jessica. It’s a great example of people being more than happy with something that they think benefits them…until it doesn’t. There are many examples of this pattern throughout history.
It’s a hard thing to unsee that the benefits being sold to the masses with these things are ultimately for their “safety”. A false sense of security.
OK, I’m gonna be an outlier here. I agree with the general sentiment, but I wonder when it comes to things like the patriot act and safety where that dividing line between security and freedom lies. In an extreme case like that of violating the constitution or liberty prevents a massacre, is it not worth it? I’m not necessarily saying that this is my well-thought-out opinion just a situation that I’d like you to clarify for me.
It’s a great question, and certainly something all of us living in relatively free societies have to think about. I'm first driven by the observation that the Bible does not treat safety as a trivial good. Paul says the magistrate carries the sword as God's servant for our good, "an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer" (Rom. 13:4). A government that doesn’t have some sense of responsibility in protecting its citizens from massacre has failed at one of the very few things it’s actually ordained to do. I believe the role of government is extremely small, but protecting its citizens is one of its roles.
The hypothetical of “preventing a massacre” actually smuggles in the idea that there is foreknowledge of the massacre coming. If that’s the case, the assumption is that a measure that violates the Constitution (in American law) and liberty will stop the coming massacre, and the known cost is that violation (a supposed “single exception”). That would mean officials must decide in advance, under uncertainty, then build an apparatus, staff it, write procedures, train individuals, and eventually turn it into a department (e.g., Homeland Security). I think the challenge to the preventing-a-massacre exception is that it assumes knowledge you would never possess and then uses it to justify a permanent structure that operates without that knowledge. A good example is the TSA’s over-intrusive and ineffective functions. Since they were established after 9/11, they have a grand total of zero instances where they thwarted any kind of terrorist activity. I just did a quick search to make sure my facts are correct. I found that in 2015, DHS Inspector General red-team testers got mock weapons and explosives through checkpoints in 67 of 70 attempts. That is a 95% failure rate. A 2017 follow-up was described by members of Congress as “disturbing,” with sources putting the miss rate around 70-80%. Later detailed results, including a November 2025 OIG covert-testing report, have been classified. Lawmakers have publicly accused TSA of over-classifying detection rates precisely because they are embarrassing. So the security ritual everyone goes through at airports with the body scans, pat downs, rifling through baggage, throwing away unauthorized deoderant and fingernail clippers…it’s all theater, giving up liberty for the mirage of safety.
On a larger scale, the NSA's bulk telephone records program was presented as the very hypothetical you raise. In 2014, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded that it "ha[d] not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation.” So millions of Americans had their data stolen, unknown to them and never suspected of anything for over a decade, and nothing useful resulted from it. Liberty was traded away for a supposed safety measure that never produced an actionable outcome.
I think the Constitutional answer to your question is that law enforcement already has legal authorization to act when there is a legitimate, known threat. The framers of the Constitution gave one narrow suspension power, for habeas corpus, limited to invasion or rebellion. They (rightly, in my opinion) refused to allow for a general warrant. That’s one of the very things they escaped, and they weren’t about to go back to it. They really understood the nature of power in the hands of men. Provisions that allow for suspending the fourth amendment protections ultimately leave decisions to the discresion of whoever has the tools, which leads to what I pointed out in the article, things like a police officer searching his ex-girlfriend’s travel patterns over 2000 times.
I think it’s worth thinking about what Israel asked of God. They asked for a king so that "our king may...go out before us and fight our battles" (1 Sam. 8:20). God granted their request, and then told them it would cost their sons, daughters, fields, and a tenth of their grain, “and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you” (1 Sam. 8:17-18). They got the security they wanted, but they paid dearly for it in their liberty. I think it’s also important to understand how God designed His world to pursue true justice. For example, nobody could be put to death on the testimony of a single witness (Deut. 17:6; 19:15), or a false witness bore the penalty he sought to inflict (Deut. 19:19). Of course that means, at times, guilty people will walk free, but I think we have an important principle that violating the liberty of innocent people is a greater evil than a process that occasionaly fails to convict the guilty. God says, “Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and the righteous” (Ex. 23:7). The concept of due process is from the law of Moses and I think many of the latest efforts to provide supposed security are a direct violation of the principles God has built into the very definition of justice.
Thanks, Nick.