Oh, Say, Can You See Me? Being Watched In Washington
*DISCLAIMER: This is a travel blog, and this is a post about an experience I had while traveling. I’m trying to express my feelings, not start a flame war. It’s not intended to make anyone angry, particularly the NSA. And yes, I recognize the irony in that statement.*
Last weekend, I took a trip down to Washington, D.C. for a short reunion with a few friends I studied abroad with in India last semester. My trip down was an irrelevant but amusing comedy of errors that, as a result of poor planning, scalding-hot battery-acid Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and three shopping bags of shoddy manufacturing, resulted in me waddling off the train at Union Station desperately clutching three weeks’ worth of laundry, leaving a trail of odd socks and pairs of underwear that I was helpless to retrieve. It was like Hansel and Gretel, but more embarrassing. Anyway, after my misguided exploration of suitcase-less travel, I was reunited with the family I studied with in Jaipur.
Our reunion was a joyous one. We went to a hookah bar. We rode the metro. We went to the National Gallery of Art, the Botanic Gardens, and Starbucks. We swapped stories about our summers, reminisced about our time abroad, and got inappropriately excited whenever we spotted Indian people. And, most importantly, we stayed in a fancy hotel. A very fancy hotel. Maybe the fanciest hotel I’ve ever stayed in—and definitely the fanciest hotel I’ve ever been kicked out of.
During our time in India, a small group of us made a pastime of getting into places we were definitely not supposed to be. We snuck into half-finished construction sites, teetered on the tops of water towers, and tried to climb mountains in the middle of the night. We even infiltrated a gigantic mountaintop fort once, which I’m pretty sure is supposed to be a federal offense. Due to the general inefficiency of India’s law enforcement system and, admittedly, owing in large part to our whiteness, we never got into any trouble. Well, except for that time Max and Bennet got chased by a man with a rather large stick, but that was just a minor misunderstanding. We never got into any legal trouble, anyway. So, late Saturday night, Max and I decided to try to get to the roof of our fancy hotel.
I do not blame the security guards for apprehending us. Nor do I blame the chief of security for giving us a verbal spanking. I don’t even blame the manager on duty for kicking us out of the hotel. We deserved it, all things considered. But as I was sitting there staring at my feet, being told by a police officer exactly how lucky we were that we weren’t going to jail, it hit me just how foreign my own country felt, and how little I had adjusted to it since my return. I had forgotten how stifling American culture can be. In India, we would have been ignored—in fact, we probably would not even have been noticed. But here in our nation’s capital, our behaviour was perceived as a security liability, perhaps even a threat. This was not a place where adventuring was encouraged.
We were paraded back up to our room by two security guards and the manager. After gathering our belongings and hastily hugging our friends goodbye, we were shunted out the front door of the hotel into the semi-deserted street to find a taxi. We took a cab across town to an all-night diner, ordered pancakes, and assessed our situation. It was 3:30 a.m., too late to find a hotel room. Max tried calling a friend he had in the city—no answer. I tried calling my friend Brett, who I thought might know someone we could crash with—no answer (BY THE WAY BRETT IF YOU’RE READING THIS THANKS A LOT). After briefly considering sleeping in the park, we resolved to slog sleeplessly through the remaining hours of darkness at Union Station, where we both eventually needed to be in the morning. We finished our pancakes and hailed a cab.
At the station, we decided to try to sleep for an hour or so. Sleeping in the Amtrak depot didn’t seem appealing: there was a plasma-screen television playing and replaying an informational video about the training of K-9 units, who are positioned in the boarding areas of trains “for your safety and security”. We opted to sleep next to the locked doors of a store in the shopping area, which was darker and quieter. Just as we were starting to nod off, however, a security guard woke us up.
“You can’t sleep here.” She said.
“We have tickets. Look, here’s my ticket.” I rummaged groggily through my purse for the wrinkled piece of paper.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t stay here, ticket or no.”
We looked at each other and sighed, and shuffled back down to the fluorescent lights of the train station. At 6:00, we relinquished any dreams of sleep and decided to go explore the National Mall for awhile. Max had never been to the capital before, and since the only places he had been so far were the hotel, the diner, and the train station, his experience in the city had been…less than ideal. So we set off to see what he thought of Capitol Hill and the monuments.
The sun rose behind the Capitol building and threw a warm blanket of peachy light over the mall. But the luster of the rosy-coloured shrines to patriotism was dampened slightly by a lurking sense of unease. “Lampposts or security cameras?” Max said, pointing at the streetlights that line the sidewalk of Capitol Hill. I said they were probably both. After he started pointing them out, though, we couldn’t stop noticing them. Everywhere. On the corners of buildings, attached to traffic lights, half-buried beneath the cherry trees…a hyperbolically large amount of cameras. We kept walking.
When we reached the Capitol Steps, Max took a Frisbee out of his bag and we threw it back and forth a couple of times. No sooner had we started, though, then a security guard emerged from the bushes and gruffly told us to leave, gesturing with his machine gun toward the reflecting pool below. We left. “I feel…unwelcome.” Said Max.
I should probably reiterate my disclaimer at this point. I’m not trying to take a political stance on privacy or security issues, and I don’t want to start a giant online fight about it, because it would make me sad and uncomfortable and I would probably lose. This is a travel blog. I use it to write about how traveling makes me feel. And Washington D.C. made me feel…nervous. Cautious. Paranoid. Like a criminal in my own national capital. As though my mere presence posed a security threat, and that it was therefore imperative to micro-monitor my movements to ensure that each of my missteps could be appropriately punished. The message was clear: tiptoe through the capital in careful conformity and don’t get any big ideas about walking on the grass or anything. But really, what is so dangerous about a couple of U.S. citizens celebrating their liberties to play Frisbee in a public place? Why did we get a gun waved in our faces for trying to play Frisbee? Why can’t we play Frisbee?!
A lot of people joke about “being on the watchlist”, and it’s usually mentioned in the context of benign social deviance--doing something that isn't inherently harmful, it's just...different.
“I just subscribed to the North Korean youtube channel. I’m definitely on the watchlist.”
“Well, I was involved in Occupy, so I’m probably on the watchlist.” “
“I just wrote this blog post, which is pretty much a request to be on the watchlist.”
But why does it feel like a crime to be curious or vocal or opinionated? Why is our government so hysterically paranoid about benign social deviance? I doubt I will be returning to D.C. anytime soon, but my experience there this past weekend has gotten me thinking about issues of privacy, surveillance, and civil liberties a hell of a lot more seriously than I have in a while. D.C. made me feel afraid, and that bothers me. But what bothers me more is that I felt as though I was expected to feel afraid. That worries me.
Obviously, there are advantages and disadvantages to both the anarchistic laxness of India and the ever-present surveillance of America. Having lived in both for a time, I haven’t yet decided which I prefer. However, I have decided that I’m hesitant to approve of either extreme. Surveillance of the degree to which we are subjected in America is not the global standard of normalcy, and I refuse to accept it as such. From now on, I intend to think critically about it, even if it means I end up on the watchlist.
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