The NSA And Your Music Career

For those of you that were under a rock this past week (or locked in a remote studio), it was just exposed that the NSA has been monitoring and can access anything that you ever put online, or anything you've ever done online in the entire history of your internet usage, including your encrypted bank transfers, credit card numbers, and just about anything else you can imagine.

I'm going to not talk about whether this is morally right or wrong (better not in case some horrifically bored NSA employee is reading this), but it does bring up a really difficult question: if your customers, your friends, your band members knew everything you've ever done online, would they still want to associate with you?

What would the things you've done indicate to them?

Would you have spent your time in worthwhile pursuits? Used the internet to be generous, to give, to connect with others, to learn?

I can honestly say my record on the internet has been a mixed bag. The internet often tends to drift to the lowest common level, and it's so easy to use this massively powerful network of global communication to view kitty pictures. And while that's fine in limited amounts, it's a horribly grotesque waste of a tremendously powerful tool if that's all we use it for.

Perhaps if we all could pretend that an NSA agent is assigned to us, reporting everything we do online to our closest friends and associates, we'd act differently. Perhaps we wouldn't. I don't know.

I do know that if I want to become the person I dream of becoming, this is how every moment of my life should be lived.