Though it was little over a week ago that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.com was the target of a torrent of moral outrage over the new Facebook News Feed (or as it was popularly known, the Stalker's Guide to Everything), the indignation has since largely ebbed.
Students can occasionally be heard remarking to roommates or close friends that Facebook "sold out when it expanded to high schools," the kind of outpouring that the American university system briefly exhibited has been basically extinguished.
However, the reaction to the addition of the News Feed prompted a couple positive developments: the national coverage provoked a renewed focus on civil liberties and privacy rights, and the addition of increased privacy settings has made users ever-so-slightly safer from the rapists and nutbags who managed to battle their way into Myspace.com's fortress of security.
It is safe to say that in this particular battle, students and civil liberties prevailed (or at least brokered a truce on favorable terms).
Why is it, then, that the larger fight for civil liberties has failed to gain traction among the majority of students and young Americans?
Since President Bush admitted that he signed the NSA wiretap orders in December 2005, the program has basically remained in place, regardless of the near-universal acknowledgement of its illegality.
While a Detroit judge sided with the ACLU recently in calling the program a criminal act, President Bush has continued to assure the nation that it is absolutely necessary for his administration and the United States intelligence agencies to have access to such gathered information in order to guarantee the safety of the American people.
The citizens of the United States can further take comfort in the fact that, should another terrorist attack occur, it will probably be Clinton's fault.
We have all heard President Bush declare time and time again that the information from the warrantless surveillance program is important and necessary.
One must inquire, however, as to how the people of America can be expected to trust the Administration with some of its most sensitive information when the Administration can't seem to keep its mouth shut.
From the "outing" of Valerie Plame to the recent controversy over the Administration's alleged threat toward Pakistan (both delivered by Dick Armitage, suggesting that Scooter Libby is not the only official who should be kept in a closet with a sock in his mouth), President Bush's government seems to delight in saying things they shouldn't and then denying that they said them.
The bar has been set so low that the American people have begun to take news of secret programs and detention facilities with a collective roll of the eyes, and the blabbing of incendiary information with a casual shrug.
Bush himself seems to be blissfully unaware of just about everything that goes on; he was reported to have been "surprised" and "taken aback" when he was made aware of the Pakistani allegations (largely the same reaction that Americans saw when the President was made aware of the Dubai ports deal, the Vice President's hunting adventure, the "secret prisons" in foreign countries, and the identity of Valerie Plame).
So why is it that today's university students will go after Mark Zuckerberg with foam at their mouths and blood in their eyes but don't have the will to take a run at the big dogs?
Perhaps we are victims of a certain disconnect: our four-year insulation from the "real world" makes it relatively easy for us to pretend the real world doesn't exist.
At a time when our main concerns are papers, problem sets, and theses, a government official listening in on the phone calls of people we probably don't know seems fairly low on our list of priorities. The point is, however, that last week's controversy showed that college students will fight for civil liberties when we want to.
Now all we have to do is want to.
