ravan

TIA (Total Information Awareness) formerly of the Pentagon, and killed due to privacy issues, has reared its ugly, unkillable head again, in the guise of DHS's ADVISE program. Same trolling through personal financial and travel records of American citizens: "Data can include credit-card purchases, telephone or Internet details, medical records, travel and banking information. "

I don't know about you, but I get the heebie jeebies thinking of some fundie, pervert, or stalker who happens to be employed by the DHS having access to all of that information in one handy-dandy place. Even though most of my life is very vanilla, I just don't want all that stuff about me and my roomies collated and gone over by someone who may or may not have their own axe to grind. As Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) once said "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him." Your personal financial, phone, health and travel data comprise more than six lines, and by having or doing them, you are "writing" them.

When will these assholes understand that the constitution never had the intention of allowing unfettered government prying into our lives?? Amendments III, IV, V prohibit it. What the hell do they think privacy is, but a rounded understanding of the Fourth Amemdment: "persons, houses, papers, and effects" are protected from "unreasonable search and seizure". Your buying, telephone, internet, travel, health, and banking data is all part of your papers and effects. It's yours, not public data, regardless of where it's stored.

Time to get out the red postcards....

Hello, "conservatives" and red state voters. I have some things for you to think about, even while you are still aglow with Congress' success at abrogating the Geneva Convention and the 6th, 7th and 8th Amendments.

The executive branch of our government, with the connivance (or cowardice) of Congress, has accreted to itself more and more surveillance, domestic intelligence gathering, warrentless arrest and detention, secret trial and even "mild" torture powers. The Patriot Act was only the start, and I'm sure that the Military Commissions Act will not be the last of the power granting.

I have to ask anyone who supports these type of measures to do this simple exercise:

Imagine that your worst nightmare has come to pass, and the government is entirely made up of the party and politicians you hate and/or fear the most - example: think of Congress and the White House filled with Hillary and Bill Clinton clones, with some Kerry and Gore for moderation.

Imagine that this government of people you loathe has *all* the tools now granted to the current administration -- plus future ones in the works -- for monitoring, identification, surveillance, spying on, wiretapping, arresting, detaining, "interrogating" and trying in secret undesirables and "enemy combatants".

Imagine that this government that you loathe now considers you to be an undesirable, a terror suspect, an "enemy combatant" or otherwise anti-American.

Are you still so sure that you want to give the "government" (current and future) the authority to use these tools?

You see, you haven't just handed the good ol' boys of the Bush administration these powers, you are handing the government, in perpetuity, these powers - regardless of who is running it. If, and when, you lose your predominance, the people who you hate, and that hate you, will have the tools to make your (and your decendents) lives miserable - and you gave them to them with a cheer and a "damn straight".

Doesn't that make you feel brilliant?

Let's undo it, while there is still time for all of us to be free. Until then, you had best be sure that all of your papers are in order.

EDIT: You could end up reading stuff like this in a few years: President Clinton Jails 938,000 Illegal Enemy Combatants Isn't that what Congress has granted?

DHS is at it Again

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