Monday, September 27, 2010

Wiretap Expansion Threatens Internet Privacy


For those of you who read my last post and are worried that the government's ability to crack down on its citizens might be on the wane, check out this heartening article. Don't worry, it's for our own protection. You can tell because it's been introduced by the Obama administration, and Obama would never do anything to hurt American citizens, right?

(Except in the case of Anwar Awlaki, of course, a citizen marked for assassination without any actual disclosure of sentencing, or a trial, or any of those "niceties" enshrined by that hippy-liberal "Constitution" nonsense. And don't tell me "oh it's cuz his a terrister," because it's only a matter of time before anti-war activists are considered terrorists, and then the union organizers will be considered terrorists, and so on ... it's called a "slippery slope," look it up.)

The trend towards police state is unnerving in America, almost precisely because it parallels the rise of the police state in other countries too - allies and not-so-allies alike. As this article points out, Saudi Arabia and the UAE banned Blackberries because there was an inability of the government to "monitor" use.

That article also points out that the Obama administration wants to watch every international monetary transaction that goes on between America and the rest of the world. Not just the major ones - not just the big crates of electronic exchanges between banks, for example, or between masters of finance - not, essentially, by those of whom could wreck the most havoc with mismanaging their fortunes (as evidenced by the recession). No, they want to watch every parent sending their exchange student cash, every immigrant wiring money back home to her family. They want to monitor every transaction, every last one, all the foreign aid donated to countries hit by "natural disasters," every eBay and Amazon purchase, every Malice Mizer t-shirt some American otaku orders from Japan.

These are the faces of the new federal suspects. All the new data-combing programs, all the new hires for the DHS, all the new training courses and technologies, the cameras installed in the last 10 years, are going towards atomizing and oppressing the people who inhabit this country.

People need to move from a mindset that trusts or fears the government into an activist-oriented mindset. They need to find the groups in their areas that oppose the abuses of civil liberties and get involved. If you can't find such a group, look on the internet and help start one. Talk to your friends and families. Organize protests. Those of us who are already activists need to be doggedly recruiting and organizing against the expansion of federal authority.

There is still time before the noose closes, and even if it does it's never too late to fight back.

ADDENDUM: And the Democratic Party continues to alienate its base.... I'm so over that stuffy corporate machine. Talk about out-of-touch with the country. They're going to scream and whine as power slips out of their hand, but the worst part is they're leading all of our progressives back into cynicism and inaction. The worst thing those of us on the Left could do right now is make excuses for the goddamn Democrats.

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