With all the surveillance initiatives, programs, and policies it would be easy to think that we are safer than ever. I personally do not see how scanning my email, web communications, or listening in on my phone conversations with my mother can be a good thing. I have only heard of one account where this use of technology has saved me from anyone. I guess that is classified. I have read numerous accounts of Homeland Security taken overboard and blog authors discussing privacy rights.
Not to worry some say, the government is doing all this to keep us safe and secure. What are we sacrificing? Pre Patriot Act and warrant less times, I never thought much about discussing topics that might include the words bomb, a terrorist related name, nasty comments about the President, Congressional members, or the ELF fires. Now, I think about these words and how I use them. I would like to tell you that I have nothing to fear, after all if I am not doing anything wrong, why worry. I am not as worried as I am disgusted. I assume that if I were a terrorist that I would know enough to realize that Uncle Sam is listening and would circumvent the system somehow.
How many citizens will be falsely accused, questioned, maybe detained over false computer interpretations analyzing threat potentials. We already know our government disregards the grand daddy of law, our Constitution. Some wayward military personal find nothing wrong with torturing their prisoners and to heck with the Geneva Convention. I no longer trust my governments system to work for me and not against me if caught in this situation.
Racial profiling, our presence in Iraq, and rhetoric about the Clash of Civilizations creates more terror. Mass surveillance, tracking, biometrics, Echelon, Carnivore, Magic Lantern, MATRIX the infrastructure of the operations roadmap is surrounding us, systems that may convert our constitutional republic into a very large panopticon.
“… each man is a coded number and the telescreens spy on every activity.”
“Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society.”
George Orwell in 1984
Winston Smith, the protagonist in George Orwell’s novel, 1984, ultimately had nowhere to hide.