They're Tracking Your Phone Calls, Your E-mails, Your Banking (and this posting?)

"Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security".
- Benjamin Franklin

Americans have become fat, happy (in an ignorance-is-bliss sort of way), and in general, don't give a shit.

There I said it.

How else to account for high levels of a passivie malaise that has spread across an entire generation? In the 1970's under comparatively less dire political, criminal, and personal privacy invasion issues, the American public literally forced President Nixon to resign. These days, despite overwhelming evidence of misleading the public, lying under oath, pedaling federal procurement contracts for cash and sex, and nondenials of the breaking of constitutional law on more that one occasion, the loudest the public outcry ever gets is to the level of a whimper.

In two separate contexts the public has been made aware of the fact that large numbers of American citizens private phone calls are secretly monitored, and that millions of records of our phone calls have been collected from numerous phone service companies. And it doesn't stop there, today brings information that news bureaus and reporters cell phones are specifically being targeted to monitor their protected sources of information.

If no other words in this post scare you into some sort of active response these should:

"The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly seeking reporters' phone records in leak investigations. "It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration," said a senior federal official."

I'll even put it in caps again for emphasis....USED TO BE HARD AND COMPLICATED...NO LONGER IS IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.

Still not ticked-off, concerned, or at least a little creeped out?

"Imagine a situation where massive government computers listen to every phone call you make, read every e-mail you send and receive, and keep meticulous records of your pattern of communication. Yet amazingly something like this might just be happening right now. So claims the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which filed a class-action lawsuit against telecommunications giant AT&T in U.S. District Court in Northern California earlier this year.

In the lawsuit, EFF accuses AT&T of providing the U.S. National Security Agency, the super secret intelligence outfit, with unfettered access to customer phone calls and Internet communications collected through a secret room at the company's downtown San Francisco switching center."

And we'll link to a photo as well.

I'm not naive, secrecy and spying have a place in the government and in the protection of our national interests. But that need has to be firmly grounded in a rational understanding of the requirements for checks and balances within branches of the federal government and between the public and their political leaders. An overwhelming paranoia of those outside of the inner circle and an obsession with secrecy and spying inevitably has lead to criminal acts once those checks and balances have been removed.

Support elected officials who can be trusted to maintain our security and retain an honest, open transparency in their governing. Rationally question those who continuously wave the banner of "fighting the war on terror" as a hollow justification for ignoring your personal rights and maintaining a sense of trust and dignity.

P.S. To the secret spy-guys: I'm not sure if this post has enough "key words" to flag your data analyzing software and bring it up for a read-through. If it did, just want to say "hi", thanks for all your hard work, we're not here trying to blame the messenger.