This is not a dress. This is a sacred robe of the ancient psychedelic monks

I tend to believe that governments use major events to increase control over their greatest opponents, the people they govern. One can see this through the free ride 9/11 gave the Bush administration, the massive curb in privacy and freedom that followed, or the privatising of the school system in New Orleans while people were reeling from Hurricane Katrina, the list could continue...

I read something interesting in a nytimes.com story today (read here), it was interesting and disappointing in two ways. The first issue concerned the Democrats apparently considering backtracking their promise to repeal the new laws passed in August allowing the U.S's NSA blanket approval to wiretap all foreign based communication (the Protect America Act). This could mean any US citizen being legally tapped if they receive an international call or deal with someone from another country. The fear of the Democrats is being attacked as weak on terror if they take away investigative (read invasive) power from the state. I am sure the White House would accuse them of being soft of terror so it is a genuine fear. The thing that disappoints me is that they are not scared of being labelled soft on privacy, freedom, or extremist by their public. I do not think we do enough to protect our way of life and our personal freedoms.

The second issue I had with the article was this short paragraph

A competing proposal in the Senate... may be even closer in line with the administration’s demands, with the possibility of including retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that took part in the N.S.A.’s once-secret program to wiretap without court warrants.

What the fuck? I had never heard about this before and that in itself is wrong. If a goverment has been illegally snooping on it's own residents why is it no big deal? Why is nothing done? It makes it sound like the Protect America Act and the Democrats approval or rejection are absolutely meaningless. The snooping on US citizens has been happening illegally anyway. This is just a way to put a legit face on yet another facade of the police state that is forming.

The general issue reminds me of an article written by Henry Porter, he has a weekly article and he usually uses it to blast Governments for slowly taking over our personal freedoms and he blasts the people for letting it happen. His article used the English DNA database that is growing rapidly as its basis but we are talking about the same issue (Porter article).

We are all fucked. Most Germans thought Hitler was a funny little man who would come and go quickly but when they realised what they were dealing with they had sat back and let enough of their personal freedoms be taken off them so that they were all helpless. We are all fucked.