Changing privacy in the United States:
For those who don't know, Americans have taken great pride and comfort in being able to disappear into the masses. Safe in the knowledge that their government has more on its mind than discovering what they had for supper or what dirty books they check out from the library. Apparently not any more.
"Temporary" measures to secure the nation from "terrorists" have predictably become part of the tangled web to the point where communication companies were "asked" by the government to revert and copy e-mail and telephone communications so that the government could indiscriminately "monitor" them...without a court action, without boundaries.
As common as this is in some countries, us spoiled Americans are accustomed to much better protection of our rights and a check in the governing power's reach. The freedoms are so taken for granted that most Americans won't even realize there's been a change in this system until they are directly affected by it.
4 comments:
Hmmm, 7 years down the track, with relatively few attacks in that time, and the government still tells us that they have to take away our rights to protect us... and we still believe them?
As U2 once pointed out beLIEve...
Maybe we were wrong... maybe the terrorists have won. After all isn't the end goal of terrorism fear? And they've certainly got us too afraid to question the actions of our governments! Again!
fear certainly seems to have moved in and taken control of the tv remote. Some house guests really should be kicked out.
The point of a democracy in the form that the US has is that people can vote for the bunch of idiots who promise them the most stuff and then not worry about what really happens for the next 3/4's of a term. Then it gets ugly with more unuseful promises next time while people weigh up the good bad and ugly of what the last group did against what they are promising to do next time.
Overall, middle class people just want the government to let them make money however they see fit. Upper class people can afford to pay for privacy so they have nothing to worry about. And lower class people are so easy to scare when election time comes around they are never a hassle anyway. Overall, it doesn't exactly create an environment where anyone actually cares about what things are happening to other people that they wouldn't want happening to them. So it keep going round and round. Besides, if the US citizenry really cared so much they wouldn't egg everyone on to fight for US V Them all the time. You dumb the system down that far and you just encourage stupidity.
Odysseus, good point. it seems like it's almost beneficial for governments to have terrorists. at least they can focus on the "us versus them" mentaliy and keep up the excuses.
Kris, good with the not so subtle point.
Ansell, sadly, i think you're pretty right on about the election process.
but it's not just that. common people don't feel like they have much of a voice. the lawyers and poliicians are the ones monitoring the media for any information seeping out about themselves. by the time everyday people figure out what's going on, they assume 10 lawyers have jumped all over it trying to sue and make tons of money. and if they haven't (especially with that kind of incentive), the mass of people are at a loss of the next thing to do except picket something.
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