Speak out, damn it, speak out!

I'm convinced that this country has gone to hell in a handbasket. The principles that made this country great have been tossed out the window. The Constitution is being ignored. The tenets of freedom are being stripped. Privacy is gone. This is not your father's America anymore.

All Internet communication can now be monitored without a warrant. Most don't realize how big a of a loss this is. Phone service is starting to be carried over the net. Voice over IP (VoIP) has been a buzzword for a long time and is coming to fruition. This will place all your phone calls over the Internet, a portion of them happen now, without you likely knowing it as your local carrier looks to better ways of call routing.

Digital convergence is another buzz term from the past that is happening. This will place your TV viewing across the Internet as well as everything else. On-Line banking, bill paying, and shopping are growing, even if you buy from a physical store, your transaction will likely be recorded over the Internet. Your health information is recorded in databases, it is likely transferred across a network that can be loosely termed Internet should entities wanting to monitor it choose to declare it. Our entire lives are converging on-line and we appear ready to let them monitor it all with no warrants or reasons.

The Patriot act allows searches of your home without you knowing about it. Eavesdropping devices may be planted without ever telling you. Searches and seizures may happen on pure suspicion. You may be detained on pure suspicion. Facial recognition technology is spreading like wildfire, the fact that it hasn't caught one terrorist, yet has tied many innocent people up due to mistakes hasn't mattered. Cameras are everywhere. We are now tracked everywhere.

National ID's are being pushed again, they'll likely pass. Another term for a National ID is papers, "Your papers, please". A National ID makes it far easier to catalog all that other data gathered. Every aspect of our lives, monitored, databased, cataloged. Mere suspicion can cause our home to be searched, devices planted, us detained, where every little thing we may have done that can be twisted to fit that suspicion will likely be thrown back at us. Has any of this woken anyone up yet? Nope, it's even gone further.

TIPS is the Terrorism Information and Prevention System. It is a Department of Justice project that is part of the war on Americans, otherwise known as "the War on Terrorism". TIPS' goal is to turn one out of every 24 Americans into an informant for the Government. People who will report suspicious activity. Who's suspicious activity? Why yours, of course. Everyone has that neighbor who makes it their business to concern themselves with what you are doing. Those people are prime for TIPS. They are the ones who will volunteer. It legitimizes their busy-body activity. TIPS is real, it's being actively pursued, chances are it is already in a community near you (see www.citizencorps.gov).

Is anyone else scared about all this? Does anyone else see the danger? Or is everyone blinded by thinking this is for our safety? A lot of it is in place now. How many terrorists has it caught? How many stories have you read about some innocent caught in the works? That is what the standard will be. Someday you may find yourself in a cell trying to explain something you did or said in the not-so-privacy of your own home that a busy-body neighbor reported.

There will be a huge folder detailing the fact that you bought something at a store where a suspected terrorist shopped. That you bought a book that some other suspected terrorist also read. That your car was seen at some toll booth at a similar time some other suspect was seen. That you watched a TV show that raised a flag somewhere. Suddenly, "innocent you" will have to defend yourself. The defensive position is never a good one to be in. In this country you are guilty until proven innocent.

This is not supposed to be the real America. This is not what it was founded upon. On the contrary, this is what was fought against! The United States is becoming what our founding fathers feared most. They put certain clauses into the constitution to specifically counter the possibility that this could happen. Those clauses are being systematically stripped or trivialized. What our founding fathers feared is happening. This is what we have fought against in nearly every war we entered! Why are we now not fighting? Fight!

What can you do? Speak out! Say something! Vote in the next election! Vote the politicians that are turning our beloved country into a police state out of office! Yes, terrorism is real, but no, nothing that is being done is catching terrorists. All that it is doing is taking away our freedom. It is taking away our rights. It is taking away our privacy. It is stripping this country of the things that made it great. It is turning it into an oppressive society. It is turning our country into what we have fought against for the last two centuries. It is turning it into a police state where _you_ are the suspect. Speak out, damn it! Speak out.

/steve