Oh, no, he didn't.
But yes, he did. As the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act comes up in Congress, Donald Kerr the principal deputy director of national intelligence says that we need to rethink the way we define privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.
Now, I know plenty of people who believe that the Patriot Act, and others like it, are completely harmless. As my one friend, B., always says to me, "The only reason why you should care if someone is listening is if you are doing something wrong."
But is that really true? Sure, if I choose to give my information, that's one thing. I'm doing that of my own free will. But why should the government have carte blanche to my financial information, to what books I take out of the library or the phone calls I make back to the states (and I gotta tell you -- if anyone was listening, I'm sure the spooks were totally grossed out by all the phone calls I made to my Mom describing the color and consistency of my son's stool when he was an infant)?
Why exactly is that information important? But more importantly, what will the government do with it? How can they really safeguard it? (And even more disturbing, if I'm not even supposed to know that they are examining that information and it is compromised, how am I to know?)
The executive branch of our current government is doing its best to try to knock out basic checks and balances. Yes, it's a pain in the ass to go through a judge to get a wiretap. But you know, that process is there to make sure that there is just cause for that tap to be placed. To make sure that individual American rights are protected. And as anyone who has been wrongly accused of a crime can tell you, those rights are never more important when the spotlight is pointed at you.
Running roughshod over the safeguards our forefathers placed to make sure that America could not become a dictatorship or tyrannical regime is not making us safer. Sure, to a certain extent, I guess it's all philosophical, but it makes me sad that people are willing to trade so much for the illusion of security.
Because, really, at the end of the day, has it been demonstrated that access to all of this data really has the potential to make us safe?
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3 comments:
I agree 100%, kinda sounds like communism or some kind of dictatorship.... "the government knows best".....
Holy Cow that quote is scary!!!! It just sounds a little too 1984 for my taste....
Truly, I believe in the end they just really don't know what to do, so they think that if they violate everyone's privacy they have a shot at coming up with something, anything, to prevent the next potential threat against the Nation. I don't think they can, at least not this way. What needs to be done, needed to be done a long time ago and I think they are sort of trying to close the barn door after the cows are already out...but in reverse.
We needed to protect our Country from our borders...you can't protect the Nation by examining my checking account or my library card...you needed to protect it 50 years ago by examining who you allowed into our country and why and who you got into bed and negotiated trade deal agreements with.
If you get in bed with the enemy, what exactly do you foresee the outcome to be? You know, Patton warned Eisenhower about Russia when they were weak enough for us to defeat them, to free Europe before communism had a chance to take hold, long before they were powerful enough to become our enemy, and no one listened...I guess a lot could be said about hindsight being 20/20....maybe if we heeded some of the warnings in the past we would not have to resort to things like searching through the trash to find non-existent needles in superficial haystacks....but then I'm one of those people who has nothing to hide, so I guess searching through my records will just be a waste of time, energy, money and resources better served elsewhere....and while we are wasting the majority of those resources, the next plot is being planned against our Nation.....and yeah, I think it's an illusion of security, one that the majority of America buys into HOOK, LINE AND SINKER, because to look at it any other way means they would have to face the reality of the situation at hand, one where the threat of another 9/11 is a real possibility, and I just don't think that most of us could deal with that day in and day out.... but then that is just my opinion....
I think at this point, all in all they do what they feel they can in order to either put the minds of our Nation at ease or absolve their conscience in advance of the next potential threat....is there really a difference in the two? Falsehood is falsehood no matter how you look at it.
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