Last edited Fri May 17, 2013, 11:51 AM - Edit history (1)
according to the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. It is appalling that we have reached the point in this country, after the Patriot Act and relentless subsequent assaults on our civil protections, where we are supposed to be grateful and excited about legislation to restore certain aspects of our privacy for certain limited groups under certain limited situations.
We also saw crowing and excitement this evening for Obama's statement that a warrant should be required before the government can access the email of American citizens.
Good god. That should be a given, and the protection certainly should not be limited to email. Americans should *already* have a baseline guarantee of privacy from warrantless government spying into ANY of our private communications, email or otherwise.
Creepy, creepy, creepy authoritarian framing going on these days. We are to be delighted at the prospect of legislation that returns only bits and pieces of the civil protections that have been stolen from us? And that is supposed to end the controversy? No, we need to be having a serious national conversation about our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and ALL the rights that have been outrageously stolen from us through the Patriot Act and subsequent legislation.
Enough Alice in Wonderland praise and excitement at news that politicians may deign to give back a tiny fraction of what they have stolen from us: the fundamental civil rights, privacies, and protections that used to be considered a given for every single American citizen.
Access to information about government by the people, and access to information about people by the government *should* be asymmetrical. The people should have privacy, and the government should be transparent.
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