Well…read an interesting article in the Washington Post today that tries to get a handle on the explosion of the security apparatus that has been built in America since 9/11. One of the the scariest parts of the whole domestic spying program is that no one knows how many people or dollars are being spent on it….no consistent oversight, no protections for you and me anywhere to be seen; things that would have not been thinkable 15 years ago…and our whole world has been changed without our permission to resemble a high tech Soviet Union…so that all economic activity that anyone in this country now does is recorded in huge databases that are regularly mined by federal, state, and local authorities for any reason…but you and I can’t find out the reasons since they are no longer required to tell you when you are being “seached”…in clear violation of the 4th and 5th amendments to the constitution.

But, that is not even the most scary part….you can get swallowed up by these databases just because “someone” thought you looked “suspicious”…..yep, you heard it right, no probable cause, no rights….just “someone” (who can remain anonymous) thought you looked suspicious because you come and go at odd hours, because you take pictures in some city, or because you just looked “different” than the rest of the people in the neighborhood. And, you have no right to look at you file…EVER. I can’t even count the
ways that this stuff has been abused to control people that belonged to a targeted group…can you say “driving while black”?

We, as a people, need to say stop…no, scream stop at our government…watching American citizens is no way to prevent terror attacks…but it can and has been used to chill political discourse and participation by an overzealous government in the past….and I predict it will be again. Geez….