American Worries Part II

During times of danger, throughout the history of this country, our government has withheld certain civil rights from the people in order to protect something “greater” than an individual’s rights. On almost all of the times this has happened, it has later been looked upon as a mistake (McCarthism, Vietnam Draft, even Lincoln regretfully dismissed many rights during the early stages of the civil war). Today, there are factions around the world that pose a threat to the US and its citizens and the current administration believes it has the right to encroach on our civil rights in the name of national security. This is evident in (at least) two secret programs the government operates to track the financial and communications records of anyone in this country. Furthermore, the administration has accused the people who exposed these secret programs of treason. It makes me wonder what are the other secret programs we don’t know about. They are already (as part of the Patriot Act) collected all of our emails, but are they reading our mail, recording every voice conversation, tracking our credit cards, EZ pass, and plane trips. Are they asking the On-Star Hotline to track our every movement? They can visually track our movements from satellites in space and probably listen to our conversation in our homes. And this could all be secret (and technically legal). My issue that is most important to me is “what is the specific reasoning behind these programs?”. Do we really think that terrorists are using regular landlines to set up conference calls between fellow jihadists. Do we think they are using their Mastercards to charge AK-47s at the local gun shop?

I’ve written about this before and it’s only a matter of time before the government is exposed to spying on other politicians. That will be the end of these programs, but until than what what you say, what you buy, and what blogs you read.