Dear Friends,
It seems to me, one of the results of the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center, is the surveillance state we now live under. The surveillance state has been a long time coming but the terrorist attacks of 12 years ago greatly accelerated the trend. The elite seized on the opportunity to move ahead with their plan to monitor every aspect of our lives, not to protect us from terrorists, but to protect their shredding the Constitution from our outrage. This is a continuation of the elite’s overall scheme to move the US from a Constitutional republic to a socialist democracy. Anyone who has their eyes open must be alarmed at the development.
The NSA scandal has it’s roots in the 911 attacks. When the Patriot act was implemented and became law under George Bush it was sold as a means to protect the homeland from future terrorist attacks. The reality it seems, is far more sinister. The sweeping surveillance of the American people by our own government is Orwellian in it’s scope and intrusiveness. The Snowden leak is only the tip of the iceberg I’m afraid.
There is not a single aspect of our lives that is not monitored by our government. They vacuum up information from our Twitter and Facebook posts, our phone records, our personal information and our financial information. If you or I were to get just the phone records the government claims are not personal or private, we would be charged with a CPNI, (Customer Personal Information) crime. We would be tried with the full weight of Federal law. The irony is delicious. If those records are truly impersonal and not private then why is it illegal for us to gather that information? Because they are personal and private.
Many police cars have license plate readers that operate all the time. The readers log the owner of every car they pass, where that car is, at what time… and store that information in a government database. The government could conceivably use this information to model every American’s comings and goings. Software could use this data to predict not only where we are at any given time it could be used to predict our actions. Most major cities have government cameras on street corners. If these cameras are coupled with face recognition software they could be used to reduce the granularity of the police license plate readers. It is impossible to argue this is not an intrusion on our privacy.
Off site backup is a great idea and a wonderful business model but leaves anyone who uses it open to further government intrusion. Every bit of your hard drive is backed up on the firm’s server farm. They can have the very vest encryption software and have the most stringent privacy policies, but all that information is only a subpoena away from the government tracking your web habits, writings, political leanings, financial information and who your friends are. All in real time without you even knowing they are doing it! The problem is only magnified by cloud computing.
As we know, the government, not just the American government but all governments seek to increase their power over the citizenry. This is not new nor is it startling. Governments have always been this way and the United States founding fathers understood all too well this pernicious nature of government. That is why they put such stringent restrictions on the US government in the Constitution. Those restrictions have been under direct assault for over a century now. The fear that 911 caused in the American psyche was exploited to speed the scheme up.
Today if you or I bring up the Constitution we are scoffed at. Nancy Pelosy laughed when she was asked if Obama Care was Constitutional. The unbiased media derisively call those of us who argue on Constitutional grounds, “conspiracy theorists” and our own government has issued directives that clearly state that Constitutionalists are potential terrorists! Imagine that! Patriots who consider the Constitution a limiting document are called terrorists, but those who openly call for the overthrow of the US government, are not! Our government refuses even to call Islamic terrorists, who openly avow terror as a means to conquer the World, terrorists! This shows conclusively, the surveillance state is not aimed at real terrorists, it is aimed at citizens who seek to limit government on Constitutional grounds.
The IRS scandal is proof positive that the US government is, or at least has, used the apparatus of government to promote a political ideology, and we can reasonably extrapolate that scandal to any other surveillance program. If someone misuses one tool without consequence why wouldn’t they misuse other tools? Now the IRS is the gatekeeper of our health care as well as who gets tax free status. The ability to deny medical coverage to someone, due to his or her political ideology, is a very powerful tool to dominate citizens, by the political party that wields power. Coupled with the ambitious program to monitor our every move gives government unprecedented power to control us. There is no hiding from Big Brother government, and I am afraid that is exactly where we are headed, an Orwellian state… if we are not already there.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
