Hey just a note of possible significance, albeit minimal: there’s a bill in the Senate to be voted on next week that allows the government to access your emails, Google search history, and Facebook and Twitter messages without a search warrant. In fact a total of 22 government agencies will be permitted to hack into any manner of internet correspondence without even a symbolic nod to your constitutional rights. Don’t worry though, your ISP can let you know AFTERWARDS that your account has been “accessed”. That is unless the government doesn’t want your service provider to tell you, in which case notification will be “delayed” for up to 360 days. “Hello customer, just wanted to let you know the FBI skimmed through your emails last March. I guess you already know that hence you being currently confined in a military stockade courtesy of the NDAA 😉 lolz. Anyways hit us up when you get out!”
There are two types of people in the world who I would love to line up and kick in the shins one by one:
First, the idiots who read about something like this and say “Well if you’re not doing anything wrong you’ve got nothing to hide!” Fantastic logic, Socrates. I assume from your submissive kowtowing that you are a masochist so I’m betting there’s plenty of stuff in your search history you’d like to hide. I do have one request of anyone who says this: simply go ahead and post your email and Facebook passwords online. You don’t have anything to hide do you? I assume if you don’t meet my challenge you’re a terrorist and a serial killer. Law enforcement will be notified accordingly.
Second, the morons who hear about further intrusions on our civil liberties and blanketly justify the government’s actions by saying “Would you care so much about e-mail privacy if there was a TERRORIST about to blow up your FAMILY, and he could have been stopped if the FBI had been able to access his internet accounts?” OK if you have to immediately go to an absurd life and death hypothetical to argue your point, your point probably sucks. But to throw you a bone and play the game, the answer is no. I wouldn’t care about anything if my family’s life was threatened. I wouldn’t care about you or your mother or your rights or the constitution or the founding fathers or anything else or anybody else. That’s precisely why the hypothetical is irrelevant. When trying to discern what’s right and wrong and certainly when trying to decipher our constitutional rights, we shouldn’t put ourselves in the mindset of a panicked desperate man whose entire family is about to be incinerated by Osama bin Laden Jr. Do you want to live in a country whose laws and liberties are protected and enforced from the perspective of fear, panic and desperation or from the vantage point of calm objective ethical, legal and moral analysis? Personally I’d choose the latter. If you’d choose the former, you’re wrong.
And I’m going to kick you in the shins. Insult to injury.
Presumably it was a brain injury in your case.
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