Learning 2.0 - Privacy

I just got finished watching the Frontline "United States of Secrets" and I am literally sickened.  I knew that the Patriot Act was a bag of tricks when it was sold to the public back in 2001, but I guess I didn't realize exactly how much personal data is being sifted through daily on me and other US citizens in search of "unknown" terrorists.  I wanted to believe that the sifting was on targeted known terrorist, but if they WERE in fact known terrorist, a legal warrant could easily be attained, and this massive collection of US citizens would not be necessary.   I am equally shocked to hear that this program has not only grown to a 10 Billion program in 2010, but now this program is even more powerful under the FISA act. I am empathetic to the whistle blowers that thought when they risked everything to come out with the truth about this program,  that the American public would be appalled by this information, and that the NSA would be forced to shut down this program, but instead the public has been mislead and told only about the least invasive part of the program, protecting the domestic program, the larger program that tracks US citizens phone calls, email, internet searches, financial transactions and more.  It seems so strange to me that as the end of Bushes term approached Obama openly opposed the illegal spying of US citizens and promised to put a stop to it, but then after being put into office he signs the FISA act continuing the program and giving it even more power making all of the programs legal!

 

Further in the program after learning everything you google, every word of every email, all AT&T phone call are all being captured and stored, we learn that Gmail and the new social media information whore FaceBook are competing with each other to see who can gather the most information on you as possible.  Additionally a new program called Muscular begins breaking into other countries gathering marketing information on their citizens as well.  The beast just keeps growing.  Now all of the tracking "cookies" are used by the NSA as well.  The NSA sent out 56,000 letters to internet companies demanding them to not only turn all of their information over to them, and demanded a gag order, before one person from a small internet company contested.  People that stand up for their constitutional rights do so at great expenses and risks.  I am grateful to them for coming forward to bring this beast to light!  I am anxious to watch the documentary "Citizen Four" this weekend and learn more about Edward Snowden.  Some people would call him a traitor or criminal, but I applaud him for making the sacrifices he did to begin to bring this illegal program into the light.  When I think of a traitor I think of someone that is giving information to other countries that would hurt the USA, the information that he is bringing to light is Illegal activity within the National Security Agency that is hurting American citizens.  I do like the idea that Obama made a panel of people to investigate the programs and discuss where the fine line is between security and freedom.  I have to wonder though, who and how were these people chosen, and why didn't he use elected officials that have been voted in by the people like governors or senators make these decisions.  Obamas panel concluded that Prism program was acceptable but dragnet collection of mass information was overreaching and threaten our personal freedom.  The documentary never said what steps were taken as a consequence of the panels decisions if any, so we can assume that the same illegal activity is going on right now!  In defense of the NSA I did empathize with Micheal Haydens closing remarks that stated that the American people feel like not enough is being done when they feel endangered, but as soon as the feel safe again, they feel like the NSA is  doing too much.  

This poll would seem to suggest this argument is correct.  This thought from Micheal Hayden may be true but that doesn't justify them doing what ever they want tillegally and bullying companies to comply with a gag orders.  Many others could argue the same complaint.  Insurances is too expensive and you don't like paying it until you are in a wreck.   The defense department spends too much money on defense until war breaks out etc.. This argument doesn't make this enormous wrong justifiable.  We need to applaud whistle blowers, bring all of the actions of the NSA out into the open vote and decide through elected leaders where we want the line to be.  We need to shut down all of the Spy programs and destroy all of the information illegally obtained.  Right now the programs are spinning out of control and growing so fast that we don't even know how much we are being watch and and by whom?  It needs to end.