Face it; if the government wants to open your mail
to peek inside and see what you’re up to, it’s going to open your mail and peek
inside. If it wants to break into your home to rifle through your papers and
things, it’s going to do just that, and it has the technology today to do it without
you even knowing about it.
If it wants your banking and other financial accounts
information it can get it. It can open your safety deposit box if it wants to and
you won’t be any the wiser. It can find out what groceries you buy, what items
you mail order, and how often you eat pizza. It knows where you go in your car
and where you’ve been. It can listen you your telephone calls in real time and
record the information as it pleases. It can bug your bedroom; scan your
computer; pick through your trash.
The Fourth Amendment is a relic of the past. You are
no longer secure in your papers and things from government intrusion. No
warrant is necessary. All is accomplished in secret and there is nothing you
can do about it. Your life is an open book. And now even the private sector is
actively cooperating with the government to deprive you of your privacy.
Did you know that Yahoo, Inc., in cooperation with
your government has secretly come up with a custom software program to
search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information desired
by U.S. intelligence officials? The government simply demanded the program and
Yahoo gladly provided it. It scans hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts
at the behest of the National Security Agency and FBI. Again, no warrant is
necessary. It’s all a classified secret. You can’t keep any secrets in your
Yahoo email account.
You can safely bet that if the government is demanding
this from Yahoo it’s demanding it from all the other Internet providers
too. "Yahoo is a law abiding
company, and complies with the laws of the United States," the company
says. Unfortunately the Fourth Amendment excepted. Naturally, the government intelligence
agencies aren’t commenting.
Forget privacy.
In spite of all you mention, I don't have to "forget privacy", because I encrypt anything I don't want the government to see when/if it comes smashing into my house. I also make use of steganography, which embeds data in innocuous music or image files in such a way that it's impossible to tell anything is hidden there. No amount of snooping, with or without a search warrant, can crack this.
ReplyDeleteI don't really have anything to hide, but I enjoy flipping off the government criminals who would strip me of all privacy. Perhaps for your own sanity you should do the same?