There are a lot of great authors who would die or die again if they suddenly came to life and listened to what is going on with the NSA. George Orwell would swear that this government agency was using his book "1984" as a guide rather than as a warning. The same with Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". "Big Brother" is watching where you call on Verizon and using the threat of terrorism to do it. Just plain old common sense should tell people this is very bad. If I have learned anything in my short time on earth, it's that when you allow a government to spy on its citizens; democracy is threatened.
The President said that this cell phone surveillance was only used to see "where" the phone calls were made and not to listen in on conversations. That will be the next step. They already lied to us last year and said that this could not be done without a warrant and this activity was not going on anyway. Do you think they served Verizon with a warrant on all of its phones in the meantime?
This stems from The Patriot Act and shows that government overreach knows no party lines. This is not an ideology thing, it's a right to privacy thing. Politicians from both sides are defending and condemning this. Who ever defends this automatically loses my vote. There's even disagreement on whether this has foiled any terror plots. I've heard it's stopped two plots, dozens of plots and zero plots. What about the attacks it has not stopped? How long has this been going on anyway? What's next, we find out the government has been listening to certain phone calls based on "buzz" words or phrases? Average citizens finding themselves being questioned because they strung the wrong words together in a simple conversation?
I was a little frightened to hear the President say "You can't have 100% security and 100% privacy", I'm paraphrasing, but you get the point. I don't care who's in the White House, a blanket statement like that can be used to explain away a lot of government prodding. This has to be cut off at the knees, because it will not stop here.
You know what's more powerful than money, celebrity, the military, social status and ability? Information. With the right information you can control all the aspects of life you want. There's such a thing as too much information and control over that information. Once again, if you think this will stop with looking at where the calls are going, when, how many times, etc, you're a fool and I think fools should loose their right to vote. Fools will vote themselves out of freedom every time in the name of being safe and secure.
I think I'm going to pull out my Verizon contract and see if I waved my right to privacy when I signed up. I don't remember the "And with this 2 year agreement you are allowing the NSA to monitor when, where and how many times you call certain countries, cities, geographical locations, etc" paragraph. I must have skipped that part of the fine print.
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