What is the danger in the government knowing everything? Listening in on everything? Tracking everything you do, and every place you go, and establishing a network of ever person you know? Your not doing anything wrong after all. You've got nothing to hide. So why should you be concerned?Well, your not doing anything wrong by your perspective. Information is power, and if those with the information don't like what they see, you could be in for a lot of trouble. Here is some of what they already know about you:
- E-mail, all of it ever sent, or received, regardless if you delete it or not
- Chat, every word every typed into any chat application
- Twitter, all of it
- Facebook, every post, picture, and everything you deleted that you hope no one noticed
- Flicker, all of it, again including the stuff you posted, then removed
- Text records, every text sent or received, including the ones your wife/girlfriend sent you
- Phone records, every call, recorded, not just who calls who, but what is said is recorded
- Internet traffic, everything you do online is recorded
- Every search is recorded, and attached to you to build a profile of you to predict your actions
- Your daily routine, when does your computer connect to the internet, when does it disconnect
They know what car you drive, where you work, and the cameras tell them where you go. How often you fill your gas tank (credit card records) gives them a very accurate pattern of your movements and a good guess of how far you move outside of where cameras are placed.Your entire life is compiled in real time as it happens. They know you and your history far better than you do.
The NSA has all this stuff, right now, they have been recording it for years. They have recorded so much information on American citizens thanks to the Patriot Act they have to build a MASSIVE storage facility to house all the servers they need to hold information they are still collecting on us.
"So what?" you say? Well lets say that you disagree with what the current administration is doing. I'm not talking about Obama here. I'm talking about in general, with any president. You don't like him. You post funny things about him on your facebook. Or you chat and e-mail your friends about how much you hate his policies and what he's doing to the country. How you can't wait for November so he can get voted out.
One of your comments gets flagged at the NSA. Why? Why me, I'm not doing anything wrong at all. Wrong by who's count? Yours or theirs? You don't know what they are profiling. You don't know what things get flagged, and why other things are ignored. We don't know how it's determined. So can you really say you haven't done anything that the NSA thinks is wrong? No you can't. This is why privacy matters.
If you've ever wondered how innocent Americans end up on the "No Fly" list, now you know. Feinstein wants a bill that would, if not implement, augment a "No Buy" list for guns. How many other lists are going to be made? You want to be on one? There no way to get off of them, as the NSA operates above the law. Lists are the first step on the road to death camps. That's not exaggeration, it's what history shows happens if this continues unchecked. This is why privacy matters.
What if you get flagged? Now you're on the "No Fly" list. They raid your house one day while your at work. Oh they can. And they don't need a search warrent. Not under the Patriot act. You just come home to a house in shambles with an official notice slapped on your door. This is why privacy matters.
Right now, they are making lists. But what's next? We know what happens. Nazi Germany stands as a warning in history. Communist Russia stands as a warning in history. Communist China also stands as a warning in history. Breach of privacy leads to lists, lists leads to restrictions, restrictions leads to incarcerations, which then escalate into concentration camps of "dissidents."
Information is power. Keeping the information of your life private keeps you in control of this power. Allowing this privacy to be breached gives the power over to the government. Power corrupts, and the more information the government collects, the more power they have and the more corrupt they become. This is why privacy matters. In short, a private society, is a free society.