Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern?

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Wed, 07 Apr 2004 09:59:03 EDT, James.Cupps () sappi com  said:

> The real question though is why should we care. 
>
> In the sense that we as individuals still have some privacy the statements
> about huge volumes still applies. 

The only reason that we should care is because people are involved, and
people in general can't be trusted.  Some of us are more concerned about
what our government is doing to protect us against terrorists than they
are about terrorists attacking us.

J Edgar Hoover launched illegal surveillance of a lot of people such as Martin
Luther King Jr.

At least once a year, we see news stories of somebody in law enforcement
getting convicted of poking around in databases to gather dirt on somebody for
non-work-related reasons. 

The ACLU has a lawsuit in progress regarding the "no fly" list as it currently
stands - and you *know* that the people who thought of Total Information
Awareness (which was renamed Terrorist Information Awareness and then killed,
only to re-emerge as MATRIX) would love to feed all your e-mail into the mix.

And quite frankly, I'd rather worry about living in a world where there's still
a few terrorists on the loose than 5 years from now, not being able to get on
a plane because the first paragraph of my reply has flagged me as an "enemy
of the state" in some database.

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