Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today… it’s
Thursday, September 2, 2010
More Here @ 3 pm (PST)
(This article refers directly to today’s issue of the Los Angeles Free Press. If you have not yet seen it, please, before reading further, click HERE.)
Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today it’s…
all about who’s looking into our life and why, and how we, individually and collectively, have come to say no way, no more.
by Steven M. Finger
Private companies all have reasons for meddling into your life… money motivated, for sure. After all, they are in business. Any opportunity for them to find out personal information so that they can make a dollar… I think we can all understand that.
But the Patriot Act is something altogether. Is it protecting our liberties, or chipping away at our civil rights, keeping us safe from terrorists or putting us under the same rule that seek to institute?
Today, I’m most sure that I do not want all factions of society to go unwatched, too many people who believe anti-social actions have value and the fact that one crazy can do much more harm than ever before. But, still, and it is a difficult balance to strike, freedom with social order thru self-governance is the premise on which this country founded. And the one that we’ve adopted and regularly pledge to continue.
And so, its intrusion rankles our majority, even if we do wish that every corner can be looked into to find the bad guys; the downside, the good that it keeps from blossoming, the opportunity it stifles for self vigilance is not worth the maintenance of that Act.
And our acceptance – tolerance – of its being is what leads to our consideration and submission to other things which would normally be dismissed out of hand. A National ID Card? At one time, even the mention of it, with or without the fresh thought of what had happened in other countries would have been enough to scuttle the idea.
If it’s not clear how far we’ve moved from that line, see the Los Angeles Free Press Archive Piece for today. Did we actually think, back then, that the money-motivated merchants would do more than look over our shoulder for any other reason than to sell us stuff? And were we so wrong to wonder?
Hold the line, before it is so faint that it will be hard to grasp.
Here are the keywords to our thinking today: Credit Cards, LA Free Press, Los Angeles Free Press Archives, Privacy Issues, ACLU, Art Kunkin, Cato, Janet Napolitano, National ID, PASS ID, REAL ID ACT, FISA Amendments Act of 2008, National Security Letters, NSLs, Patriot Act, Political Humor, Big Brother, Surveillance Society, Changing Society, Self-Improvement, Social Change, Society & Culture
Here are links to today’s items:
[1] Patriot Act: to Peel or Re-Peel?
[2] Congress Should Re-Examine The Patriot Act: A Statement By The ACLU
[4] Credit Cards Threaten Privacy! (Says 1969 LAFree Press Article)
