Who you gonna call?

You ever hear something so outside the realm of what you thought was possible that it takes you quite a bit of time to even react?

As I'm sure you've all heard by now, our government here in the good old Land of the Free; Give me liberty or give me death; etc. etc. is collecting information on every domestic phone call they can get their hands on.

Before, people got upset about illegal wiretapping and were told that only international calls were being looked into.

Now we find out that every time you call your mom, your sister, work, Dominos, hell, any time you vote for Kat or Taylor on American Idol - the government knows about it.

Does it creep anyone else out that George Bush could come out tomorrow and tell us all that AI is rigged and Chris really was getting way more votes than Taylor? How about that you are the one that kept calling and hanging up on that cute young thing that you met last week at a party? Or, that you haven't called your mother in two weeks - shame on you.

What disturbs me more than anything is the large percentage of Americans that obviously refuse to engage their gray matter and have responded to polls that they actually support the government peeping in their virtual windows.

Do most people really have such un-exercised imaginations that they can't see what control and access are being handed to the government by not standing up and simply saying 'no'? How long before, emboldened by our inaction, the government does other things that are made possible by technology - if not by ethics?

Many of our cars have speed limiters built in. Lots also have GPS and know what road you are on. It would be trivial to make your car go no faster than the posted limit (oh, _you_ don't speed? Right.) How about, rather than mandated speed - a revenue stream from simply mailing your ticket straight to you if you ever exceeded those limits?

Every web site you go to is broadcast in the clear on the Internet. Wouldn't be too hard to keep tabs on what sites you like to visit - now would it. Just to make sure you aren't visiting any site with questionable content....such as web sites for the minority parties, perhaps?

If these don't scare you (If you aren't breaking the law, you have nothing to worry about - you say.) then think it through. Once the monitoring is in place - what is to stop the government from changing laws and making you the outlaw tomorrow?

I suggest we all write to our congress person and let them know we don't appreciate being spied on - whether by monitoring of what books we check out of the library, who we call on our personal phones, what web sites we visit from the privacy of our home computers, and any other pieces of personal information that the government might decide could help them fight the bogeymen of the week.

Until next time...