>yesterday evening I was flipping channels looking for something while waiting for the Olympics coverage to start.
>When I got to CNBC I saw the guy who broke the "warrantless listening" NSA story, so I stopped and watched.
>There was another guy on with him on the Tim Russert show, and this guy had scary tales to tell.
>
>First, I must say that here in Canada we (supposedly) have laws against what kind of information governments can collect/keep on citizens and how long they may keep 'special' of that stuff (i.e. under investigation for something).
>This guy said that the CIA and FBI are big customers of Choice Point, Lexus-Nexus, the credit 'bureaus', etc.
>
>This has got to be dangerous if true. If nothing else one can easily see the CIA or the FBI being approached by (or approaching) these information sellers to say what additional information they'd be interested in buying. Gotta be an awfully handy way to circumvent laws preventing your own collection of specific information.
>
>Big Brother is here.


Privacy issues are the next legal battleground in the U.S. The Bush administration has used 9/11 as a rationale for pushing the monitoring of citizens to a level that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. The confirmation hearings for Justice Alito were mostly a fan dance about what he thinks of abortion. I wish they had focused more on privacy, which impacts many more of us. If Cheney, Gonzalez, and their ilk get their way they will be inside our computers, inside our telephones, listening in at every moment. You're right, this is way too 1984 to be anything but scary.

I do NOT want to hear from the "If you've got nothing to hide...." crowd. As it happens, I don't have anything to hide, well, no more than anyone else, but that doesn't mean I want the government looking and listening in on every moment of my life. The fledgling KGB in Washington can butt out and go back to misspending taxpayer money like they do best.

They're going to be monitoring me now for sure [lol}.