>>Big Brother is here.
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>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.
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>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.
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>They're going to be monitoring me now for sure [lol}.

Yes we are. I built a website that has over 5,000 law enforcement personnel accessing it every day. If they are looking for a victim, witness, suspect, address, vehicle, pawned item, map, etc. they can pull it from this site. I mine the local utility data, motor vehicle records, state of TN Driver's licenses, our own records management system, the courts, the jail, etc. Without the system, the crime would be even worse than it is. Almost every case that gets prosecuted in Criminal Court will have documentation pulled from my website.

Having said all that, I don't want the government knowing any more about me than they already know. For that reason, I obfuscate things as much as possible - just in case I decide to become a CRIMINAL.<g> I am registered as a male, other in the voter database.

John