ClutchCargo

I am not a terrorist. I have nothing to hide or fear. If "Big Brother" wants to read my email in exchange for keeping the lives of my family safe, by all means, have at it. I don't like it, but it may be that I must sacrifice a portion of my privacy in order to secure the safety of fellow Americans, and others on this planet.

Yes! I was waiting for this!

Nobody here is a terrorist. You, me and the next guy are straight, honest people with nothing to hide...

But remember this:

You have just traded in your freedom, your democracy for "security".

It happened before... you are not the first... and people like you are a vast majority...

You cannot see it yet, but you have just embraced Stalin, Hitler and Mao... and the bell talls for you...

And I have been waiting for this !!

You cannot see it yet, but the bell tolled for you many years ago.

If you are an American, whether you like it or not, government surveillance is your legacy. Its always been there, and always will be.

The techniques for keeping tabs on American citizens and suppressing dissent have a long and unsavory history that predates the National Security Act of 1947 by some fifty years. The actions of the administration of Woodrow Wilson in 1917 represent the most obvious and egregious antecedent. In order to stir up support for a very unpopular war, Wilson created the Creel Commission of Public Information, a propaganda machine that turned indifferent Americans into anti-German zealots practically overnight. The Creel Commission’s legal counterpart, the Espionage Act — and the even more draconian Sedition Act — granted the government sweeping powers to suppress and prosecute anyone voicing even the smallest criticism of the war effort. The Justice Department sponsored the American Protective League; by June 1917, units in 600 American towns and cities counted nearly 100,000 members.

The Creel Committee urged all Americans “to report the man who cries for peace, or belittles our efforts to win the war.” The ears of the American Protective League were everywhere—in schools, churches, at the workplace, in public meetings and private clubs, on the street. “It is the duty of every good citizen to communicate to proper authorities any evidence of sedition that come to notice.” An enthusiastic public did its part, reporting three million people, even children, for comments or activities deemed disloyal. 300,000 young men were classed as draft evaders, 175,000 of them “arrested and disciplined, often by jail sentence, invariably by a whipped-up scorn that could ruin business careers and family lives.” In 1918, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer wrote, “...never in its history has the country been so thoroughly policed.”

The band has changed, but they play the same tune.

Trolling for the NSA:

Hey! How’s it going? I’m all right.

My job is so shitty I wish I could overthrow my boss. It’s like this oppressive regime where only true believers in his management techniques will stay around. I work marathon-length hours and he’s made all these changes that have made it the worst architecture firm to work at in Manhattan. Like he moved the office to the Financial District and fired my assistant. She was the only one who knew where the blueprints were! I need access to those blueprints to complete my job! F my life, right? And he keeps trying to start all these new initiatives to boost revenue, but seriously we just need to stick to what we do best. There’s only one true profit center. I seriously feel ready to go on strike at any second.

I just read this article about how these free radical particles can cause the downfall of good health and accelerate aging. These could actually cause death to millions of Americans. If these particles are flying around undetected everywhere, does that mean we’re all radicalized?

Have you seen the second season of Breaking Bad? I just finished it. I couldn’t believe that episode where they poison the guy with ricin! That was the bomb! I won’t say any more because I don’t want to reveal the earth-shattering events to come.

Oh! So I’ve been planning a big trip for the summer. I’m thinking of visiting all of the most famous suspension bridges in the United States. So probably like the Golden Gate Bridge, The Brooklyn Bridge, and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. I’m gonna bring my younger brother and I know he’ll want to go to bars, so I’m thinking of getting him a fake drivers license, but I hope that doesn’t blow up in my face.

Okay, I gotta run! I’m late for flight school. I missed the last class where we learn how to land, so I really can’t miss another one. Talk to you later!

I am not a terrorist. I have nothing to hide or fear. If "Big Brother" wants to read my email in exchange for keeping the lives of my family safe, by all means, have at it. I don't like it, but it may be that I must sacrifice a portion of my privacy in order to secure the safety of fellow Americans, and others on this planet.

Its a messed up world, and it seems to have been determined that "all available means" are being employed to assure the safety of its citizens. Not a bad trade off when you consider the alternatives. If history has anything to show, it is clear that government meddling in foreign affairs will continue. And lets be clear on this point, my government is not alone in these unsavory practices, they are only the ones most recently caught. There will be more, many more. Do you think that the host countries of the Xkeyscore server sites offered their cooperation for nothing? The data is most certainly being shared with the host government.

We can shake our fists in the direction of our capitol cities, or sit in our basements on a pile of rice, with a shotgun on our laps, wearing tin foil hats, waiting for the apocalypse. Both are equally ineffective. Or, we can go about our lives secure in the fact that we are not the ones they are looking for, that the world we have created for ourselves now requires that we submit to government watchdog practices, and realize that our personal secrets are not the intended target of government data mining. Ultimately we must hang on to the hope that one day we can all show tolerance to each other in our global community, and that the sacrifices to our privacy will someday no longer be warranted.

Did the United States make a mistake giving Snowden top secret clearance? Yes they did. However, it happens. After all, even monkeys fall out of trees. The fallout from that mistake may rattle some cages in Washington for a while, but despite all of this, the sun will rise tomorrow, life will go on, and the significance of my email on the world order will remain negligible. I see no practical alternative than to just make peace with this whole mess and get on with my life. Is this so wrong?

And then there is the obvious alternative for those who are particularly outraged: Turn off your computer, read a good book, or spend your leisure time interacting with real world family and friends. Problem solved. Smell the roses.