Shanghai Yummy

I think many Americans are willing to allow the government to increasingly invade their privacy because at some fundamental level, they trust that the government's intentions are noble and that the information that is gathered will be used only to make their lives better and/or safer.

We're slowly moving towards a constant surveillance society, not unlike the one portended by Orwell's 1984. In that novel, the government clearly cannot be trusted with the information it is able to gather through surveillance. It is a repressive regime bent on using any means necessary to control the population and retain power.

What most people do not think about when drawing parallels between such legislation as the Patriot Act and works of fiction like 1984 is that the society presented in 1984 was once like our society. It takes a perilous journey down a long, slippery slope to get to that state, but we are on that path at this very moment.

I also find it ironic that people like John Ashcroft sell these laws to us by saying that "law abiding citizens" will not have to sacrifice any of their freedoms. Aside from the fact that this is a circular statement (think of the extreme case: if you change the law so that everyone except for yourself is a criminal, then of course you're not sacrificing freedom yourself), it is also not true in practicality. The more power we give to the government to intrude on our privacy, the more we sacrifice. Today it's Arabs or Muslims... tomorrow it's Asians, next Africans, then people who write things they disagree with, then pro-choice activists, and people who wear green pants... The point is, if we are sacrificing one group's freedoms, or one set of freedoms, we are sacrificing them all. America is slowly becoming the least free of all the countries in the world. It's a slow process, one that is masked carefully and orchestrated so that the majority of us don't see it happening until it's too late. Again, I ask my fellow citizens to open their eyes.

There is no condition upon which sacrificing any measure of our freedom as a society is worth it. This has never been more true than the present day, with a tyrannical government in power that is willing to do anything to stay in power.

PGP Signed Entry