Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Ask John Galt... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Liatris Spicata who wrote (3880)	10/20/2000 8:53:25 AM
From: Father Terrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4006

It is in here jeans... hahahaha. Please read this: The government invasion into what we see and do didn't happen overnight. We seem to think that in this day of high tech, no corner of our personal lives can be left uncovered. Sadly, these chains of events started many years ago as law enforcement tried to take the best part of our liberty away in the guise of "public safety". In 1928, United States Supreme Court Justice Brandeis wrote, "discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet. The progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wiretapping." His haunting and prescient words clearly apply today, as the line between science and science fiction is continually redrawn. Two of the best books I read growing up were George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. In the latter, the entire population is constantly monitored and administered "soma" to keep the feelings of paranoia at bay. In 1984 Big Brother took care of the all aspects of life and everyone was an open book. For the sake of the whole a few must be culled. The year 1984 came and went but the encroachment of personal privacy has kept a steady pace. Personal privacy is like air. You don't realize you need it until you don't have any. All aspects of society are bombarding us, stuffing the vent of our privacy air space until all valves are closed. New technologies for collecting personal information, which bypasses our personal liberty, are constantly appearing. They probe more deeply, widely and softly than traditional methods, transcending barriers (whether walls, space, time or distance) that historically protected personal information. The boundaries that defined and given integrity to social actions, groups and the self are increasingly absent special precautions. The power of governmental and private organizations to compel disclosure (whether based on technology, law or circumstance) to analyze and distribute personal information is growing rapidly. For the sake of the 3% of the population that commit 80% of the crime, we see the constant pushing of the envelope into our personal lives. As Brandeis predicted, State-sponsored intrusion will continually seek to sneak into the whispering walls of our private lives. If we don't put up the firewalls now, that Brave New World of 1984 will gain a full chokehold on every individual American. The warning signs have been here for years in the forms of government agencies like the DEA and EPA. Sadly, most Americans are blind to the danger.