ABC News keeps swinging with new allegations. Today the revealed that the FBI is using provisions of the PATRIOT Act (remember it was passed to fight terrorism) to use National Security Letters to get the phone records of journalists. In case you don't remember, a National Security Letter carries the same weight as a warrant except it must be kept secret and does not require judicial oversight to be executed, as a warrant would. This was done under the assertion that the government might need to act quickly and secretly to prevent a terrorist from acting out their plans.
Of course, the problem with an NSL is that it can be used to get information which a judge would not allow because it would violate the Fourth Amendment, giving law enforcement a way to get around the Constitution with no way for the judicial branch to perform the oversight it's supposed to perform. (Article here)
Add to that that the government issued 3501 NSLs for people within the US and I feel even more worried about this country and our freedoms. (Article here)
Worst of all, with NSLs and the NSA tracking of phone calls as a "classified yet legal program" it will happen in the future that people will be charged with crimes they did not commit by Federal Agencies on the basis of evidence that has been collected without oversight that they and the defense lawyers will not be able to see or refute because it is "classified". There are already cases of people being charged with "secret evidence" that courts are not allowing defense lawyers or juries to see.
Why all of this combined doesn't scare the pants off of most Americans baffles me.
Unless some very significant, dare I say 'drastic,' reversals of legislation like the PATRIOT act occur soon, I think history will look back at it as the most visible indicator of American cultural and political decline.
Our posterity will wonder how we had so many people with their heads up their @ss, and why no one took more of an interest in the long-range consequences of such indicators?
Fear is a powerful motivator, which is why it's so often employed in mainstream media. They know us 'citizens' better than most of us know ourselves. And if we can't tell when we're being 'played' then we WILL be played, like a broken record, over and over again until the players get what they want.
When will people stop being played? I fear never; they will wake up, but only when the steel door slams shut so loudly, and is locked so tightly, that they will be unable to effect any kind of deliverance or revolution against their oppressors.
But why to they have to take me with them?