Good morning, Frank, everyone... Recently a friend of mine asked me if I would consent to an interview about my knowledge and experiences of the Bay Area in the 60's, and with certain conditions, I told him I might be interested, thinking that it probably couldn't do any harm, given the *extensive* information which the police already seem to have on me, most of which is misinformed speculation on their part.
However, the mentality of fear, as mentioned by McManus and in your discussions is something that I have witnessed first-hand, and it is neither speculative nor imagined, but very real. There was a time, perhaps a decade ago, when such discussions would have been considered the prattle of the hopelessly paranoid, but no longer. Frank Reichert wrote: > You know what? Every day I see this incremental progression of > greater force being codified into law, and the incremental result > of greater use of police powers over our daily lives as a result. What is even worse is that the ever-expanding reach of technology is accomplishing a level of intrusiveness that could never have been achieved even ten years ago. As recent news stories suggest, high-speed databases containing our most private information are expanding every day, but even as they are intrusive, they are subject to all kinds of electronic hacking and theft, thus expanding the encroachment on our privacy to include a realm of evil and cunning that is hard to imagine. What is even worse, the government is doing little to stem this tide of invasive technology out of control. In fact, they are a HUGE part of the problem. One of fastest ways you can conceive of this is a study, performed by the General Accounting Office last year, regarding the effectiveness of the Internal Revenue Service at keeping tax information private. If you believe firmly that your income tax returns are privileged information, well beyond the grasp of electronic raiders, guess again. Pay a visit to Equifax, one of the nation's largest credit agencies, who has access to your income tax return within a few months of its filing. In short, there is not one shred of realistic protection for your privacy where the government is concerned. What is more macabre is the police have access to many of these online records, but here in Spokane there is a "wall of blue" which prohibits you or I from ever seeing the level of information they have on us. [skipping a bit] > And what I found was that virtually NOTHING that McManus > discussed that night over one decade ago has changed very much at > all today. We still live today in an even greater environment > and climate of fear than we did back then. And it is that > climate of 'fear' that has driven Americans to abandon their > liberties for the sake of so-called public peace and safety! > > Thanks so much for the kind words, and I'm so sorry it took me > THIS LONG to get around to discovering what you wrote. I can't > believe I missed this one. The element of fear of which you speak, however, should extend logically to include the cogent question of where will all this invasion of our right to privacy end? As police agencies, through incredibly-complex information gathering efforts, continue to gain access to every aspect of our lives, where will it end? Dave -- Dave Laird ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) The Used Kharma Lot Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/24/2004 Usenet news server : news://news.kharma.net Fortune Random Thought For the Minute Pauca sed matura. [Few but excellent.] -- Gauss _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [email protected] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
