Ok, so according to this article, the NSA has obtained a warrantless wiretap on all Verizon customers, with no known time limit. In other words, that call that I got from my wife this morning, the NSA now knows when she called, how long the call lasted; and even more frightening, due to the metadata all carriers append to their call records, WHERE both me and my wife were at the time. I don’t know about you, but that scares the bajeebies out of me!
Think about it for a moment. If you’re on Verizon, the NSA knows where you are, every time you make a phone call. It doesn’t matter if you’ve done anything wrong, they’re watching you anyway. Law enforcement agencies nowadays like to say “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.” That’s bullcrap! My family hasn’t done anything wrong, but I STILL don’t want someone coming into my house to watch me take a shower! At what point does it stop helping us catch bad guys, and start becoming creepy? I’d say…about frickin’ now!
Look, I know law enforcement has a hard job. They look for ways to make it easier to catch bad guys. But look, it’s not SUPPOSED to be easy. It’s SUPPOSED to be difficult. Because anything easier means it’s easier to put away someone you just don’t like, or don’t agree with. Sure, YOU wouldn’t do that, but how about the guy down the line? Can you say for certain he won’t? Politicians notoriously take the short-term path. Do you actually trust a politician not to throw you in jail because you did something he didn’t like, like maybe let a dog chew up his gardenia? How many people can truly say they trust the federal government? And yet, we let them do something like this?
Sometimes I wonder about us.