This Line Is Insecured

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 24 Jun 2006 10:43:51 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Charles H. Featherstone at LewRoclwell.com - receive a wire transfer from Saudi Arabia, start hearing beeping sounds on your cell phone. How Mr. Featherstone got himself wiretapped. [lew]

Since I started sending e-mail and doing on-line stuff, long ago in 1989, I have always just assumed that someone, somewhere, with a badge and maybe a warrant (but most likely not) was reading or watching or monitoring. Or could whenever they wanted to. Certainly it shouldn't be that way, but it is. And there isn't a thing any of us can do to change this any time soon. (Unless, of course, you're putting your faith in Hillary Clinton's or John McCain's future Justice Departments?) This is the unfortunate reality of the world in which we live right now, of governments staffed by those wishing to know and control everything.

That said, we should not let surveillance, or the possibility of surveillance, silence us or shut us down. At least half of being free is thinking and acting like a free human being, whatever the consequences might be. The possibility that all my phone calls are being monitored (I suspect they are being recorded, and then filtered through software for various phrases and subjects) does not keep me from expressing my views on George W. Bush (idiot), the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan (disasters), and that the political and social changes in Saudi Arabia since King Fahd died (nothing short of amazing). If Caesar is going to make thinking about these things or talking about them a crime, then I've already presented a fairly convincing case against myself without any recorded phone conversations.

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