So, if you haven't heard, the government has decided to approve prying into our lives more.  Yes, this is all in an effort to catch the bad guys.  Supposedly it's only communications to people outside of the U.S., but what happens when an innocent person says on his phone or e-mails by accident some trigger words?  Knock, Knock.  And that's if you're lucky.  I'd hate to be the person that doesn't even get the door knock.  That looks like the premise of the movie Rendition.  Or at least close to it from what I got from the preview I saw today.

So I watched The Bourne Ultimatum.  Last of the Jason Bourne trilogy.  Pretty good movie.  Blackbriar is the continuation of Treadstone.  For those that don't know, Treadstone is the super-secret government organization that does black ops, and Jason Bourne was their assassin.  The movie starts out with a reporter in England talking with his editor about something called Blackbriar.  And that sets off the alarms in the CIA via their Echelon listening system.

What kind of set me off on this was an e-mail I sent out.  I was forwarding an e-mail from my parents to my friends.  Normally when I send out mass e-mails I send it to me, and the Bcc: the rest of the recipients.  By default, any e-mail I send to myself is encrypted with GPG.  I have to remember to take off the encryption.  But this time I forgot, and I decided to resend it without encryption, but get on a soapbox for a couple of sentences about privacy.

I understand that there is a need to spy.  But to do it without a warrant is just wrong, and that is what the government is getting away with.  And this isn't just a Bush thing.  Even before him, this stuff was going on - just not as bad.  And no matter who gets in office after him, I don't see any president revoking this stuff.  It gives them too much power.  Once they start taking away your liberties, good luck getting them back.

Democrats and Republicans are both guilty of this.  Right now the flavor of the month is Bush and the evil Republicans.  But does anyone remember the evil Tipper Gore?  Husband of the Liberal Dems poster child Al Gore?  Yeah, she wanted to censor music.  Another liberty attempted to be taken away.  Only with the music industry making such a fuss did they get away with a self governing "Explicit" sticker.  And the funny thing about that was it was the Liberals attacking the Liberals.  OK, not every musician is a Liberal, but many artists consider themselves Democrats and/or Liberals.  Unfortunately, there really is no privacy industry to defend our rights.

Government control comes from both aisles of the House/Senate.  It's just a matter of what the American public is willing to put up with.  Not that either one is more important than the other, but out right spying is bad.  I hold the 1st Amendment and Privacy as the top 2 things that are most important to me.

OK, so enough of the rant.  Just get GPG!  And set up your IM client to encrypt too!