President Obama, as well as many other politicians, recently said “… we must strike a balance between privacy and national security …”, as he commented on the revelations made by Edward Snowdon, an NSA contractor now seeking political asylum in Hong Kong.
Note that Mr. Obama said “National Security”, not Pennsylvania security, or Lancaster county security, nor township security, and certainly not our individual security. National security. Think of that.
If we believe those in the government, the very existence of the United States, the fourth largest country on the planet (over 3.7 million square miles) and over 310 million people, with a large, well equipped and nuclear capable military, backed up by National Guard units and tens of thousands of police officers is in danger of being overthrown if we do not support government collection of our phone calls, and texts and emails of our daily lives.
We are told that because third parties (phone companies, Internet companies etc.) move our information for us it is no longer private. That somehow an electronic communication to my son is equivalent to me shouting the message from my porch across the miles to his ears.
Is it really true that our government can only fight terrorism by collecting massive amounts of data on innocent citizens? I say no! I say no to a national surveillance state.
The national surveillance state advances with the license plate reader technology mentioned on this site today.