Two things happened this week that has brought the question of privacy back into the forefront for me: Laura Poitras et al won an Oscar for her movie about Edward Snowden, and the FCC passed a secret 323 page plan for net neutrality.
At the beginning of the year, I stated I thought this was the year Obama had to put the finishing touches on the surveillance state before the next president comes in. That’s the kind of thing only a Democrat will be able to do the way only a REeblican will be able to bamboozle us into giving up our guns. So when I saw that the net neutrality plan was an about face for the FCC at the behest of Obama himself and that it would be passed without the public being able to read it, I figured deep within those 323 pages is the key that locks up the Internet.
As for the Poitras-Snowden collaboration…last Saturday on the show a caller named Lisa said “we’ve all given up on privacy.” I would say that’s a statement no one ever would have made before Edward Snowden made the scene. This is another factor to consider in evaluating my hunch that Snowden was and still is a government operative whose task it has always been to get us to give up on privacy!
So this week, I’m going to take a break from what is clearly the build up to the next very big war, to talk about these two important domestic issues:
These are the two questions I want to dig into on the show:
1) HAVE WE ALL “GIVEN UP ON PRIVACY” as one caller last week suggested?
2) WHY DOES PRIVACY MATTER?
Post your thoughts & we can talk about them on the show (Saturday 4-6).
Laura Poitras exposed our loss of privacy before Snowden arrived on the scene…
Aug 29, 2012 – The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.
VIDEO – NSA Whistle-Blower Tells All: The Program | Op-Docs | The New York Times: http://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE via @YouTube
Snowden and Greenwald exposed Israel’s gathering of raw signal intelligence on us and we can do nothing about it…
“Israel is allowed to receive “raw Sigint” – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: “Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content…”
Read more: NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans’ data with Israel http://gu.com/p/3tkkx/stw
I feel that we try not to focus on it too much because we feel helpless to do anything about it.
When I first read this, I thought ,what does it matter to me? Well,I just got a new cell phone number and was cautious about who I gave it to . I gave it to my brother and about five friends. No problem until I gave it to my doctor ,I.R.S. and my mortgage company. Now ,the undesirable solicitation calls have started. JUST DARN !
Monica: I have not given up on privacy, nor on the hope that this country will, at some point, return to a more constitutionally limited government, in the way that it was originally intended. However, I do think that, in the face of the ever expanding power that Obama seems to be assuming for himself and Congress’ either unwillingness or ability to stop him, it isn’t hard at all to feel that hope is gone for this country,and individuals are not able to have their voices heard anymore.