They've Got Your Number

So the federal government has been looking at who's been making telephone calls to whom through Verizon since 2006.  So they collected records of phone calls to detect patterns that might lead to a terrorist plot.  Well, what's so bad about that?

Under this President, maybe nothing.  Maybe.  But under an arch-conservative Republican President - and I don't mean George Walker Bush, I mean a Tea Party type - this power could be dangerously abused.  Imagine a President Gingrich spying on leftist groups he doesn't like by going through their telephone records.  Even if he doesn't listen in on conversations, even if he wouldn't have these phones tapped or tape-recorded, he could still gather enough information to harass the living daylights out of his opponents.
And even though the government keeps saying it prevented numerous terrorist attacks, not too many  examples have been offered. Hey, the government doesn't have to provide plot details that would give potential terrorists ideas, but it could at least offer up some of the highlights to justify their snooping into the business of, well, everyone.   

Oh yeah, the National Security Agency has also obtained direct access to the systems of various computer and Internet companies such as Google, Facebook, and Apple, according to the Guardian, the same (non-American) newspaper that broke the Verizon story.  This access is part of a program called, PRISM, which has only just now been disclosed.  It allows the government to collect search histories, e-mails, live chat data, and shared files.  It's all good and fine for me to say that my Internet searches are not of a controversial matter (I look up biographical data for the subjects of my beautiful women picture blog, for example), I don't write a lot of personal stuff in my e-mails,  I don't take part in many live chats, or I don't share files, yada yada yada - if the government finds any reason, no matter how contrived, to scrutinize anything I, you or anyone else is doing online, no matter how trivial or non-terrorist-related it may be, you should worry.  And if a Tea Partier ever does become President, you should be worried if you spend a lot of time online advocating for immigrants' rights or single-payer medical insurance.

Ahh, forget abut privacy.  The only thing in private hands right now are our public services.