The NRA can whine all it wants about gun control robbing us of our freedom but if you want to take a look at the real curtailment of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms all you have to do is look at the right’s favorite piece of legislation, It’s called CISPA, The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a digital equivalent of allowing government to fight perceived threats by monitoring which books citizens check out of libraries. It has passed the House and will soon be taken up by the Senate.
The bill gives the government access to everyone’s personal information with almost no privacy protections. To quote, “information pertaining directly to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or network of a government or private entity.” That’s everything guys. That’s the whole enchilada. There are no boundaries to that statement. It can be interpreted to cover everything and you will have no recourse because it does not interpret what it means by “pertaining.” There are no boundaries. Everything you do on your computer will be open to any government hack who cares to check it out.
It will supersede all provisions of law protecting privacy because it would apply, “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” That means we’re all screwed. That means you can kiss any vestige of privacy goodbye. Hello KBG. We embrace you 1984. It just took a little longer than we thought.
To make matters worse, it completely exempts itself from the Freedom of Information Act, which will remove FOIA’s fundamental safeguard for public oversight of governmental activities. With one grotesque piece of legislation the government will strip away all our rights of privacy and protect itself from any right we may have left to check on what it is doing, supposedly in our name.
It will give companies blanket legal immunity from sharing anything in their records pertaining to their customers. This bill is the worst offense against personal privacy in the history of our nation. If our intelligence and security forces cannot protect us from terrorism without this kind of freedom robbing legislation than the solution is to replace them with someone who can. Our intelligence and security agencies failure to function without destroying the constitution should be seen as their reprehensible failure, not a reason to turn America into a totalitarian state.
CISPA and laws like it, some of which have already passed are the true indicators that we are losing the war on terrorism. If giving up our constitutionally secured right to privacy and our freedoms to think, speak, write and move about the country, is the only way for us to feel safe, than we are no longer the country that millions of Americans have died to protect. If we relent and bow to the cowards amongst us, rather than stand up and fight the oppressors then we deserve the loss of freedom that is the inevitable result.