Ignorance is Strength

Hopefully you have heard this already but if you haven’t I want to at least get you interested into this disturbing news. The NSA (National Security Agency) has been building a database of domestic and international phone calls. The information in the database includes the phone numbers and times of all calls. AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth have all consented to releasing this information while Quest Communications refused because no warrants were given. All the major telephone companies involved broke their own policies of releasing private information to government without a valid warrant. So basically every call at any time is recorded into this database – the largest database ever assembled. This is a scary thought not because it records statistics on calling patterns but because it can track the specific calls of a single number. Although the NSA denies including names and addresses into the database, that information can be very easily found from unclassified sources.

The information collected by the NSA is used to “data mine” which in many cases can be very scary. The information might not be used for corrupt reasons right now but, it may very well be used for counter-terrorism. But, the information could be used later for corrupt reasons. For example: say in a few years down the road, we have an even more corrupt administration, one that decides they don’t want any citizens in the nation that might be against their agenda. So that administration goes ahead and looks at the phone records in the massive database, that “data mining,” which creates complicated statistics and such; those corrupt officials would then gather the numbers of questionable citizens who oppose their agenda. They look up their names and addresses from unclassified sources and some how affect that person’s life. They could harass that person with mail or phone calls or even worse - charge them for anti-American activities; a scenario very reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Just imagine if McCarthy had this technology available to him, it would have been an even more scary time. To avoid this happening now we must act eminently to stop this illegal and very scary activity.

In George Orwell’s modern classic novel 1984 countless telescreens constantly monitor the people of Oceana. Any time a person opposes the views of the “party” they will secretly disappear never to be seen again. The part’s motto was the following: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

President Bush uses war in the name of peace, he uses slavery in the name of freedom and he knows that our ignorance is his strength. Making sure we know nothing about what is going on in our government keeps his power. He replies to every leak of very scary corrupt material as a “national security issue” and should have never been leaked in the first place. He says “its bad for troop moral” or we should be silent during war time. But I thought the war ended 3 years ago! I guess not. And now our freedoms are being compromised in the name of security. It’s sad how we are moving closer and closer to fascism in our nation of “freedom,” our nation of liberty and justice and due process of the law. But our president won’t even obey the laws, he just puts them aside and ignores them, in the name of freedom. What freedom? It’s like propaganda slogan in America: “promoting freedom.” How profiting off of the third world “promoting freedom”? They don’t give two shits about the third world; all they want is money, money, money (and tax cuts). They are corrupt on a scale beyond Nixon and if we let to go they will be right up their with the fascists dictatorships of the past.

I don’t want to see this nation go to a fascist state, but its fast on its way. Back in the revolutionary war we had the Patriots and we had the Loyalists. The loyalists in both cases are the ones who remain silent, and the ones who won’t do anything and the patriots are the ones who will question and the ones who are brave enough to stand up and speak. And that’s what I want all of my very few readers to do: to listen, to think and to speak because knowledge truly is power.

SCIENTIA EST POTENTIA.