Total information awareness-projektet stoppades men det finns andra tecken som tyder på att USA håller på att sluta sig, hävdar Dan Gillmor:
”Meanwhile, under cover of a war that has caused the news media to ignore other important news, the Bush administration issued an order that will guarantee the wrongful arrests or harassment of innocent people. The Justice Department told the FBI it no longer needed to worry about the accuracy of its National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database containing 39 million criminal records, including some documents that would barely pass the gossip hurdle. /…/
The Bush administration’s attitude, assisted by a Congress that long since abandoned any commitment to liberty, is that government has the right to know absolutely everything about you and that government can violate your fundamental rights with impunity as long as the cause is deemed worthy.
You, on the other hand, have absolutely no right to know what the government is doing in your name and with your money, unless the information is deemed harmless by people who have every motive to cover up misdeeds. Bush and his people have turned secrecy into a mantra, and too few people recognize the danger that poses to our freedoms, much less our pocketbooks.
/…/
But the damage we will do to ourselves if we allow our liberty to disappear is incalculable. An entrepreneurial society can’t exist if political freedom disappears, and if Big Brothers, public and private, are invading our daily existence with impunity.
The damage we’ll do globally will be tragic. The world looks to America in large part because of our freedoms. We are a magnet, and a beacon, because liberty means something here.” Hela artikeln. [Länk via Boingboing.]
Kalla kriget 2.0? Och det finns tydliga kopplingar till det första i biografin hos personer som John Poindexter.