for myself...i'm not so sure franklin would have been in favor of the patriot act, but of course we'll never know...the dude's dead
. i just wanna say that i (mis)quoted him, i did not mean to bring his views into it. i was only expressing my own by stealing his.
MHO:
our government is only in favor of protecting our privacy when it comes to other companies or people or governments. i think that they (our govn't) would prefer to have our personal data, and they'd like to reserve the ability, and the right, to access any part of it that suits them at any time it suits them.
i am not a conspiracy theorist but...
the problem is that once a line is drawn it is never completely erased. it might move around, but it never goes away. take income tax for example. it too was begun as a
temporary act of govn’t…as a means of raising money to support a war-effort, but over a hundred years later, it remains and it’s spawned its own juggernaut that needs an entire industry of lawyers, accountants and software, not to mention the bureaucracy that is the irs.
the patriot act was also a temporary measure created during "war time", and created in fear - a bad time to make laws - as opposed to a need for money (as income taxes were). BUT, almost as soon as it was passed, the lobbying began for extending it and even making some parts of it indefinite.
if you are an upstanding, moral citizen, the removal of some basic rights granted by the act shouldn't bother you nor will it affect you, but who decides that? they have already begun arresting, questioning, and detaining people for just
talking about their views and ideas (the peeps who wondered what would happen if they blew up the holland tunnel, for example). blowing up a tunnel is bad, i know, but they didn’t even have a real plan, money or materials, they were just
wondering. i’ve wondered about shit like that. i’ve wondered about shit worse than that.
ever see the movie minority report?
