the13thfloor

Call me small minded. Call me a simpleton. I don't believe that in the age of Wireless information transfer any of us should expect any semblance of privacy. Any time you use a cell phone, the internet, the credit card, the bathroom, data is created and stored somewhere. This data is available whether you like it or not. If somebody wants to access this data, they can and will, legally or illegally. Its a fact of life, so deal with it. If you want privacy, move to rural Montana and read only the newspaper and communicate only through VOIP (for now). Get a job that pays cash under the table and only pay cash for all your purchases. In the 21st century, anyone can know what you are doing if they want, including your government. Access to the data you produce daily is not that hard no matter how much you wish it were. So what is it with the Main Stream Media and the Main Stream Loony Liberal Democrats in this county? Why are civil liberties more important than civil protection? What makes the left think, in the name of civil liberty, it is proper and right to disclose secret programs used to keep the county out of harms way. In previous times, these leakers would be investigated, tried, convicted and then shot as traitors. Today, they are held up as some kind of hero http://www.kantor.com/blog/2005/12/when_the_right_wing_gets_out_of_touch.html. Look people, we are at war with forces that want to kill us. My children would like an opportunity to have children. We need to protect ourselves from the blood thirsty zealots who would just as easily kill a 1,000,000 American men, women, and children, as smoke out an ant hill. With a free and open society, these people can infiltrate our borders as easily as a mouse can crawl into your garage and take nest. As sure as the sun will set in the evening, these people are already here, just waiting for the opportunity to kill all of us. I don't believe terrorist should have the Civil Liberty to KILL all of us. Our Federal government is first and foremost charged with the task of protecting us from foreign enemies. In today's world that includes tracking down enemy cells already in place within our borders. The enemy now hides behind a wall built of liberties and enforced by the ACLU. Whatever tools our federal government have at their disposal should be used to find and thwart our enemies. If these tools impede upon our perceived civil liberties, so be it. In a time of war, I freely and willingly sacrifice some of my perceived privacy rights in order that we may track down and destroy the enemy that resides within our borders, be they citizens or not. All the civil liberties known to man will do me no good if my city is destroyed and I am dead. If and when the enemy is dead or defeated, the ACLU can worry about perceived civil liberty.