Is Privacy An Outdated Concept ?

Is the concept of a citizen's privacy outdated? If the Bush administration gets what it wants, it certainly will be.

Bush appointee to be Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Donald Kerr (pictured above), believes we must re-define privacy. He says anonymity is a thing of the past, and privacy should now mean the government can collect as much information about you as they want as long as they don't "misuse" the information they gather.

Kerr made the remarks in testimony to Congress regarding the re-approval of FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act). Congress has already given the government permission to eavesdrop on any electronic transmission as long as at least one end of the conversation was outside the United States. Bush would like to extend that to all conversations, even those without a connection outside the country. He also wants the telecommunications companies to be immune from any lawsuits that might expose the extent of the eavesdropping.

The reason Bush wants this written into law is to prevent exposure of WHAT THE GOVERNMENT IS ALREADY DOING! Retired ATT technician Mark Klein says a device was installed on ATT lines in 2003, which diverted and copied ALL calls,e-mails and internet accesses to a government supercomputer. Undoubtedly, the same has been done at other telecommunications companies.

In other words, the government has been breaking the law since 2003. Most of these diverted transmissions would violate even the newest FISA laws, not to mention the Constitution. But if the telecommunications companies are protected from lawsuits, then the public could never find out what the government is doing.

We must hold Congress' feet to the fire, especially the Democrats. They should not extend FISA, and they should not shield the telecommunications companies from lawsuits. It is time that they took steps to uphold the Constitution.

The government should not have access to the communications of an American citizen unless they have first obtained a warrant from a court. Further, these warrants must be issued on an individual basis, and not for all of the communications routed through a particular company. Anything less would truly trash the concept of privacy.

I don't want to give up my right to privacy, and I have no wish to re-define the concept of privacy. Do you?