George Orwell would be well pleased.
On Friday the Drudge Report had a link to an Infowars article detailing the Department of Homeland Security's effort to monitor the web for "anti-Government sentiment and signs of of social unrest".
Of course, students of history will note that this is not the first time the Federal Government has spied indiscriminately on it's own population. First there was the Communist infiltration scare of the 50's. All anybody had to do back then is point a finger and yell "Pinko!" and your life was scrutinized every which way by the Feds, and suddenly it was hard to keep a job, and once lost, hard to find another.
After the Commie purge, then there was the Civil Rights upheaval of the famed 60's. The radical left was energized by all the anti-Government sentiment flowing out of the Vietnam war, in combination with simmering socio-economic tensions. If you were young and wore tie-dye shirts, peace symbols, and attended peace rallies, you had a good chance of having your picture wind up in a dossier at the FBI.
An now we have the Great Terror Threat. The threat of terrorism has been our Government's latest excuse to spy on it's own people. Social Media has been a boon to DHS. You don't need a search warrant to surf the internet for public domain commentary. All you need are some smart programs to pluck out text that matches algorithms detecting anti-government sentiment. Like on this very blog, where I have been, and remain a heavy critic of DHS's illegal, unconstitutional searches in public venues around the country. But is someone who decries the erosion of our Constitutional legal and civil protections a terrorist-in-waiting? Hardly. However, it's pretty clear, at least to me, that you don't have to be a terrorist to be considered a threat by rogue agency granted far too much power by a Congress that at least from a certain point of view, seems afraid of the very agency they authorized.
So, if DHS is indeed blowing our tax dollars not looking for terrorists, but looking for anybody ripping on our grossly bloated, increasingly paranoid and hostile Federal Government (which includes a pliant Judiciary), then that means that it's likely that even this humble blog blipped on some nameless bureaucrat's radar. That alone would be pathetic. I have no doubt the DHS's technology engines can pierce the anonymity veil quite easily if and when it suits them. And we all know, or we all should know, that Congress permitted DHS the unconstitutional authority to simply write a letter to a vendor, such as Go Daddy for instance, and make secret demand for any information they please so long as they dress it up in the guise of a terror related investigation. Search warrant? Show cause? We don't need no stinkin' due process - we're the DHS!
I remember in days gone by reading about how bad and repressive the communist regimes where around the globe - especially Russia and China. I recall reading about how carefully the citizenry of these nations had to be in all their speech activities, for fear of being arrested and sent for "re-education" and so on.
Are we now headed in the same direction?
A stupid nation that trades it's liberty for the false perception of a little temporary security, will wake up one day to discover they've lost it all after it's too late.
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