Seamless Surveillance

I'm one of those people who is fundamentally mistrustful of government. But the current administration's repeated displays of incompetence and arrogance have brought my cynicism to a whole new plane of Christ-what-are-they-going-to-try-and-pull-next? Thankfully, it seems that I'm not the only one with doubts about government intentions, especially when it comes to the so-called war on terrorism and what that means for civil liberties and privacy. According to a recently conducted Gallup poll, two-thirds of Americans "are concerned that the [NSA's] monitoring may signal other, not-yet-disclosed efforts to gather information on the general public."

The Washington Post's William Arkin takes the issue one step further by asking whether the surveillance that Bush so righteously defends isn't just the tip of the iceberg--are we headed towards a "new seamless surveillance culture" in which the government tracks everything we do and combs it for terrorist tendencies, hauling you into the police station if you eat too much hummus, went on a trip to Saudi Arabia, or frequently dial phone numbers in Indonesia?

In today's post 9/11 we've-got-to-give-up-some-liberties-to-fight-terrorism-world, the expectation is
being created though that it is normal then for the government to churn through the phone records and Email headers and credit card receipts and bank records of EVERYONE for tip-offs and triggers. What started as an expectation that individuals already of interest to the law enforcement agencies had no expectation that their records were private has digitally expanded to the expectation that no one's records are private.