Government Spying, an Erosion of Freedom
The following is an opinion piece by VTLP member Travis Spencer:
Last week, the Washington Post revealed the NSA is collecting list of contacts from individuals e-mail and instant messaging services. This is another in a list of private communications the government is monitoring. After 9-11 we were told that in order to keep America safe from terrorist we had to be willing to give up some freedoms and accept a level of domestic spying.
Supposedly this surveillance was only used to monitor “suspicious” activity but as we are learning millions of individuals are being tracked. According to the Washington Post each day the NSA collects an estimated 500,000 contacts from individual chat services and e-mail accounts. The NSA claims they are not interested in every day Americans, that they are trying to locate terrorist or drug smugglers but with those type of daily numbers that is roughly 250 million people a year they are gathering info on clearly not all of them mean harm to America or are running a drug cartel.
This follows findings earlier this year where the Postal Service is photocopying the envelopes of all mail sent in this country, as well as the story of millions of phone records being collected daily by the NSA. This shows communication records of millions of US Citizens are being collected in bulk regardless if there has been any wrongdoing. It is easy to see how these three programs can create a road map of a person’s life.
Why is the American public allowing this to happen? Are folks unaware, do they assume their data isn’t involved? What was sold to us as protection from terrorism under the Bush Administration has continued on to status quo under the Obama Administration and in some cases grown even larger. Two separate parties, same results, domestic spying and erosion of Freedom. If you believe that your mail, e-mail, and phone calls are private then you need to send a message. A message that you will not sacrifice your Freedom for a false sense of security. A message that the two party system is broken. A message that only the Libertarian Party will defend your rights and fight for Liberty.
