re: How do you feel about being monitored on line?
its very eazy to get carried away with our patriotic feelings and say “hell yeah, do anything you need to”, which makes it even easier for those who would oppress us.
here in the US while our government was working out the details of an anti-terrorist bill, the recording industry’s lobbyists tried to slip in an amendment granting them the right to break into private citizens computers to delete copy written files, without having to pay for any damages that occurred in the process (if under 5k per year per computer). No need for due process, no court order. Guilty until proven innocent.
We need to watch’em all the time, make them stay in line. If we don’t it wont be long before we can’t say what were saying right now.
Its not too hard to imagine what some ambitious officer, politician or industry magnet, greasing the right palms, could do with a data base of every email, msg board/irc post ever sent by everyone.
In times of emergency we must make concessions, but lets make sure those concessions leave with the emergency.