Blessings of Liberty

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.“
-The United States Constitution

Ever since 9/11, it seems that the blanket of privacy has been pulled away from Americans and wrapped around government.  Security is what the government thinks we want, and in part we do, but at the expense of privacy?  It’s unbelievable how quickly we can throw away our civil liberties in the face of terrorism.  Our Forefathers realized that you could not have freedom without fighting for it, what has changed now to make things any different from before?

Is a cloaked government something we want?  A government that can do as it wishes in the guise of national security? 

Already the Government has a system that can scour the internet, looking through blogs for potential terrorists. They have also begun the process of subpoenaing records from major internet companies (AOL, Yahoo, etc.). 

A recent article on Slashdot stated that using software such as Google Desktop, could be providing easy access to your files by the Government.  How?  Once the files are on another server, available for other users to search through, they can be subpoenaed by the Government without a warrant.  Nice, right?  Fortunately, Google is one of the few with the…pelotas, to stand up to this egregious government conduct.  But, I can’t imagine, in this day and age, that they, or any other company, will be able to stand up to Uncle Sam forever.

Privacy. Freedom. Liberty.  These are all things that should come before security.  If the Government can not provide security without taking away from those three items, then I think the problem lies not in us having a new enemy, but in the Government’s distrust of it’s own people.