Privacy is dead

I'm no Luddite but this is why I held out until 2002 before I fully embraced the internets.

Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.

Of course, by 02 I realized that even though I had no Google presence, they were already tracking us through our various transactions and there was no where left to hide from government surveillance short of moving to a deserted island. Still, this is over the top. I was really hoping it would be curbed under Obama. Yet another false hope.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]