Yes, once the Feds have secured rights to all the information about you, they can create a profile of your beliefs and life and can identify possible crimes you have committed. Anyone hear of the department of Pre-Crime? It's in the movie Minority Report. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. So who has something to hide? Do you really have a right to privacy?
An interesting movie I watched when I was a teenager was called Sneakers. The movie was about a bunch of guys and gals who snuck around and stole info and other highly secure stuff from others. Basically the movie was about governments and espionage and lots of computer hacking. In the movie, they find an organization named SeaTech Astronomy, but the organization name is an anagram, it doesn't exist. The anagram when rearranged produces the words No More Secrets. I won't give away anymore, but suffice to say the idea is that when no one has any more secrets, the world is free of them but that means everyone, including the government, has to face up to the consequences of their lies.
What we actually fear isn't necessarily that our lies will be revealed, it is that we will have to take responsibility for them and the consequences of avoiding the truth. Lies were invented to cover up the truth because no one wanted to take responsibility for the truth. So the Church came in and said, ok we will take your sins, and you can keep being bad, except nowadays instead of a Church they have an intelligence agency. What a deal, except now we have cameras and people's stuff isn't as hidden anymore as it used to be so the game can't be played like that anymore.
Basically the idea that people can keep secrets from others is something that is slowly disappearing, and that means all the people who have been hiding from their responsibilities can't hide anymore. When there are no more secrets, we will know who lied to whom. When there are no more secrets, we will know where the bodies are buried. When there are no more secrets we will find out who is sleeping with whom. Sounds kind of exciting to me.
Article comments
1 - just me
"A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over all its search information for 50,000 web addresses to the government, in an effort to fight child pornography according to the Feds."
Maybe you should re-read the ruling. The judge ordered nothing of the sort. He ruled that Google must produce a sample of 50,000 web addresses from its index to the government, but specifically ruled that is does NOT have to produce any search queries related (or unrelated) to these addresses. After that ruling there's no privacy issue in this case.
2 - Just Chris
Doh! Correction upcoming soon.
3 - Dave Nalle
A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over 50,000 web addresses to the government, in an effort to fight child pornography according to the Feds.
You have some good general points in your article, but this initial statement is not correct. All Google is providing the feds with is tracking information on the browsing trends of their users, no specific user information and nothing personal on the users.
The current administration is very much pro internet privacy - one of their limited number of good positions.
Dave
4 - Larry Hosken
"setec astronomy" "too many secrets"