wtansill
Ncc1701
join:2000-10-10
Falls Church, VA
| reply to rradina
said by rradina  :said by daniyel :"... Nothing pisses me off more than a government that constantly removes our rights, and monitors our activity." In this particular case, what right did we lose? How about the right of 300 million US Citizens not to be actively monitored or spied on in their daily lives and communications? I'd say that that's a fairly important right. Here are a few quotes (three from former US Supreme Court Justices) that might serve to enlighten you:
"The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men—the right to be let alone."
-JUSTICE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evilminded rulers.The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal well meaning but without understanding."
JUSTICE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
"The fantastic advances in the field of communication constitute a grave danger to the privacy of the individual."
EARL WARREN
"It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume... that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him."
H. L. MENCKEN
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That which does not kill me merely prolongs the agony. |
