Perspective: Ashcroft’s worrisome spy plans

Attorney General John Ashcroft wants even more power to snoop on the Internet, spy on private conversations and install secret microphones, spyware and keystroke loggers. Ashcroft’s Justice Department has quietly crafted a whopping 120-page proposal that represents the boldest attack yet on our electronic privacy in the name of thwarting future terrorist attacks. The nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity posted the draft legislation, which reads like J. Edgar Hoover’s wish list, on its Web site Friday.

Usually Ashcroft’s crap is directed at eroding the civil rights, and invading the privacy, of Americans - to bad for them, life sux, live and learn….. they elected this crew and, like every other democracy, they have to live with their choices until the next election. Normally I would even say that if the American voter is daft enough to re-elect a party and a president that forms an administration with this sort of mindset - so be it…. after all, it’s their civil liberties, and their privacy, that is being eroded and invaded so what’s that to me? I should care less……….. shouldn’t I?

As a matter of fact this does bother me, immensely even, because I don’t trust anyone in that bunch as far as I could throw them - they have done absolutely nothing to show that they are even slightly worthy of that sort of trust within their own borders, let alone the powers of personal invasion they want now that will most certainly be used outside of their borders.

Now I suppose that we’ll see, in various ‘but we gotta do this because everyone wants to attack us, and blow us up, and they all hate us, and anyway, if we can’t trust our president who can we trust, you just don’t understand because it’s never happened to you’ spots on the net, the usual rhetoric of “if you’re doing nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about” - in a word, horse #*$% !! …. because it’s these same idiots will be the ones deciding what the current definition of ‘wrong’ is.

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