Wednesday, December 28, 2005

The NSA is Driving me Crazy

Last week, we found out that the NSA was spying on people and listening to phone conversations. Luckily, george was there to put the fear of the Republicans into people, with his "shame on the people who let you know I was spying on you" speech. This week, we find out that the NSA has been putting cookies on the computers of people who visit their website. Despite the fact that there are specific legislations and laws to prevent the federal government from doing precisely this. Even more fun - the cookies weren't set to expire until 2035. I'll grant you the fact that people who are concerned about cookies will clean out their files often enough that this won't be a problem. You can increase the security levels on your browser so that cookies can't be set. Some people apparently don't see what the NSA was doing as a problem (and to be really fair - they've fixed the problem). "Some people", however, are overlooking something very important: It is illegal for the government to do this. There is federal legislation to prevent this very thing from happening. And there are very good reasons for this lesgislation to be in existance. My question: how many people think that anything will come of it? I know it's naive, but when people - especially the people whom we expect to uphold our laws - break our laws, I expect punishment. Maybe they should all spend the next three years in time out. And to be even more naive, I don't expect my government to track what I do on my phone or on my computer. I thought that privacy actually meant that what I do is private. That if I wanted to look at cartoons of an airplane being forced to make an emergency landing over Crawford Texas while the president was riding his mule and the plane accidentally landed on said mule with said president caught in the middle like the colby on a grilled cheese sandwich, that I could do so in the comfort of my own home without the fear that the Men in Black might notice. (No, there isn't such a cartoon - don't you think I would have linked to it if there were?). I don't want to become a paranoid crazy woman muttering "they're everywhere, they're looking at me." But george is driving me in that direction.

No comments: