For quite a while, I've been trying to remind Americans that the NSA show is a distraction - NSA really is legally prohibited from performing surveillance of US Persons (hey, that mean corporations, too!)... the FBI, however... well that's what they're all about!
With the FBI's recent strong anti-encryption views, this should come as no surprise, but what I AM honestly surprised about, probably due to that one shred of naivete and "hope" I have left, is that the Obama administration seems to be okay with all of this.
As someone who was almost expelled for participating in a very vulgar and sophomoric underground high school newspaper (and in the end, assigned to the "punishment" of building robots at the local junior college after school), I can't help but wonder if today that same activity would have had all of my "selectors" (SSN, name, e-mails, phone numbers) assigned to a lifetime watchlist of potential terrorists, malcontents, and generally "un-American" types. I guarantee you, those lists already exist, they are growing, and they will last longer than the lives of those on them. When a teenager with a passion for the environment "grows up" and decides to protest less, and instead apply for a federal forest service job, that list will be the reason they are turned away. These lists PROMOTE separation, PROMOTE extreme thinking, and SUSTAIN anti-establishment views.
