Trust Us...

People email me stuff.  This one's from Larry E., and I'm quoting it in its entirety:

They won't keep your data secret. There is a long track record of abuses already. Its seems that even low level employees, whether at the IRS, the Passport office, the DMV, the Hospital or wherever, can improperly look at your data and often do even if for their own amusement. The more data they have and the less segmented it is, the less secure it will be. This means they can look up everything they have about you, from your shopping habits, your gun purchases, your travel, who you know where your girlfriends are.

And I'm sure you know from being in the Software industry, that despite the best intentions about keeping customer databases secure, they get copied and accessed by multiple people for multiple reasons. Usually good, but that means that lots and lots of people get access to sensitive data. Sometimes account numbers, SSNs, addresses. A lot of stuff.

We can all be targeted at any point should we come under the scrutiny or run afoul or annoy some public employee or official.

At any point, because there are millions of laws and regulations on the books and thousands more every year. Despite our own best efforts we are all scofflaws of one sort or another.

And possibly more importantly is that this means that political opponents can be targeted subverting the entire free election process.

All it takes is for a “high government official” to decide they have reason to believe you are a terrorist and you can be disappeared. Without a trial. Without evidence. Nothing. Because this trustworthy official has decided.

Think about that. Your only safety is trying to keep your head down and not get noticed. Decidedly the opposite of free speech in a free society.

Trust us. We are doing this for your own good.

Trust us. It’s for national security.

Trust us. Those people we killed without a trial, they were terrorists.

Trust us. We can’t show you the evidence, its secret.

Trust us. We have determined that our own actions are legal.

Trust us from a government that is caught lying continually.

Trust us from a government that has proven itself incompetent at every level.

Trust us from a government that invokes executive privilege over matters they claim they had no involvement of.

Trust us from a government that hides behind state secrets at every turn.

Trust us from a government that despite all of the intelligence gathering, secrecy, destruction of liberty has show they still cannot keep us safe. Yet all of these abuses continue.