Perhaps this will launch a campaign where bookstores and libraries across America thwart part of Ashcroft's "Patriot Act" by adjusting their record-keeping systems as this Vermont bookstore has done. A bookkeeping system that contains only customers' names and the prices paid for merchandise ~or~ books sold and prices paid, but no names of buyers on file. Or in the case of libraries, borrowers' names expunged from records upon the return of checked out books. Many learned persons who work in the book business are offended by the idea of this violation of civil liberties and might be quite open to these suggestions. Just a passing thought. :m: Peace.
I keep telling people .... I keep telling people: The Drug War is the prelude to the War on Terror! For your consideration: War on Drugs: Coming to a Bookstore Near You (DRCNet, Week Online #157, 10.27.2000) I guess the Patriot Act just made it easier for the government to get the records. When all else fails, outlaw due process. If you can't get a warrant, change the law so you don't need one. Who cares? You'll be out of office when the Supreme Court gets around to gutting your legislative mockeries. two cents :m:, Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
"Agent Smith, we've got a code 41. Someone's been reading Dr. Suess!" As if the government doesn't control enough of our lives already. Now they need to know what books we're buying? Next they'll be installing cameras in our houses, to make sure that we brush our teeth every night. I've already got a mother, thanks.
A friend and I have been talking about some effective, sometimes risky, sometimes amusing civil disobedience. Without breaking any law, expose and humiliate the paranoia: Look Arab. Act benignly "suspicious"; perfume a customs agent; speak, or at least imitate, Arabic in restaurants; throw money from your car; post "subversiveness" on the internet; teach an Arab to fly; host an exchange student with Mideastern genes; laugh when authorities are ridiculous; get a "liberal" education, including Arab professors; expose ignorance in new and hilarious ways. I AM SPARTACUS! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Maybe your friend would suggest that we all use our real names instead of hiding behind pseudonyms...or do we fear to actually risk ourselves?
Isn't it amazing how much the world today resembles the novel 1984 ? Pretty soon they will have thought-police.
Actually big business does more monitoring of purchases than big government. Buy anything with a credit card at a major retailer and the transaction will be entered into a data bank. You will also most likely be on a security camera while shopping. Businesses use the data to track purchase trends. They also sell the data to the frikking junk mail companies. The same thing goes for online purchases. I recently bought some "food supplements" online to enhance my er er ah ah memory. I was soon inundated with spam and junk snail mail with offers to buy everything from Super antioxidants to dildos. Once the feds tap into this vast source of commercial info there will be no privacy period. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
"...suggest that we all use our real names " An alias here is to me only an easily-breached hedge against annoying individuals. With IPs and a few posts to piece it all together, any two-bit private investigator can deduce an identity. With more intrusive and increasingly "legalized" government poking around on personal hard drives, anonymity is a joke. Everyone in Cyberland who opposes tyranny should engage in as much "suspicious" and "subversive" internet activity as possible. Programmers should spawn billions of bots to do the same: Bury the Puzzle Palace Pigs in oceans of noise. I am Spartacus! I am the Boogeyman!
