Well, if you feel safe now wait until they solve global warming. [major sarcasm]

Does anyone think for a second that surveillance was not happening prior to the patriot act? They passed that law to make it legal and so companies that would not turn over information could be forced to more easily. To our government, the Freedom Act are only words on paper. Just look the other way if they don't fit the objective. No one will do anything about it.

yes

Our government, under the guise of protecting us from terrorism, has protected ITSELF so well that a revolution here is pretty much impossible to carry out, no matter how bad our government became in its treatment of citizens.

this is ominous, but it should have been expected. -- j
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Click on "banana republic" in blue at the bottom of the eighth paragraph.
I did so kinda with a yawn, expecting to see nothing more than a definition I could come up with in my own words anyhow.
Instead, I read an interesting article called "10 Ways America Has Come To Resemble A Banana Republic."

I've been floating the idea on the prospective Presidential candidates' Facebook pages of enacting a comprehensive defense of personal privacy in the electronic age, if necessary via Constitutional Amendment.

Let none of us forget that in addition to such things as the antics of the voyeurs at the NSA, the FCC enacted the Government Takeover version of Net Neutrality, Title II, nine months ago - which means we must insist that Net Neutrality Title II be abolished in favor of Title I as soon as the adults regain control of the Executive branch, Title I being the non-Orwell version. ['Net entrepreneur Michael Glenn gave an excellent discussion of the distinction, in a presentation to the LA/Santa Monica Tea Party in January 2015, viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIbBg... ]

The examples are endless: In the aftermath of the George Zimmerman fiasco, where "Spike" Lee publicized the street address of the Zimmerman family and - D'OH! - it was a different George Zimmermann (not that such a thing could ever be ethical in any case); with reports of union thugs doing the same thing with the addresses of basically anybody who opposes them; with the epidemic of "Identity Theft" and the avalanche of "data breaches," there should be a new, codified deterrent against the use of electronic means to attack others.

To date, what we've seen is the legal equivalent of "Can't we all just be nice to one another?" That just does not cut it, and needs significant strengthening. The specifics will need to be hashed out, certainly, but at the very least any publication of any citizen's home address without their prior consent should be a major criminal offense; if such action results in injury, mandatory prison time; conviction of identity theft should carry a massive prison sentence, etc.

The electronic revolution, like the industrial revolution, has been a vast benefit to humanity. and promises similarly-vast advances in the future. But like every technology, it can be used for as great an evil as it can for good - and in a civilization that's embraced the same kind of non-absolutism and moral greyness that plagued late Weimar Germany, the power conferred via electronic means has become a profoundly destructive thing - a fact largely unaddressed, to date. This must change, dramatically.
.

Privacy?
If they want to spy on me, I hope they get a load of my 81 year old gravity distorted, unmuscular, wrinkled body. They'll never get that image out of their minds. I know I can't.
But if I have to sacrifice my privacy for security, F...it! I don't need security that badly. I don't need ANYTHING that badly. However, I don't think a single candidate gets it or would agree with me.

We can demand that the Fourth Amendment be
enforced. Also, if they send some equipment or
something out of the country to do unConstitutional
things, those acts remain unConstitutional as long
as they are done by the the government. I know
that many in the government are hostile to the
Constitution, and that it will be a hard fight.

Does one really expect anything differently from the Kakistocracy?
It's not survival of the fittest, it's the weakest among us, the great unwashed, the rule(lessers) that are in fear of extinction. We've been through this battle before; in fact, it has never ended.

Question is: How to we End It for good?