They say that "the love of Money is the root of all Evil." Well, the love of Money (#CLASSIFIED# #CLASSIFIED#ions of dollars of it, every day) is the root of a great many vulnerabilities, too.

You're all sitting in secret rooms, breathing your own ... ummm ... "air" ... and collecting these gigantic checks that officially don't exist, and "Sure, Senator! We can share!!" Pretty soon, you've all convinced one another that you're the smartest kids in school – certainly the richest ones, anyway – but there is no one in that room to "Think Different.™"

This is "Groupthink" at its most dangerous.

Perversely, "in the mighty name of Homeland Security™," we have created social vulnerabilities (and I'm not talking about insecure ciphers ...) that never before existed. And because we know our own natures, we know what that means.

I'm not saying that "greed" is a noble motive [Although I think the term "greed" is becoming hyperbole lately. A lot of people who are always accusing others of being greedy, are often the same ones who want to have the benefits of making an easy, comfortable living by doing some menial job for a corporation...]; I'm just saying that when it comes to what others do in a free-market [not that we have a free-market], one at least can simply choose to "opt out" by not patronizing businesses whose practices are not to your liking- just as I don't use Facebook.

And while it is true that government may not be inherently evil, I believe the fact is, when a power structure is erected, it is invariably always used by some to control others against their will; and for the personal benefit/aggrandizement/philosophical agendas of those who rise to power. [A chapter entitled "Why The Worst Always Get On Top" from Frederich Hayek's book The Road To Serfdom explains it well...and can be read here: http://www.savageleft.com/poli/rts-ten.html ]

In the history of mankind, has there ever existed so much as one instance of large powerful government which in fact did not use it's power to coerce, plunder and ultimately exterminate large numbers of people (be it their own and/others)?

Greed becomes a serious problem when it causes us to turn into b*stards. When we are willing to shove hundreds of millions of people under the proverbial bus because "I got mine!" We've been doing that ever since Cain said to God, "am I my brother's keeper?"

Like it or not, much of the stuff that is being done "in the name of Homeland Security" is pure-and-simply being done for Filthy Lucre ... not because it genuinely advances the process of security. Which might not be such of a problem were it not for the reality that it undermines that national security.

We're all still thinking about "nations" as "objects" that from time to time build "armies" and go fight one another. What no one seems to be thinking about is that this technology reduces a nation to "hundreds of millions of individually-identifiable individuals," and captures in real-time far more information about those people than any of those people are (yet!) seriously thinking about, and puts that information ... which in other contexts would be "beyond-Top Secret" ... under no protection at all. We don't know what it is, we don't know where it is, we don't know who has it, and we can't observe them doing anything with it. But someone, someday, is gonna do something very-horrible with it, the likes of which the world has not yet seen because it was never possible nor conceivable before. Furthermore, it will be the intrinsic nature of the threat, not merely its size or severity, that will be seen to be "unprecedented."

Well, it isn't unprecedented. We can see it very plainly right now. It requires nothing more than "a six-month contract" to do this.

If you uncork a bottle that has never before been found and let a benevolent genie out, you'd better look in that same bottle for the other genie.

more and more the line between the government and corporations is disappearing
if you have a bank account can you be sure you money isn't being tracked by the bank for the government
or that your phone call calls are not being recorded by your telaco even though the government is supposedly not allowed to do that they just have a corporation do it for them
the government has been using corporations to go around the laws that apply to them
the government isn't allowed to randomly drug test you BUT your employer is allowed to drug test you
a while ago there was a story about windoze vista sending data to the NSA
not only did the story disappear from the original web sites but it disappeared from close to all web sites that picked it up
there is even a story that Linus Torvalds was approached by the NSA to put a back door in the kernel

can you be sure that some day your views will not be considered illegal

my main point is any thing that can be abused will be abused

Exactly! And no surprise- since corporations are a creature of the state- one literally cedes their ownership/authority to the state, in return for that corporate status and protection from liability.

And how about how the traitorous pols created a corporation and chartered it in Puerto Rico; calling it The Federal Reserve- to get-around the Constitutional prohibition against the US having a central bank?!

What's really sad and scary, are the 501c non-profits. How many people realize that even their church (if it's incorporated) is ultimately controlled by Uncle Sam- right down to regulating what the preacher can say- and they didn't even have to use force to do so- as people signed up for it voluntarily.

[Waves to NSA snooper]

What's that quote I'm thinking of- something about 'in a system built on lies, to tell the truth becomes an act of radicalism'?