Most of you, at least those of you who were born and educated in the United States, probably know that under normal circumstances, you’re protected from warantless searches and seizures. If you’re a citizen of the United States, do you think that seizing personal information about you without your knowledge and without a warrant or due process violates your fourth amendment rights? Do you think you should have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you give a private company such as Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google personal information – whether you do so via the Internet, telephone or regular mail? And to what extent? If you give your credit card information or your social security number to a private company, do you think that information should be handed over to authorities without due process or warrants? Do you see any inherent danger there?<\/p>\n
Here’s an article which appeared yesterday on Reuters’News… read it then come back here and let us know what you think:<\/p>\n
“Governments sought information on over 38,000 Facebook users in the first half of 2013 and the No.1 social network complied with most requests, the firm said in its first report on the scale of data inquiries it gets from countries around the world.<\/p>\n
The report follows allegations by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that practically every major Internet company – including Facebook, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp – routinely hands over troves of data on potentially millions of users to national intelligence agencies…<\/p>\n
Facebook’s report included secret information requests within the U.S. authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act. U.S. companies are ordinarily prohibited from acknowledging the existence of data requests made under those statutes. Facebook negotiated with the U.S. government in June to begin publishing the total number of data requests it receives without specifying how many are related to law enforcement investigations as opposed to intelligence-gathering efforts…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
To read the rest of this article – click here.<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Let’s not make this a political debate — it’s not about politics, it’s about freedom. No one president, no one congress, no one person, is responsible for this. The attacks on 9\/11 were not all about destruction and killing Americans — they were about changing the American way of life. Do you think the terrorists were successful in changing the way we live? Do you think our rights are being taken away. Is a little extra security worth the loss of privacy or the loss of basic freedoms?<\/p>\n
It’s not about whether you have something to hide or not. Today it may well be that only those who have done something legal need to fear — but what about tomorrow? Are we on a slippery slope?<\/p>\n
Please let us know how you feel – and let us all respect each other’s opinion. One of our most basic freedoms is the right to our opinions without condemnation. So tell us what you think — and please respect those who disagree with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of you, at least those of you who were born and educated in the United States, probably know that under normal circumstances, you’re protected from warantless searches and seizures. If you’re a citizen of the United States, do you think that seizing personal information about you without your knowledge and without a warrant or due process violates\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1426],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6183,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6182\/revisions\/6183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}