While politicians like Michele Bachmann and Anthony Weiner are taking the press into their own hands, effectively making press conferences irrelevant, Attorney General Eric Holder and the DOJ are attacking reporters from another direction, approving search warrants, signing subpoenas and collecting phone records. Oh yeah, and the NSA is wiretapping, well, everyone, in what the ACLU is referring to “beyond Orwellian.”
Meanwhile, Congress and “our beloved president” are arguing about whether this stuff really matters. And claiming it has been done with “congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate.”
Is the government saying they don’t want a free press and they don’t care whether everyone’s information everywhere is up for surveillance? It certainly seems so. It used to be when a politician had something to announce, they called a press conference where journalists would gather, listen to their statements, and then ask questions. Of course, a journalist could ask any sort of question, making the politician have to face things he or she may not want out there, but they are elected officials, are they not? They should be held responsible for what they do.
Oh yeah, there also used to be this thing called privacy, where one could assume they weren’t being looked down upon by the overlords. The whole communication system has allowed for global expansion, technological breakthroughs and many other incredible things. And it has made the world smaller, and a place where it is much easier to track what anyone does, anytime, anywhere.
This time, the conspiracy theorists were right. And I’m not surprised.
