Should the government give telecom companies immunity against lawsuits for illegal wiretapping?

Wiretapping, fingerprinting, video cameras everywhere, etc. – it’s not the “war on terror” – it’s a power play by fearful people who read or heard of Orwell’s 1984, and thought it sounded like a good or inevitable idea, and that they wanted to be on the side of Big Brother.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004–09-09-chicago-surveillance_x.htm

@chris6137: It seems that link is not working.

Tell you what: corporations can have immunity for committing egregious crimes to help a near-dictator violate both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution when I get exactly the same “get out of jail free” card. Deal?

@chris – your link doesn’t work.

In regards to the question, it’s not going to pass congress as is. Congress wants to pass it, but without full immunity. It will be handled on a case by case basis. Does it really matter? The government will do it anyway if they want to. They’re watching us now. Did you know that corporations want to start putting small microchips into the products we buy. They want to monitor how often we use a shampoo, how far we go in a particular shoe, how long it takes us to finish a product. These are just some examples of what’s coming down the pipeline. Unfortunately, we are in the age of technology and this whole monitoring the people talk has been going on for decades. It is inevitable. Technology…as useful as it is, has an evil side.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/national/21cameras.html

@vanguardian – word man, RFID chips in everything.

The government wants immunity for these telecom giants as a preemptive attempt to push and secure RFID technology. RFIDs will be in everything. Your refrigerator will send your supermarket demographics, your toaster will let producers know what you use it for most often, all of your telephone conversations will be logged, cross referenced, and sold to the government and telemarketers, Best Buy will tell you when you need a new computer and offer “convenient financing,” and your television and browser will spit out tailored advertisements for you and your family. Your children will be what THEY make them more so now than ever.

“Hey little Johnny [your last name], do you have the new G.I. Joe? Your neighbor Billy does because his parents love him more.”

This is all part of a plan to form a Panopticon Singularity in the U.S. And this plan is very much so in full swing. A prison where your captors can always see you but you can never see them.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/rant/panopticon-essay.html

If you are not already fighting this the time to start is NOW! They will convince you that it is for your own good but they are LYING!

@seek2be – right on. The big picture is a much scarier scenario. I’ve been telling people about this and they brush it off as “the government will never allow it to happen”

People tend to lose sight of who the real Puppet Master is.

@chris6137: That is evil stuff. Four years old, too.

I guess the likes of myspace and facebook have been a starting point for permission to abolish privacy. People willingly put up everything about themselves for the whole world to see. Plus now that newscorp owns myspace, Mr Murdoch has a very powerful marketing tool in his hands.

Minority Report, here we come.