I know this is not TG related but... I'm pretty sure that if it passes it will affect us all

QuoteAn Obama administration plan to make wiretapping the Internet easier for law enforcement and national security agencies was met with silence by online companies Monday.

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Research in Motion – never shy about issuing press releases – all declined to talk about what would be a major shift in privacy law.

Source

Here in the UK all our phone calls and probably internet connections go through Big Brother aka GCHQ which is a big establishment that has thousands of staff listening to us chat.
The Chinese must have the same from the recent news?
There may be a central listening system in every country.
Just because there are 310 million Americans doesn't mean the listening in will be impossible.
Personally I'm in favour of Big Brother if it keeps me and my money safe but the problem is that crooks and smart lawyers negate the good effects of BB.

Quote from: lilacwoman on October 08, 2010, 04:17:59 AM
Here in the UK all our phone calls and probably internet connections go through Big Brother aka GCHQ which is a big establishment that has thousands of staff listening to us chat.
The Chinese must have the same from the recent news?
There may be a central listening system in every country.
Just because there are 310 million Americans doesn't mean the listening in will be impossible.
Personally I'm in favour of Big Brother if it keeps me and my money safe but the problem is that crooks and smart lawyers negate the good effects of BB.

Well, US & UK (& Australia, Canada, New Zealand) jointly operate ECHELON. So they already automatically intercept your emails, text message & phone calls etc. However how that operate isn't with people actually listening / reading every message but it being automatically filtered and analysed by computers flagging up messages that contain certain keywords & phases. Only those messages are then reviewed by a person. What this proposal is talking about is easy wiretapping of specific persons.

I find it no surprise.  I have often thought that we were being tapped any way.  Patriot Act, CIA, 911 and all that.

As offensive as it is, we made the mistake of giving governments these powers in the first place.

History shows that, once governents get a power, they are almost invariably reluctant to give it up.