—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1
This evening, the Democrat controlled Senate voted to give Mr. Bush unprecedented powers of surveillance. In a vote of 60-28 — in the middle of the night — they decided to cave in to the fear that this administration has bullied the American people with for the past six years. As the measure was passed at the last minute we — the people — have no real idea what is in the legislation, congressional records are published the next business day; however, we can assume that Mr Bush got his 120 day pass to conduct surveillance without review, and got approval for the Attorney General to be the sole arbiter of who is to be targeted by the new found power. It goes without saying that the existing FISA law did not require any changes until Mr. Bush was found ignoring it.
It is, however, the constant fear mongering which the Republican party has used over and over and over which allowed then to push through another midnight theft of our rights as free people. The question which begs — requires — an answer of these people is what in God’s name are we protecting from the terror you constantly say is at our doorstep? Is it simply the freedom to buy tube socks for $1.69? Is it the freedom to choose between Walmart and Target? Or is it the freedoms and rights handed down to us by our democracy: the right to redress one’s government, the right of habeas corpus, the right to criticize one’s government, the right to be secure in one’s person and papers, and the greatest of those principles: the right to know that we are a nation of laws and not men. Those who mongered for this legislation, and the cowards who voted for it, will fall back on the simplistic mantra of protection, security, the freedom to live. Liberty and freedom are not satisfied by mere existence. Great statesmen understood this throughout our our history. ‘They hate us for our freedoms’, Mr. Bush once said. It now seems that he and the congress have decided to mitigate that hatred by eliminating those freedoms that they believe spur our enemies on. What are we fighting for?
The fact of the matter is, that we are all now suspects in our own country — we are now all subject to a level of scrutiny which would have shocked our founders. The content of our phone calls, our e-mails, our Internet usage, our banking records, our charge records, our day to day lives are now subject to collection and use by our own government to do with as they please. Given that this administration has politicized nearly every function of government, can there be any doubt how they will make use of this collected data?
In order to let the listeners know of our disgust at their prying eyes and ears, I suggest a minor, perhaps annoying protest. Send an encrypted e-mail to your congressman, the NSA, the CIA, or simply to anyone whose mail routes through the AT&T network. Use a simple symmetric encryption algorithm, like blowfish or AES, and encrypt a message such as:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The NSA, and others, will no doubt be able to decipher your cryptogram, but at the expense of time and processing power. It may take quite a few days of processing time to break your simple message of Constitutional Law. If you want to be more clever send them a photo of your cat or a tree and embed your message with stenography – believe me they’ll detect the message is there. If you want your message to receive priority processing, just include something like Koran, jihad, death, etc in the subject line or add a mail header.
Given the new found power of our Chief, it is best that we all begin encrypting our personnel correspondence sooner then later. Here are some resources to help you out:
GPG – symmetric and asymmetric encryption application
Steghide – simple stenographic application
Truecrypt – file system encryption
Hushmail – free e-mail service with encryption
—–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFGtCXsDnQGI4lCC44RAlg1AKDbh9ciTvPxZTdLYa2YjOMg2tcq8QCeMTSz
MZ8RLIigXg3xNwRIcIWNVzE=
=P55h
—–END PGP SIGNATURE—–
Update: ABC apparently pulled their link: Here’s a current one
Update 2: Some other notable discontent is being registered about this action:
What Would Lincoln Do has an apt post.
The ever delicate Liz at Blondsense echo my feelings as well
