In a recent blog, we complained that Microsoft had set up a separate account for me on this computer without telling me who had set up the account. The irony was that I do not have the password for this, my own account, and so cannot use it. The extra irony is that they want information in exchange for setting up a password, information that will surely be brokered to anyone with money.
Then late last night, I discovered that the privacy settings had all been turned on, no doubt for my advantage. The computer had already taken a picture of me without my consent. It was in fact watching me through the screen and listening to conversation in the room, and so I did my best to reset these settings, if the buttons even work- Microsoft controls them. Last night this started when I almost defecated when a surprise piece of music came on all by itself, and the other night I tried but failed to make the automatic zoom stop interrupting my writing every few minutes, or to prevent the cursor from moving the page so that typing is inserted throughout the text.
President Obama, what on earth is occurring? Do we not see that this is now a national security threat of inestimable proportion? And Congress, do you not see that the voters are going to learn what you have done, to prostitute America and her citizens for campaign contributions? Microsoft, you will be held accountable, especially when your leaking of information causes deaths, as is quite obviously possible in the present political climate. How does “accessory to murder” sound, Bill Gates? And is this not so, when your profitable dishonesty and spying on U. S. citizens without warrant contributes to or assists the carrying out of a death threat? The law now charges passengers in a car for the crimes of the driver that the passenger was not obligated to know about. Prior to this, the commission of drunk driving and even petty offenses devolved into charges of murder where there was no intent to kill, rather than manslaughter, which is the true tern for a serious misdeed or negligence that results in death. Pocket that with a chuckle at my inability to play rap music on your front porch.
Our disregard of the Fourth Amendment has simply gone too far. Essential communications are becoming unusable without endangering us with identity theft or even murder. And this under the argument not of liberty but tyranny, due to our fear of terrorism. Both leading Republican candidates are prepared to suspend the Constitution in Muslim neighborhoods to catch a few hundred ISISTS. And in the long run, if not also the short, law enforcement depends upon privacy, friendship and trust, and so the very shortsighted argument that terrorist will be caught turns round to refute itself. This argument is like debating the relative virtues of the martial arts compared to Big Time Wrestling, though some, and perhaps a majority, will always be why the one is funded and on T.V. while the other is not. To argue that we will be weaker in the face of the enemy if we pursue the other rather than the one is an argument that is both obvious and useless to make. That is why we do not subject First Amendment matters to the democratic majority, and nor should we subject the Fourth and Fifth. Regarding these internet billionaire companies, we have the truth exactly backwards: We are the owners of information about ourselves, and private companies are not allowed under American principles to trade in our constitutional rights, which our government is obligated not only to observe, but to secure. “To secure these rights” is, again, the very purpose of government, according to the third assertion of the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence. This is still fundamental law, regardless of popular opinion or the meat heads and door bashers in the un-elected executive agencies. And it is still, and will always be, also the most effectual truth, the truth in proof, the best effect, the most useful or profitable or however we in this age like to state our preference for the matter and the effect when it hits the ground, and truth becomes real, the piper is paid. Machiavellianism in government is a practical disaster, though we may not believe it until we and American liberty are dead.
Next it will be Black anti-police-shooting activists. And why not also, and with far more reason, White guys from areas where the Klan or Nazis are prevalent? Does the President himself not give in to the FBI on these issues, setting aside his Constitutional scholarship? The founders are wise, and have thought these things out far better than this thoughtless generation. Can you, my reader, not hear the heroism of Rand Paul shouting, “GET A WARRANT!”
mmcdonald77 