Good news: Government’s recording your conversations on the bus too. You can bet that if you yell help or jihad, no one will show up. Say something bad about Obama and a Homeland Security Swat Team will show up immediately.
This post was last modified on April 12, 2021
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This is REALLY starting to piss me off! Our country has everything bass-ackwards! We bend over barrels to "protect" the rights of people who have essentially blown their rights - criminals and people who choose to live outside of society's rules - and instead we punish the law-abiding.
Sure, in theory, I don't mind that the government data-mines, looking for key words, but that is only true if we have a trust-worthy government. We have just witnessed, and are continuing to witness what happens when that government is NOT trustworthy.
And recording everything we do in public? There are cameras everywhere, and now voice recorders too? maybe no actual human is listening to my conversation, but the fact that they COULD is bothersome. It is a huge privacy violation. And that's not just a theoretical invasion, that is an actual one!
Instead of bugging public transportation, lets try this: KEEP CRIMINALS LOCKED UP. There! The need for a huge law enforcement force, and deep investigation is over, since most crime is committed by the same people, over and over. Make it HARDER for people to come to our country - even as visitors. Track them and monitor THEM - not US. If they are here 15 minutes past their allotted time, find them! Throw them out and don't allow them back. And, if anyone is acting suspiciously - DOCUMENTABLY suspiciously, investigate them. Not US.
Use all that technology to keep track of the bad guys. And remember, the rest of us are INNOCENT, until and unless proven otherwise.
Everyone read 1984! How have we allowed this to happen? When are we going to put our collective feet down and stop this? When they have cameras in our bedrooms and bathrooms, just to be sure we are not doing bad things? Seriously?
I don't mean to misuse this forum to plug my own stuff, but ya know? A couple of you here, I think, read my sci-fi story, and I was talking about exactly this kind of thing in a dystopic vision of the US in a slightly alternate timeline. I mean it's kind of obvious, and one little bit I drew from a story that was linked here, about the NSA supercomputers out in Utah. I mean it's not that much of a stretch, but the problem with sci-fi is that it can be so dam hard keeping ahead of the pace of reality sometimes! Case in point (to coin a phrase):
We kept walking, and I briefly recapped my meeting with the extortionist from the government. Then I dropped what I thought would be our bombshell. “We think our [hotel] room may be bugged, and if ours is, yours may be, too.” Instead, Dusty laughed out loud and dropped his.
“Well hell, yeah, o’course they are, where y’all – oops, dang, I’m truly sorry, I almost axded where y’all had been lately. Bobby, I thought they’d started this before you disappeared, maybe I’m wrong or maybe you just wasn’t paying attention. The National Security Initiative?”
I vaguely recollected stories on the ’nets, and some controversies, even protests, but with my [space] flight schedule, I usually didn’t get too wrapped up in “current events,” since one ground leave’s “current events” was the next one’s “history.”
Dusty continued. “National Security kin listen in on any hotel room, restaurant, casino, jus’ about anywhere they like that’s open to the public. Telephone signals are all transcribed fer voice and Letterburst [what your people call text] messages. Computer mail, anything you do on the ’nets, it all gets recorded and stowed away somewhere, and giant computers poke through it all, tryin’ to find words that’ll give away you’re some kind of terrorist or malcontent or troublemaker. Anti-taxer, pro-taxer, pro-gun, anti-gun – they don’t much care what you’re fur or agin’, just so long as you don’t get too loud and sassy ’bout it.
“Oh, and that’s just what they admit to, up front. Good Lord only knows how deep it goes if they ain’t scared o’ tellin’ us as much as that.”
Recorder on the bus goes click, click, click,
click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click
Recorder on the bus goes click, click, click,
all the way back to the homeland security prick, prick, prick, prick......
A slight alternation of a child's song...
Or the bus driver might be an undercover IRS agent who will audit you on the spot.