Shut Up, and Let Me See Your Jazz Hands

I'll admit it. Yes, sometimes my grammar is questionable, but! But! I realize I'm doing it! If only because my best friend is inordinately fond of mocking everything I do, think, and say. And I would never do that in a piece of fiction.

Anyway. I meant to have this up right after the other two, but then my computer ran mad (as it does) and I lost the ability to right-click. Which I tend to find necessary to cutting-and-pasting. So.

( In Which I Go Argh. A Lot. )

Yeah, so, I was at this chick's journal, and she linked to an article in the LA Times.

I followed the link, skimmed the article, and then I saw a headline at the bottom that made me sit up and take notice.

U.S. Obtains Internet Users' Search Records

And now I have something to say.

Fuck you, government. Fuck you, NSA. Fuck you like a prison bitch, Patriot Act.

You know what, I could be all calm and reasonable about this trend, this scary fucking tendency this government has developed, to act like Big Brother. No, I don't want to use Big Brother.

Big Brother is a fictional figure; he's a cultural cliche. Big Brother is no longer a phrase that adequately conveys the weight of my fucking sentiment. Our government is a thug and a bully that has begun to make paranoids and conspiracy theorists look like reasonable, foresighted individuals.

I could be reasonable. I maybe should be reasonable. Christina, I should say to myself, this isn't a horrible invasion of privacy. There are no names attached to this data. It's not like it'll hurt anyone for the government to see it.

Fuck reasonable. Fuck calm, and rational, and cool, and collected, and every other emotion that is not outrage, that is not righteous fucking anger at this slow and steady erosion of my reasonable expectation of the right to privacy.

The government is not welcome to insinuate itself into my home, into my personal communication, into my "inner monologue". Every law-abiding citizen should be free to access any non-classified information they please without worrying about some ABC agency looking over their cyber-shoulder.

You know what? A rant against the government's infringing upon the rights of its citizens wouldn't be complete without a quote from the Bill of Rights. So here you go:

"Article IV:
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."

In whose eyes is this subpoena of information reasonable? The government is seizing data via the Patriot Act not to punish criminals, not to protect "national security", but to rebut a Supreme Court ruling striking down an anti-pornography law.

I, I literally do not have the words to express the ridiculousness of this subpoena. It would be one thing if the websites had been asked to provide the data. Instead, they were subpoenaed. Google refused, which is the only reason this made the news. Go, Google, because this is fucking ludicrous.

And you know what else? I disagree not only with their actions, but also with their motivation. I disagree with their instituted anti-pornography morality. I think it should be a guardian's job to fucking guard the child/children they are responsible for; I think the guardian is the one who should be held responsible for what that child does and does not see; I think the government has no business legislating fines for companies they deem negligent when it's the guardian's negligence at fault. I especially have issues with the fact that anti-pornography laws leave the definition of "obscene" and "offensive" entirely up to the individual presiding, when I, personally, know people who find even the mention of homosexuality obscene and offensive.

Maybe you still don't care. Maybe this isn't an issue for you. Read it again.

"...congressional hearings are expected soon on the legality of a National Security Agency program to track communications by U.S. citizens without prior court approval."

"Under a section of the Patriot Act expanding the use of so-called national security letters, companies such as Google can be asked to turn over potentially useful data — even about people who aren't suspected of wrongdoing — while being barred from disclosing those requests."

"The Justice Department also asked the Internet companies for the addresses to every website in their search-engine indexes, a request that was negotiated down to 1 million randomly chosen addresses. Government lawyers said they wanted that information to gauge the prevalence of websites that were harmful to minors and to measure the effectiveness of filtering software on those sites.

"We're not seeking any individual information regarding anybody who entered the query terms," Miller said.

He did not respond to other questions, including whether the department would rule out seeking such information in the future and how the existing data would be used."