Saturday, March 22, 2008

Will the Inspector General Protect Your Privacy? (Thomas DiLorenzo)

Thomas DiLorenzo blogs that, according to the state, only politicians have a right to privacy:

Our rulers have abolished our privacy. They are now free to eavesdrop on all of our phone and email conversations without a warrant; our financial records are an open book to the IRS and myriad other federal bureaucracies; they hide behind bushes (literally)waiting to nab us for purchasing too much liquor or cigarettes across the state line; they set up speed traps to ticket us in places like I-85 outside of Atlanta where, because of construction, there are three different speed limits that change about every mile and a half; and they have declared the right to imprison any of us indefinitely without due process if THEY decide you are an "enemy combatant." With PATRIOT Act II our rulers have given themselves the "right" to open our bank safe deposit boxes and confiscate all of the contents if they declare an "emergency." Thus, there is no longer any such thing as a "safe" deposit box at your bank.

None of this applies to our rulers themselves, of course. When it was discovered recently that a couple of beltway bandits (i.e., government contractors) took a peek at Obama's passport itinerary, all hell broke loose in D.C. The lapdog media couldn't talk about anything else for days. Condoleeza Rice promised that the Inspector General will get to the bottom of this crime against humanity. The State Department promises that it will never, ever, happen again; new procedures will be immediately put in place. The entire Washington Establishment was outraged -- OUTRAGED! I tell you!

[UPDATE] Lew Rockwell responds:

Tom, I noticed that the State Department's laughably low-tech computer system alerted the bosses if a politician's or celebrity's file was accessed outside of normal procedures; there is no such system for the rest of us, of course.

The passport itself is a tyrannical device, though we are used to it, boiling-frog style. The feds' much plotted national ID is an internal passport, of the Soviet sort.

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