Freedom Encroaching Technologies

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Recommended: Limits on Civil Liberties in the 20th century

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

-- Benjamin Franklin

INTRODUCTION:

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts...the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

-- Edmund Burke

U.S. has enjoyed being the most dominant country in the world for almost a century now. No one argues the supremacy, be it militarily or economically, of U.S. in present days. U.S. dominance is so overwhelming that almost nothing can restraint its will, case in point, the recent war without approval of U.N. A disturbing trend seems to be developing. An overconfident/arrogant international policy and a growing fascist domestic policy appear to be the image of U.S. government at this point in time.

With every passing year, the government is doing more and more surveillance on the people, citizen and foreigners, without their knowledge and consent. The recent world events have escalated the situation. To be sure, the U.S. government was already on the path of slowly encroaching on privacy well before the events. But since 9/11, the citizens have willingly given up their resistance against the government’s encroachment on privacy in search for national unity and safety. They gave the government more power to prosecute foreigners and citizens accused of terrorism

In the 1990s, as technology evolved rapidly the government has kept pace and tried to create new ways to surveillance using the evolving technologies. In addition to that, the government is seeking to find ways to break through encrypted data by asking software companies to allow build-in backdoors for the government to decode sensit...

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Karen Tumulty and Viveca Novak, Goodbye, soccer mom. Hello, security mom. TIME Magazine. 2 Jun. 2003 ISSUE.

Jack Ryan. McAfee broadens denial: No contact with government of any sort. Internet Security Review.

28 Nov, 2001. http://lists.insecure.org/lists/politech/2001/Nov/0109.html

Bugbear worms threaten Internet. CNN.com/Technology. 08 Jun. 2003.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/06/08/computer.worm/index.html

Urge Congress to Stop the FBI's Use of Privacy-Invading Software. American Civil Liberty Union. http://www.aclu.org/Cyber-Liberties/Cyber-Liberties.cfm?ID=9958&c=58

John Leyden. Zimmermann defends strong crypto against govt assault. 10 Mar. 2001. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/22014.html

Declan McCullagh, Lantern' Backdoor Flap Rages. 27 Nov. 2001. http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,48648,00.html

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