Well. The big news item these days is the degree to which the National Security Agency has been getting info on our phone calls, our email, our Skype calls, our Internet surfing. Repubs are having a field day; this subject reverberates among conservatives as well as it reverberates with liberals like me. It pisses me off.

It would also piss me off to lose both my legs in a terrorist bombing. We have no idea how many terrorist attacks were thwarted with these measures. Maybe many; maybe not a one. But we are giving up more chunks of our privacy, it seems. Except for one thing.

We don’t have a right to the Internet. We don’t have a right to cell phone calls. Cell phones use public airwaves. Many are at 960 MHz, a frequency that has to be auctioned off because the airwaves belong to everyone and no-one. The Internet was developed by and for the military-industrial complex, designed to keep the flow of information going even in the event of a nuclear war.

You want privacy? Write letters. Use stamps. Visit your friends and relatives. Nobody could ever justify opening millions of Americans’ letters and posting unmarked cars outside your friends’ houses to monitor your comings and goings. 

Yet. And that is the problem.

June 7, 2013