This mess is yet another example of personal liberty versus government power. On one side is the right to privacy in the home, expressly guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, and the right to silence, expressly guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment and by implication in the First Amendment. On the other side is an avaricious government that wants to know all it can about persons in America – whether constitutional or not.
Could a future Commerce Department ask how many guns are kept in the house or who living there goes to Mass on Sunday or if any resident has had an abortion? How much longer will a free people permit these intrusions? How much longer will we be a free people?
Tag Archives: privacy
The Harper government is monitoring your online activities | The Canadian Political Scene
An Excess of Situational Awareness
An Excess of Situational Awareness
If you protest, they will hear you. Demonstrate,
and they will come. Through the wires, over internet,
by email, social media, the government will watch you.
Criticize and they will come.
First they choked off their own cabinet, the ministers
and their deputies, then attacked their official opposition.
The scientists were silenced, literary handouts chopped
in the name of fiscal clarity and balanced budget.
Say nothing now on Facebook, not a chirrup nor a twitter.
They may claim anti-anarchy is their sole and guiding purpose,
Big Brother’s out to save us all by focusing on anyone
who dares to speak aloud to take their leader’s name in vain.
You always thought your nation was the haven of the free.
Now our government is watching and its target’s you and me.
Carol A. Stephen,
June 6, 2014
Carol A. Stephen is a Canadian poet. She’s twice been shortlisted, and in 2012 took 3rd place, in Canadian Authors Association National Capital Writing Contest. Carol is the author of two chapbooks, Above the Hum of Yellow Jackets, and Architectural Variations.
Carol A. Stephen,
Carleton Place, On. Canada, K7C 4P8
Published with permission of the above author.
Old unionist 