What is this country coming to? We are constantly surrendering more and more freedoms to the government. From high taxes to Bush’s “Patriot Act” to Obama trying to regulate the internet and sue Yahoo to surrender private e-mail accounts to the federal government without a warrant, we are constantly allowing our freedoms to be taken away.
Many people remember the Patriot Act. After 9/11 the government jumped at the opportunity to take as much of our freedoms as they thought they could get away with and for the most part many of us were perfectly will to give away. The Patriot Act included a lot of things like warrant less searches and wiretapping. Some of which was eventually thrown out by the courts and some that was not.
Barack Obama and many democrats railed against the patriot act and ran on repealing it. However once Obama was elected he fought to expand the powers. First his administration ordered Yahoo to give them access to private e-mail. When Yahoo refused he sued them in curt to have access to e-mails without a warrant. Thankfully Google and several others came to Yahoo’s aid and banded together to fight the lawsuit. Near the end of August the Obama administration finally backed off and the case was dismissed. Now his administration is trying to regulate internet content. His administration has stated that the FCC has the authority to regulate the internet and is set to outline a plan to regulating broadband lines. I’m not sure what exactly or how they plan on doing this but I will give you more when I know more.
The Federal Government is not the only ones hard at work to take your freedoms. Just a few months back a Maryland man (Anthony Graber) was arrested for video taping a traffic stop where he was pulled over for speeding on a highway. He was on a motorcycle. The cop cut him off nearly knocking him off of his bike then jumped out of his car and pulled his firearm on him. Graber was cooperative but latter posted the video on Youtube. He was then arrested for Maryland’s new wiretapping laws, which make it illegal to video police officers. Keep in mind that it is not only still legal to video anyone else in public, not to mention that the police officers themselves tape the stops with there own on board cameras. I think the most surprising to me was that this law is actually in many states. Talk about protecting their own.
What got me started on this little tirade today was a news story I came across about a young man named Yasir Afifi. Yasir, a 20 year old college student, took his car in for an oil change. The mechanic spotted a strange device attached to the bottom of his car (a little box with antenna). After they removed it he posted images of it on line and asked if anyone new what it was. Two days later the FBI showed up at his door and asked for their GPS tracking device back. Apparently the FBI has been putting GPS tracking devices on peoples cars with out them knowing and more importantly with out a warrant. This has started a major issue over privacy rights. Similar cases have been heard in many courts already with many different verdicts, which left me very surprised that I had not heard about this sooner. We cannot allow the government the right to trace our every movement with absolutely no probable cause (if they had it they would get a warrant).
Often I talk to my friends at the Mixed Martial Arts School in Columbia Maryland were I train about these issues. Our school is very diverse. We have people from all walks of life from doctors & lawyers to people who work retail to contractors and so on. Everyone is always outraged but often nothing gets done. It is not easy to stop the government from taking more and more power but we should do what ever we can (Voting, boycotting, protesting, writing letters to congressmen, etc.). Often we feel like it does not make a difference but if we do nothing then we are the ones to blame.
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