I’m going to step up and join my voice to those “privacy experts” who are speaking out against yet still again another affront to civil rights and liberties on the part of the BushCheney juggernaut. Not only do I not think the government has a right to demand anybody’s records of anything without a warrant, and really resent those companies who kowtowed and turned them over without a fight, I don’t believe for one minute their search has anything to do with protecting children. That’s just a soft song to keep the herd passive. Information is power and these guys in Washington are totally drunk on power. They won’t stop with spying on just a few of us, for a good reason; like an alcoholic, one is too many and a thousand is never enough.

I realize they claim this was general data only, and no personal information was included, so it’s not technically a violation of privacy. But it is, you bet your bippy. Check out what Blue Collar Politics blog has to say:

If the fact that, somewhere in our nation, a child molester might use Google to look for a pervert friendly website, and we allow our government to flaunt our right to privacy by getting info from an Internet service we use, then why can’t the government enter 1,000,000 homes, without individual warrants, to search for a child who might be in danger of being molested. Or, why not allow the police to randomly enter homes in the hope that they might catch a child abuser, serial killer or someone smoking a joint?

It’s a random search. For incriminating evidence. Without a warrant. Would it be admissible? No! But it doesn’t matter, because Bush believes with all his Big as Texas heart that he has the authority to throw your cute keester in prison without charges, without a lawyer or a trial, for the rest of your natural life. It doesn’t matter because They have just gone wandering off to the autocratic zoo. It gives me the creeps, no kidding.

Of course we need to protect children from harm, of all kinds. That’s why we have police, who can get warrants from judges. And as much as we need to protect children from abuse, we need to protect them from the wholesale degradation of the American system of justice and liberty. This is not about porn, people. It’s about due process and the checks and balances of power.