I was talking to an old friend yesterday from the roof of the Center in the Square parking garage. He mentioned CALEA or the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act .
I had heard about a judge calling the government arguments "gobbledlygook" but I had not paid much attention since that is pretty well the norm these days.
My friend explained that this was actually a huge issue for universities and colleges.
This is the core argument in the case.
A federal judge criticized the U.S. government's demand that universities install wiretapping capabilities in their computer networks, saying he sees no evidence that Congress intended the intrusion.
Wow, so this is what the government wants, the ability to quickly wiretap university networks. They also want to able to do it 24X7 according to my friend.
Perhaps as Eugene Robinson says in his today's Washington Post article, "Nation of Fear," we have become a nation willing to "surrender privacy and due process without so much as a whimper of protest."
So if we seal the borders with National Guard troops and start wiretapping students, I guess we're well on the way to George's dream.
My friend and I were talking about stages of life just before we hung up. He said he figured out that he had grown up when he started sounding like his parents in conversations to some of the young people who are working for him.
It would be nice if our country would grow up a little and start sounding like our founding fathers, but it appears we're headed in the wrong direction for that.
We can take some hope from Eugene Robinson's comments. It's a shame to be reduced to this, but there is a little something there for us.
It's at least somewhat comforting, in a way, to know that with the president's approval ratings so low and Congress in a state of dysfunction, we may be entering a phase of one-party gridlock in which nothing much gets done -- which means there's a chance that things might not get much worse.
At this point thinking that things might not get much worse is a first step towards things looking up.
I got a great comment the other day on my "About Remembering Mom" post. A comment as nice as that, even though they may be few and far between, helps to keep me writing and taking pictures. The words were very kind, and I appreciate them greatly as the sun continues to come up earlier and earlier each day.
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