Under Surveillance

I'm reluctant to post anything any more, now that I know for sure that 'they' are monitoring all our web and phone activity.  It clearly isn't safe to use the net.  Or the phone, for that matter.  The NSA and, it now seems, GCHQ, are listening and monitoring our every move.  Here's something for them to think about: back in a previous existence, when I commuted to work everyday, wearing a collar and tie and sat behind a desk in Whitehall, I visited both the NSA at Fort Meade and GCHQ in Cheltenham as part of my job.  They were liaison visits, way back in the day.  I was a different person then.  Part of the system.  Actually, I'm still part of the system, in my day job, just much lower down the scale and nowadays working actively to subvert the system from within.  Although that last bit might be a lie - it's more like subverting the system through utter indifference. I just do my hours and come home, where I lead this alternative existence online. 

Getting back to the point, it was dismaying to see Obama defending the indiscriminate secret surveillance of perfectly innocent US citizens by trotting out all the tired old clichés about the need for security sometimes having to outweigh the need for privacy and civil liberties.  It's all bollocks.  If you have to start invading people's privacy on this scale in the name of fighting terrorism, then the terrorists have quite clearly won.  The most depressing aspect of this whole story is the number of morons out there who buy Obama and co's schtick and happily collude in their own repression by the state.  I seem to recall that back in the dark days of the Cold War, this was exactly the sort of thing we in the West used to condemn the Soviets for.  We smugly crowed about how free from state surveillance and monitoring our citizens were in contrast to those of the Soviet bloc.  Or perhaps I just imagined that - they're probably busy re-writing that bit of history to better reflect current policies as I type this.  Anyway, I'd better go before they spot me - remember, they're watching you!