Why is the government collecting all this data?

Over the last few weeks we have learned an important thing.   Our government is out of control, plain and simple, and it has been for a long time.  We have been living our lives, going to work, paying our bills and raising our families.  Every two years, we go to the ballot box and voted for what we thought was the lesser of two evils.  Well, we are now beginning to learn that the lesser of two evils, is still evil.
The government is tracking your phone calls, texts, emails, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, Skype calls and your credit card transactions.  The government will tell you that they are just “collecting data”, not listening to phone calls.  By the way, my smart phone has GPS; they are collecting that data too.   Kroger collects data on the food I buy in a guise of better pricing.  It is just data collection, and citizens have nothing to worry about, as long as they’re not doing anything wrong.  But who determines what is “wrong?”  Remember when the government in NYC determined that sugary drinks are “wrong?”
I have been involved in politics, to some extent, for most of my adult life.  The last six years I have been much more involved and what I have seen concerns me.  The mantra of every group I have been involved with over the last six years has been “collect as much data as possible:  name, cell number, emails, addresses, married/ single, children, race, religion, groups they belong to, etc.”  Everything is about developing lists and gathering as much information as possible.  Lists are the key to winning.  At first I did not understand why these groups craved so much data.  Then I was shown it is all about patterns, habits and predicting outcomes.  
Humans are creatures of habit.   We tend to do the same things, we like things that are familiar, we don’t like change.  We go to the same restaurants and order the same things because we know what we like.  We like to stay in our comfort zone.  In our comfort zone things are predictable and we crave predictability.  There is nothing wrong with this; it allows us to live our lives with reasonable expectations that if we do something that we’ve done before, and we were happy because of it, we will likely do it again.

likely do it again.  

This predictability is why lists and data are so important to political organizations and the government.  This predictability allows the political organizations to target groups of people, or demographics that will donate money or make phone calls.  Predictability can identify those who are most likely to vote and those who will likely need some prodding to get to the polls.  Data base prediction also allows the political organizations to mass market to certain groups and change the marketing based on the group to whom they are trying to cater the message.  With enough data, an organization can predict a person’s likely behavior in the future.  

The Government has an advantage over all other organizations, we are forced to provide all that data to the government via the IRS and our tax returns.  As we have found out in the last weeks, the government is also collecting our data through phone calls, emails, facebook and other social media.  So it follows that if political and commercial organizations can predict how you will act in the future, with that amount of data they collect, the government must have a much clearer idea of how we will act in the future.  This is where things become interesting.

The question is why, and to what end, is the government collecting and storing so much data?   If the point of collecting this data is to predict how groups and individuals will act in the future, why, then, is the government so concerned about how citizens will behave in the future?

Let’s assume that the government is using data collection to determine how people will vote.  The government would never target groups of people or individuals who challenged the bureaucracy, right?  Certainly, those in power, would never target groups and harass them if they “liked” the Fair Tax page on Facebook?  What if I referenced the Communist Party USA in a Facebook status, or shared a quote from Rush Limbaugh or Michael More, that would not make the FBI interested in my “behavior”, right?  I mean if DC is not interested in my behavior on social media sites, in emails I send and receive, in phones calls I take and make, in websites I visit that Google happens to remember automatically, what reason would they have to store it at all?  As the famous line from the original star wars goes, “these are not the droids we are looking for, move on.”

Lifting the veil

Wednesday March 6th there was a shift in this country, but most people did not notice.  A defense of Freedom, Liberty and the Bill of Rights was on display in the US Senate.  Senator Rand Paul stood up in the well of the Senate and spoke for over 13 hours.

The media will tell you the purpose of the filibuster was to block the CIA nominee John Brennan, but the truth is so much bigger.

Attorney General Holder sent a letter to Sen. Paul that said,” In an emergency, the Federal Government could execute a drone strike on US soil.”  While AG Holder added the caveat “in an emergency”, the answer was yes, the executive branch of the United States government could serve as judge, jury and executioner, in an emergency.

Who determines what constitutes an emergency?  Why of course the Executive branch does.   According to the top US attorney the executive branch can declare an emergency, thereby, having the authority to execute a drone strike.

Sen. Paul stood up with 14 other senators and demanded the executive branch answer the question, can American Citizens have their  4th, 5th and 6th amendment rights denied by a President?  Can a President, with a drone strike , take away an American citizens right to “be secure in their person”, “be indicted by a Grand jury”, “not be deprived of life liberty and property without due process of law” or to the “right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury”?

This is why this moment was so important.  The Bill or Rights has been under attack for decades, but the last 12 years have seen an unprecedented attack, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps, surveillance of e-mails, monitoring of cell phones, social media and attacks on religious freedom and the curtailing of free speech.  Yet during this attack on the Bill of Rights few in power stood up and took on the executive branch.

 Sen. Paul and those that supported the filibuster did just that, they stood up and demanded that the executive branch tell them if they had the power to ignore the constitution.  These few rebels’ shook the earth in DC, evidence by the reactions by those in power the next few days.

The “old guard” of the GOP took to the senate floor and called Sen. Paul everything from “dangerous” “Wacko Birds” and the “leader of the code pink republicans”.  Those in DC that believe in party over principle understood what had happened and it scared them.

If the American people begin to understand that what is happening in DC is just a game of R’s vs. D’s and as long as they keep us fighting each other, we will not notice the government overstepping its bounds and taking away our rights, the ruling class’s power would disappear.

Sen. Paul lifted the veil just a little and an amazing thing happened.  The people’s media, Twitter, Facebook, internet news sites and citizen journalist covered the filibuster with astounding success.  The news that someone was standing for freedom and the Bill of Rights spread across that internet, from C-Span to the twitter hashtag  #standwithrand  trending to number 1.  Even today if you Google stand with rand there are hundreds of blogs and new media stories, many of them left leaning news sources, even the progressive site Mother Jones questioned the use of drone strikes as Raha Wala, an attorney with Human Rights First said, “Any use of drone strikes or other premeditated lethal force inside the United States would raise grave legal and ethical concerns”

If we can stand together on the issue of liberty and freedom, we can stop this attack on our basic freedoms and present a united front to remind those in government that the only power they have is what the people grant them.

The ground has shifted, the veil lifted and the game has been exposed. We are purposely being pitted against each other, to keep us distracted.  We need to stop fighting each other and unite to defend our rights against a government that thinks it is ok to be judge, jury and executioner, as long as there is an emergency.

The world is full of razors

So I was having a conversation at work the other day and we were getting motivated to get some projects done and were bouncing ideas around , when someone commented ”why bother, no matter how hard we try it always ends up the same.”  

The energy the enthusiasm and the productivity of that conversation ended and the negativity flowed.   How does one mindless little statement completely derail what could have been a useful and innovative conversation?  

“A soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse one crushes the spirit” Proverbs 15:4

Well I guess once again the Bible explains what happened.  

What is worse is that I am the one that brought the perverse tongue to the conversation.  How easy it is to mindlessly say something that is a fruit of anger and frustration, sure for a brief second it satisfied my need to vent, but what was the outcome of that action?  

The outcome was to suck the life and energy out of the conversation and to crush the spirit if you will.  

Imagine this situation; you have just accomplished a goal that you have been striving for, spent a couple months working toward this accomplishment, just to have someone make a small comment about how stupid it was or how pointless it has been.  You are filled with joy and accomplishment, and yet someone, you may not even know the person, has burst your bubble and left you feeling flat.  

The point is that the father of lies can work through all our actions and even the words that come out of our mouths.  Our tongue is one of the most powerful weapons we possess; it can be used for great evil or for great good.  The tongue is also one of the hardest, at least for me, weapons to control.  

As we take the Sword of truth and do battle with ourselves, we must be honest and deal with the areas in which we lack grace, and pray for the grace to overcome our shortcomings.

We must discipline ourselves to do better; only through discipline and practice can we turn that razor tongue into a soothing one.  As with everything that is positive in life, we must want it and work to achieve it.  The path I have chosen is narrow and difficult to traverse, lots of things to stumble over, but it is the path less taken and the path to life.

Which path are you going to take?