re: #165 EPR-radar

Obama and the Democrats have put the “bipartisan seal of approval” on most of the civil liberties abuses of the Bush era, to their great discredit.

even leaving out the “patriot” act, we are still living in an era with greatly limited privacy. consider this:

- when i actually use paper money for a retail transaction these days, i get a slight illicit thrill at the fact that i have conducted a purchase that leaves no permanent electronic trace that can be read by any agency with access to my bank records. wow, i just bought a banana and nobody will ever know that it was me!!!

- if, say, you were a government with totalitarian leanings that wanted all its citizens to carry devices that constantly broadcast their location as determined by gps, would it conceivably be possible not only get mass acceptance of this intense level of surveillance, but actually even get the citizens to pay for it themselves? enthusiastically, even? really??

yes, you can - it’s called “smartphones”