Ignorance is Strength

And now the Bush administration wants you to believe that although "anonymity" is a quaint and old fashioned idea, you can rest assured that your privacy will still be protected because the government and corporations will carefully guard all of your information.

"Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity, but in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity - or the appearance of anonymity - is quickly becoming a thing of the past," according to Donald Kerr, the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.

If anonymity is no longer an option, then what? Well, according to Mr. Kerr we've got to "take into account national security concerns" first but, after that, we can all rest assured that we'll still have our privacy protected by government and corporations' strong commitment to keep citizens' personal information secure.

Oh. Good. So, not to worry that they are gathering all this information about me, I can count on them to never ever share it with anyone.

But then, I've got to wonder: If they'll never use this information for anything, then why collect it in the first place?

Oh. That's right. We've got to "take into account national security concerns."

Which gets us back to where we started, doesn't it? Someone somewhere is watching.

And it's probably coincidence that this week or next the Democratic controlled legislature is going to pass the Bush administration's bill granting Comcast, Verizon, and all the other telecommunications corporations complete immunity from legal liability for sending customers' private information to the government, thus putting an end to an unknown number of pending lawsuits accusing the companies of doing just that.

But I've nothing to worry about, right? I just need to keep these seditious questions from invading my mind.

Just keep chanting over and over again:

War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength