Sometimes when I read the news these days I shudder with the fear that we are rapidly approaching the dystopian nightmare many of us who grew up in the Cold W

Sometimes when I read the news these days I shudder with the fear that we are rapidly approaching the dystopian nightmare many of us who grew up in the Cold War era came to fear. We were taught that a favorite saying by the Soviet "subjects" was "The walls have ears." I read a story in elementary school about a child (my age at the time) preparing for a State exam. His father was answering questions (quotes are approximate): "Dad, why are the leaves green?" "Nobody knows." "How far away is the sun?" "1000 miles." The father was concerned that his kid might get too many questions correct on the exam. Kids who were too smart disappeared, Hopefully Mr. Wilson would agree that if this goes through then we need a serious fucking discussion about these "warrants" that are "required" to get private information. One of problems we have now is that the warrants are too easy to get. And they can be kept secret. There is no harm in trying, so the feds might as well keep trying. The FISA court contains judges that are hand-picked by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court [1], which can leave the FISA court dangerously single-minded. Perhaps new laws compelling law enforcement to be open and transparent about what it is trying to acquire would be enough, but I am suspicious. A second problem centers on the legal justification for the validity of the National Security Letter- the letter that the FBI can write to get information from things like libraries. The (legal) legitimacy of the process for aquiring an NSL (which does not require judicial oversight) rests on the idea that the target has no expectation of privacy to the information being obtained. If they put in a back-door to our private communications, then it could be argued that we now have no expectation of privacy for our phones (etc.). So I'm afraid that lowering the technological barrier may coincidentally lower the legal barrier. [1] http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/about-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/about-foreign-intelligence-surv...