Maybe it's because I've held a Top Secret security clearance once...

[JDPriestly]

158. Many people on DU do not understand the legal concept of chilling

rights.

If you know that a call to someone will be recorded in the government's database, you might hesitate to make the call and discuss something with the person at the other end of the phone line. That chills your right to free speech, your right to speak to that person.

If you belong to the ACLU or a group of peace demonstrators and you receive and send e-mails to your friends in those groups, you might think twice about continuing that practice because your e-mails are being cataloged or at least the senders and recipients of those e-mails are in the register. That chills your speech and your freedom of association.

The same principle applies to nearly every right we enjoy.

And all that might not make much of a difference except that we have no assurance that a database like that cannot be hacked. And if it is, then everyone in the world has this information including employers, etc.

The threat that others have our secrets or can hack into our system is very real. That is especially true of the Chinese and certain countries in the Middle East. But the solution is to devise a fail-safe system that is independent of the internet that the rest of us use. Obviously, our encryption systems are not very good. If that is the case, then our banking encrypting systems could also be hacked.

Perhaps we need to rethink the use of the internet.

I'm not on Facebook for the very reasons you have given. I don't keep diaries either -- for the reasons you have given.