Are The American People Being Spied On Or Not?

[sabrina 1]

241. Our judicial system is public. Trials are conducted in public so that no one is denied the right to

to face the accusations made against them, because every person, including even children, with any intelligence at all, knows that there are those, even those in elected office, who will lie and cheat to go after people they dislike IF they believe they can get away it.

Is it necessary to point to countries where this happens on a regular basis, in today's world, let alone point to the lessons of history?

I should have said, 'our judicial system USED to be public'. But using the 'terror' scare we have as a nation accepted Secret Courts, surveillance of the American people on a massive scale, and we even have people HERE on DU attempting to justify it. It's absolutely shocking to me that we are even discussing 'adjusting' the Constitution for any reason at all.

Someone wrote an OP yesterday explaining what Democracy is about. One of the things we accept, IF we want to live in a free country, is that there will be some risks but we have always claimed that we accept those risks because it is part of the price of being free and we tell the world we are the 'land of the free and home of the brave'.

What has happened over the past decade is we have given up on being a free country with all that goes with it, and have given permission to politicians to take away some of those freedoms out of fear.

I am completely opposed to giving up any freedoms, I am opposed to secret courts and secret no fly lists and secret warrants. I do NOT believe this makes us safer. Safer from what? What could be worse than living in a totalitarian society where the government demands the people 'trust them' with their rights??? If you have ever known anyone who has lived in a society with secret courts and trials and lists, they will tell you they would rather risk an occasional attack from outside, than live in constant fear of their own government.

So I believe when we begin to see even small signs of government abuses, the old 'national security' excuses being trotted out, the claims that we need to keep lists of the activities of the entire population for reasons they have to struggle to explain, THAT is when we need to stop it. Before it's too late.

So it's hard for me to entertain any thought of giving that kind of power to anyone. Our system is a good one, I don't see any reason to change it. I didn't when Bush was president and I still don't.