Hell, I might as well say it, I used to work for the NSA

[jtuck004]

32. A guy says "Have you heard... " NSA Employee "Yes".

Your warning is chilling, but do you have any suggestions on how to get people to understand that they are afraid of the wrong things? Because it will take the people standing up and demanding their freedom to stop this, and they haven't demanded their freedom in a very long time.

We should be more afraid of what government surveillance does to our society than the benefit of this Stasi-like apparatus and social conditioning that is going on, yet that doesn't seem to be what scares people.

Being involved in animal welfare, this is easy to see. Dogs are more dangerous to kids (and vice versa) than adults, but a kid is far more likely to die from choking on a balloon or some other object, drown in a pool or lake. You and I are more likely to die tripping over something on our bedroom floor or falling in the tub, five times as likely to be killed by lightning. We have better odds of winning on two big lottery tickets on the same day.

Yet we pass laws to restrict the lesser threat and instead of taking precautions expose ourselves and the kids to far more dangerous ones, and get each other killed doing it.

It could be that this has to do with how our brains are built, a very deep-seated fear of slithering and growly things that may have served us in good stead early on, but no longer represents what we should be most concerned about.

This whole surveillance state. We are afraid of the mad bomber, (though we should probably be far more afraid of the mad biologist), but the surveillance and this mindset that "others" must be doing wrong, that you aren't so you have nothing to be afraid of, elected officials encouraging us to spy on each other... what that can turn people into, how it can cause them to turn on each other, and how it undermines what people need to do to build a strong, secure country is far and away a greater threat than any thousand shooters or bombers

Unfortunately I suspect that day you spoke about is coming, because I don't see what would motivate enough people to change their behavior and address the right things for a change.

On the other hand, maybe there will be new jobs installing peep-holes in apartment buildings so we can spy on our neighhbors.