Lost Privacy Rights in America

America is a total surveillance society. Big Brother is no longer fiction. Sophisticated technologies make total monitoring possible, everyone vulnerable, including presidents.

All our moves, transactions and communications can be recorded, compiled and stored for easy access. Anything we say or do can be used against us.

Bill of Rights protections no longer apply. Collecting meta-data communications on Americans is unrelated to national security.

Judicial oversight is absent. Congressional members are told little about what goes on. The CIA, NSA, FBI and other US spy agencies operate ad libitum, doing whatever they wish unaccountably.

Cable and phone companies want online privacy made illegal. They require permission to use personal information about their subscribers.

They want congressional legislation removing this protection. Senator Jeff Flake (R. AZ) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R. TN) support the campaign by cable and phone companies to abolish online privacy.

They intend using Congressional Review Act (1996) authority. It lets Congress review, by expedited legislative procedures, federal regulations issued by government agencies.

They can be rescinded by a joint House and Senate resolution. Once repealed, CRA prohibits reissuing the rule in substantially similar form or issuing a new regulation, substantially the same  – “unless the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of the joint resolution disapproving the original rule.”

Phone and cable companies want online privacy restrictions removed so they can sell consumer information secretly for profit, without requiring permission to do it.

Privacy rights in America are fast disappearing. If phone and cable companies get their way, they’ll be dealt another severe body blow – congressional members serving them at the expense of consumer and constitutional rights.