It has been hard for me to decide how to introduce these pages.  I am in my senior years and am a firm believer in my individual right to privacy and I guard it jealously. I am now greatly concerned and is why I started this page. There may be no one read it but me, but , it has allowed me to put a few of my thoughts down in print about how I feel. One of the few TV stations I watch "The Discovery Channel" had a program the other night (June 8th, 1999) called "Big Brother is Watching." It hit me so hard that I decided to research the subject put down what I thought into print. The problem is that once I started researching this question the larger it became and the more frightening it became. I never realized just how much information gathering is going on concerning each of we individual citizens until now. It is being stored in databases all over the world, the internet, in corporations and especially by our own government in Washington, D.C. I wish now that I had not watched the show and never started this page. I am at the age where I could have died blissfully ignorant and never known any of this was going on, especially by my own government. I know that over the last few years I have included probably too much information for you to digest at one sitting but if you are interested in this subject and would like to bookmark this pages in order to return easily just click on this link or,, This section was updated, 21 June 2002, In light of the Sept. the 11th. Catastrophe at the World Trade Center in New York, and updated again on 29 November 2005 in light of some new information I have gathered. In my humble opinion it is the government taking advantage of a horrible happening to aggresively increase their instrusive monitoring capabilities. These links will open a new page in your browser so just close it when you are finished reading it. Our New Surveillance Society ? Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains! This is very scary stuff! This is a large file with an awful lot of information. You can download the .pdf file here and read/study it at your leisure. What is the Patriot Act ? What Is Carnivore ? What Is Echelon ? What Is Magic Lantern ? What Is Digital Angel ? What about National ID Cards ? Another look at National ID Cards! National ID's by the back door ? Implanted Computer Tracking Chips ? All Your Private Information For Sale ? Is Our Government copying the movies. What is Matrix ? Matrix, Myth or Reality ? What is our Governments "Total Information Awareness program ? THIS IS SCARY ! !,,,Want to read some things about what the government is doing to your/our personal privacyFEBRUARY 10th.,,Ashcroft and our Privacy.! and what others can find out about you! ! Go Here ! ! Information about you and your travels on the internet. Here are some sites that try to keep our government honest about their spying on private citizens! The Electronic Privacy Instute (EPIC) The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Take some respoonsibility! Be alert, be Aware do some of your own investigations! The Warning ! This is on this page. In the last few years I have watched my ability to guard my privacy being eroded to the point that if I even mention encrypting my email to people they automatically look at me kinda funny and then ask me if I have something to hide. I do not, but that is not the point. There is a point in the future if things continue as they are that anyone who seals an envelope or closes a door in order to talk on the telephone privately will be looked at suspiciously. Do Not Scoff,  as I said,, I can see it already now whenever I mention encrypting my e-mail. People are already afraid that if they decide to encrypt their email or even speak of something like that or express a concern about their right to privacy that it will mean that they have something to hide. In the last few years a phrase has come into play " Why worry about your privacy if you have nothing to hide ? ", that permissive phrase and attitude may someday come back to haunt all of us. Why you should encrypt your E-Mail, If we all stand idly by and let it happen , the time may come that if you encrypt your E-Mail , send regular mail in a sealed envelope, you may well go to jail. This is not a Joke ! The major players on the Internet, ( The Government , Intel , Micro$oft, Netscape , AOL , Banks , Newsgroups and other people) Not to mention the major "Free Email" companies like Hotmail and Yahoo, all feel that they have a "right" to gather , to store in huge databases (and in many cases sell to others ) many personal details about myself , my family and my life.  Where I go and What I look at while I am searching the internet , where I live, how much I make , who I write to , who writes to me and other information that I consider mine and mine alone. Many of the records are going to be around for the rest of our lives and most of the time we do not even know these databases even exist. Even our Personal Medical Records are an open book to some and a money making proposition for some, like the HMOs, Hospitals and Doctors. Please, If you doubt this go here ! Here is a very disturbing college study written several years ago. It is rather old and at the time the professor had no idea of the capabilities of the computers of today nor did he know of the ability of todays computer programs to gather personal information. That is one of the reason it is very disturbing to me. The government databases on personal and mass surviellence. They feel that gathering such information is their right,,,,I Do Not ! ! I feel that I have a certain right to protect my correspondence and facts about my life, that is why I use envelopes and then seal the flap on mail I send by the U.S Postal Service " Snail Mail ". It is also the reason I use an encryption program calledPGP (Pretty Good Privacy) to encrypt my email.  I also use the Premier e-mail program called PEGASUSbecause it connects seamlessly to PGP by using a program written by a friend of mine called QDPGP.  It is a shell program that makes using PGP with Pegasus as easy as using Windows.  It is all just point and click. Our EMail makes several stops (hops) to and from the person we send it to.  Every stop along the way it is readable and can be farmed for addresses and information. ( 1 ) Would you as a business person want just anyone intercepting an email about : (a) someone you were going to hire/fire ? (b) a new product you were bringing out ? (c) any kind of advanced plans you were making ? ( 2 )Would you as an individual user want anyone at your Internet Service Provider ( or anyone along the line who might have some personal interest )taking a look at: (a) an email from home that was critical of The Government/Your Company/Your Boss ? (b) an email at home to/from another company with whom you are in job negotiations ? (c) an email at home to/from your, spouse/significant other/lover/mistress ? Would you stand for someone from the US Post Office or a US Mail Carrier opening and reading your regular mail ? ?  Of course Not ! Well it happens every day across the world at Internet Service Providers and other stops along the way. If we as internet users allow the government and others to continue to encroach on these privacys ,,, as they are doing now,,, It will become prevalent and accepted practice,,and very soon these rights will no longer exist and then we as a society are in trouble. There are many pages on the internet that will explain to you all the technical pertinent details of who, what , why , where of all the people and the reasons they give for wanting to know all of this information about us so here is just a quick synopsis. Intel wants to be able to sell the information gathered about everyones surfing habits and personal information gathered by using their numbered Pentium III chip to commercial enterprises and commercial web sites who will then use this information to track you as to your surfing and shopping habits. You do know that Intels new Pentium III chip has a tracking number on it don't you ? ? Netscape and AOL have always been very intrusive and then very loose with all of the information they have gathered about their users.  Especially AOL who just last year wanted to put up for sale all the personal information they had on their users. Real Networks who builds and markets on the internet one of the most popular free viewers of Multi-Video and a music player called "Real Jukebox". They have just been caught tracking who the users of the New RealJukebox are, and what they are Playing, Watching and what music the users have on their hard drive. Then when you go onto the internet all that info is transferred to Real Networks without the knowledge of the Individual users. It is a disgrace ,(IMHO), that people like this have decided that they know best what is best for all of us. Micro$oft also wants to secretly know what other software is on your computer so they can either use the information to sell you other of their own products or sell it to third parties so they can try to sell you their Microsoft compatible products. The US Government Has the worlds largest database on individuals and now wants to know what you are looking at on the internet and what is going on in your e-mail correspondence.  Clinton and Gore want to put a "clipper chip" a back door into all encryption programs in order to be able to read all encrypted emails.  They have plenty of excuses as to why they need to read our emails but to me that is all they are,,, excuses. The U.S. Government already has a program in place that is called " ECHELON " that tracks and monitors all internet traffic and all international telephone traffic for certain " key words ". If you think that is impossible,, think of the speed of computers today and what computer resources are available to our government ! "Trust Us They Say,, We Will Take Care Of You." Many sites on the internet use cookies and java and javascript to track and gain information about you as you go through their site and others. You can go " here " and see just how much information can be gathered about you without you even knowing any is being gathered.  I have been playing with some little programson my own site so I know what can be found out. There is a program out there that will solve the problem of Internet Sites gathering information about you without your permission. It is called ANONYMIZER. There are others but this one is the largest and best I have found so far. I will continue to be vigilant and if any thing better turns up I will use it. You might also want to check out " Wire Tapping In The Digital Age "."A struggle over cryptography policy is now taking place in the higher echelons of government, science and industry. Its outcome will have far reaching and possibly irrevocable consequences for every Americans' right to privacy. Yet the public has been kept largely in the dark. No one has asked the American people if they want Big Brother permanently hardwired into the country's communications infrastructure, and that is what will happen if the Present Administration has its way." The Warning While the UK-USA relationship is a product of Cold War political and military tensions, ECHELON is purely a product of the 20th Century – the century of statism. The modern drive toward the assumption of state power has turned legitimate national security agencies and apparati into pawns in a manipulative game where the stakes are no less than the survival of the Constitution. The systems developed prior to ECHELON were designed to confront the expansionist goals of the Soviet Empire – something the West was forced out of necessity to do. But as Glyn Ford, European Parliament representative for Manchester, England, and the driving force behind the European investigation of ECHELON, has pointed out: ’The difficulty is that the technology has now become so elaborate that what was originally a small client list has become the whole world.’ What began as a noble alliance to contain and defeat the forces of communism has turned into a carte blanche to disregard the rights and liberties of the American people and the population of the free world. As has been demonstrated time and again, the NSA has been persistent in subverting not just the intent of the law in regards to the prohibition of domestic spying, but the letter as well. The laws that were created to constrain the intelligence agencies from infringing on our liberties are frequently flaunted, re-interpreted and revised according to the bidding and wishes of political spymasters in Washington D.C. Old habits die hard, it seems. As stated above, there is a need for such sophisticated surveillance technology. Unfortunately, the world is filled with criminals, drug lords, terrorists and dictators that threaten the peace and security of many nations. The thought that ECHELON can be used to eliminate or control these international thugs is heartening. But defenders of ECHELON argue that the rare intelligence victories over these forces of darkness and death give wholesale justification to indiscriminate surveillance of the entire world and every member of it. But more complicated issues than that remain. The shameless and illegal targeting of political opponents, business competitors, dissidents and even Christian ministries stands as a testament that if America is to remain free, we must bind these intelligence systems and those that operate them with the heavy chains of transparency and accountability to our elected officials. But the fact that the ECHELON apparatus can be quickly turned around on those same officials in order to maintain some advantage for the intelligence agencies indicates that these agencies are not presently under the control of our elected representatives. That Congress is not aware of or able to curtail these abuses of power is a frightening harbinger of what may come here in the United States. The European Parliament has begun the debate over what ECHELON is, how it is being used and how free countries should use such a system. Congress should join that same debate with the understanding that consequences of ignoring or failing to address these issues could foster the demise of our republican form of government. Such is the threat, as Senator Frank Church warned the American people over twenty years ago. “At the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology… I don’t want to see this country ever go across that bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” "Just because I am paranoid , doesn't mean they aren't out to get me .":=)

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