Personal privacy is under attack by the government and the American public appears to be very unconcerned. Due to technological innovations, the government can now identify and watch everyone from birth to death. The citizen, without his national ID number (your Social Security number has been preempted for this purpose), cannot even renew his driver's license. Some naive, innocent people continue to believe in the government's good intentions toward them. These deluded individuals conveniently forget the untold millions who have been killed in this century by their own governments in places like China and the Soviet Union. These millions all died for the stated good of society, their country, etc. The founding fathers of the United States were fully aware of the potential for abuse by government and that is why they intentionally created a weak central government. However, government, like any institution, always acts in its own best interests, and so, since the founding of the current constitutional republic, the federal government has slowly and steadily encroached upon the powers of both the states and the individual's privacy. The government truly believes you do not have a right to privacy and if you are not guilty of any "crime," you should not complain about it monitoring all your activities and compiling files on you and your activities. Of course, what constitutes a crime nowadays is absolutely amazing. Almost every aspect of life is controlled, regulated or supervised by the state through some law, ordinance or regulation. It is a daunting challenge to find any aspect of life that is free from either direct or indirect government intrusion. In fact, it is almost impossible to find any such area. The abridgement of those individual liberties upon which a free society is based is almost complete. Freedom and privacy have become hazy memories of a way of life that very few people today can honestly recollect. Until our next issue, stay cool and remain low profile! http://privacyworld.com