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 intending 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They can be rescinded by a joint House and Senate resolution. Once repealed, CRA prohibits reissuing the rule in substantially similar form or issuing a new regulation, substantially the same—“unless the reissued or new rule is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.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” Visit his blog at sjlendman.blogspot.com . Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

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