Did I Forget To Mention That You're A Socialist?

Ace of Spades HQ: "Actually modern liberalism includes quite a lot of what used to be unique to socialism. And I don't think modern paleo-cons are opposed to public education."

I'm going to stop posting for a day or two. This post and the last are too important -- you need to grok them for a while.

Well OK. There's something else you need to grok(law) also:

I feel like that now, knowing that persons I don't know can paw through all my thoughts and hopes and plans in my emails with you.

They tell us that if you send or receive an email from outside the US, it will be read. If it's encrypted, they keep it for five years, presumably in the hopes of tech advancing to be able to decrypt it against your will and without your knowledge. Groklaw has readers all over the world.

And:

One way of beginning to understand privacy is by looking at what happens to people in extreme situations where it is absent. Recalling his time in Auschwitz, Primo Levi observed that "solitude in a Camp is more precious and rare than bread." Solitude is one state of privacy, and even amidst the overwhelming death, starvation, and horror of the camps, Levi knew he missed it.... Levi spent much of his life finding words for his camp experience. How, he wonders aloud in Survival in Auschwitz, do you describe "the demolition of a man," an offense for which "our language lacks words."...

One function of privacy is to provide a safe space away from terror or other assaultive experiences. When you remove a person's ability to sequester herself, or intimate information about herself, you make her extremely vulnerable....

You may not be interested in Big Brother -- but he is interested in you.