Privacy? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Privacy

I heard someone on the news yesterday — Rumsfeld? — try to cool worries about the Pentagon’s planned database. You know, the one that will record every single credit card purchase made by every single person in America.

Paraphrasing, he said that our fears are overblown. No one worries that banks and grocery stores and insurance companies already collect all this data.

Actually, some of us do worry about those little details. But what is left unsaid, is that banks and insurance companies don’t have guns or jails. The government does.

Shut down this project before it gets started.