Governmental Secrecy: Shield for Tyranny, Incompetence, and Corruption

An essential pillar of democracy is openness. There is no way that people can meaningfully participate in government, even if only by voting for representatives, if they do not have access to accurate information related to government operations. This was well understood by the founders of the US and embedded in the Bill of Rights. Conversely, a salient characteristic of undemocratic systems of all types, such as Czarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany is a high degree of governmental secrecy.

Twitter said in its first transparency report that the number of government requests for user information or to block content is rising in 2012. "We've received more government requests in the first half of 2012, as outlined in this initial dataset, than in the entirety of 2011," Twitter's legal policy manager Jeremy Kessel said in a blog post on Monday. The overwhelming number of requests came from the United States, accounting for 679 of the 849 requests for user information. In 75 per cent of the US cases, Twitter gave some or all information.

A Texas father caught a man sexually assaulting his 4-year-old daughter and punched him in the head repeatedly, killing him, authorities said. The father was casually acquainted with the alleged abuser, said Lavaca County Sheriff Micah Harmon. Neither has been publicly identified. The girl was left inside the family's house during the social gathering, while other members of her family were tending to horses, the sheriff said. The alleged abuser was known for his horse-grooming abilities, Harmon said.

Fukushima Daiichi Worker: Nothing can be done except to leak radioactive water! — Honestly feel that we are dumping massive amounts into ocean — Will spread all over world, reaching Hawaii and US soon

See what major US corporations and business associations have to say
about the new bipartisan ‘Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act
of 2011

Wired Article...

CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher.

(User's notes: It's very conceivable. It's can start as companies using your usage data without you even knowing it, then grow into an abomination. The infrastructure is already in place, follow the link below to learn more about power lines as a medium for data transfer)

Wiki: Power line communication...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication

The Canadian Government is set to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act which will mark the return of "lawful access" within a single legislative package. This will require the disclosure of customer information by ISPs without court oversight, force ISPs to institute real-time surveillance of their customer and allow for law enforcement to obtain that information with or without a warrant. The bill set to pass is bill C-30.

Detroit residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own.

So when you plead the fifth, it can't be when they're asking for your passwords...

This video entitled, "Mikko Hypponen: Three types of online attack" is really about the 3rd type of attack... governments hacking their own citizens citing specific instances.

Start at 4:15. In the closing he says, "This is not a question of privacy against security, it is a question of freedom against control. And while we might trust our government right now... any right we give away will be given away for good."