The Government is Watching - EVERYTHING!

A major news bomb was dropped yesterday when it was revealed that the US Governement is monitoring and recording literarily every single bit of information that is uploaded onto the internet.

Every email, document, audio file, video file, photograph, phone call and any other activity that is done online is being recorded--and kept, by the United States Government.

This type of data mining is illegal on many levels and demonstrates a blatant disregard for citizen's constitutional right to privacy.

As Julian Assange pointed out earlier this week, these government abuses are happening because the media has allowed it to happen.  The mainstream press has failed to check the political realm appropriately, the political realm has run rampant over civil liberties, and now the check and balances balance has fallen out of whack.

This is yet another knock at Obama's administration, which most voters voted into office as alternative to the destructive polices of George W. Bush.  However, now in office, Obama has failed the progressive voice time and again, and his big-brother policies have now earned him the new nickmame, and phototshopped photo above--George W. Obama.

And as the Atlantic points out, we have created an incredibly scary environment in America where there is now:

• A precedent that allows the president to kill citizens in secret without prior judicial or legislative review

• The power to detain prisoners indefinitely without charges or trial

• Ongoing warrantless surveillance on millions of Americans accused of no wrongdoing, converted into a permanent database so that data of innocents spied upon in 2007 can be accessed in 2027

• Using ethnic profiling to choose the targets of secret spying, as the NYPD did with John Brennan's blessing

• Normalizing situations in which the law itself is secret -- and whatever mischief is hiding in those secret interpretations

• The permissibility of droning to death people whose identities are not even known to those doing the killing

• The ability to collect DNA swabs of people who have been arrested even if they haven't been convicted of anything

• A torture program that could be restarted with an executive order

So no, this isn't directly related to street art, but it is such an important social issue affecting each and every one of us online, that as an alternative news source trying to keep the balances in check, M&F felt obligated to bring it up.

Knowledge is power, and big government is watching everything you put online.  Know this and watch out!