OK, so here is my opinion on the UNICCO issue.I’m just kidding, I don’t care and I’m not going to join the legions of people chiming in about it. Although I am not the one to express my opinions on political subjects in this venue; I will point out on what I think of this whole privacy issue that has seemed to take a seat on the back-burner in people’s minds; I understand though, Sunday was the Oscars and all.
First I want to ask you my readers for a favor, do you mind if I listen to your phone conversations while you talk to your significant other? How about if I rummage through your computer checking files and cookies, you know, just to see where you’ve been surfing? Better yet, I really want to know where all of you go out to eat so, if you don’t mind, I’d like to check out your bank statements.
What? No? Why not? I mean it’s just little ol’ me, and plus, if you’re not doing anything wrong than you shouldn’t have anything to worry about, right? Unfortunately many will then retort with, “omg, they won’t wiretap everyone, idiot! Just people they think are terrorists, lol.” Sure, but what’s stopping them from wiretapping you, or me, or the head of the UNICCO union, whenever they damn well please? And how do you spot a terrorist? According to an article published Jan. 27 in the Lawrence Journal-World, “.there are oversights set up to monitor warrant-deficient ‘secret’ wiretaps and Roberts is also well aware that the [current] Administration is blowing that oversight off.” Booya.
Scary, if any of you have read the book 1984 or even seen the film Equilibrium; both Oceania and the city in which Equilibrium takes place are placed under such surveillance heavy, right restricted situations because the government was “benevolently” just trying to protect them and attempting to prevent wars. For me, NSA surveillance issue strikes a chord all too familiar. Let’s take a real-life example: In Cuba, each neighborhood has at least one sentry who lives amongst that community, someone who watches, observes and judges those around him. So according to the proponents, the people under surveillance shouldn’t have a problem as long as they do nothing wrong. Now, what if the sentry misunderstands something, what if he simply has a grudge; he has the power to have that person arrested on the spot. But hey, that won’t happen in the U.S. people can’t get arrested for no reason.oh wait.
Thing is, the attorney general has pointed out that in Article II of the Constitution, the president inherently has [the] power and Congress cannot encroach on it. So here come the spies! Privacy will be a thing of the past. We’re all potential terrorists in the eyes of the government, you can’t finger middle-eastern people only, remember Oklahoma City? Yeah.
From now on just call me Winston, because we’ll be living in Oceania soon. Ministry of Love, here we come!
Jovanni Bello is majoring in computer information system and creative writing. He can be contacted at j.bello2@umiami.edu.