It would appear that the goal of the Bushcroft DOJ is to attain the ability to monitor every facet of residents's lives. Several months ago, they were talking about TIA (Total Information Awareness) - a database containing ALL financial, medical, military, educational, travel, purchasing, voting, internet usage (including e-mail, browsing habits, chat room dialogues, instant messaging), etc. data for all residents of the US. Now you may say that these records already exist. True. BUT not all in one place where, using sophisticated software, this data may be searched for 'suspicious' activity. In addition, currently the government needs a court order to obtain most of this information. With a unified data base, court orders would become moot. By the way, the name TIA was changed to something else that made it appear to be an anti-terrorism tool because the 'natives were becoming restless'.
Are you ready to have the FBI come knocking on your door at 5:00AM because you sent an e-mail to a friend stating that the 'PRESIDENT' of your local garden club 'HI-JACKED' the recent election to gain his position and that his acceptance speech really 'BOMBED' and the random search of the TIA database turned up these 'trigger' words?
One of the posters here posted a PGP message with the comment "Wiretap this". All the government needs to do is to outlaw non-governmental encryption. Even if your message only contains grandma's chocolate chip cookie recipe, you'd still be breaking the law! I can even forsee the day when 'file-wiping', 'cache cleaning', etc. software will be outlawed.
I also noted that, this morning, the government is trying to get 'black-boxes' installed in vehicles on a mandatory basis.
There is also talk of embedding chips into people, supposedly for 'medical diagnosis' reasons or, in the case of children, tracking purposes in case they get lost, kidnapped, etc.
If one considers this carefully, you will see that not only will the government know what your doing at every moment, but will know where you're doing it and who you're doing it with.
Will the American people stand for this? Unfortunately the answer is yes. The government is saying that all of this is necessary to 'protect us from terrorists' and the people are buying it. Our civil liberties and constitutional rights are slowly but inexorably being taken from us and we're letting it happen - all in the guise of a false sense of security! One of these days, we're all going to wake up in a police state.