----- Original Message ----- From: "Lew" : It's actually somewhat worse than Robert suggests. "Yahoo Inc. said that it recently turned over information about its users searching habits to federal investigators, a startling admission that has touched off a new round of privacy concerns.".. "A spokeswoman for MSN declined to confirm whether MSN has cooperated in the effort. "We can't comment on specific government inquiries," (our local paper reported MSN had been assisting and cooperating with the US government for a long time) from http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1913105,00.asp "Google is rebuffing the Bush administration's demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the internet's leading search engin" from http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/google-asked-to-hand-over-search-record s/2006/01/20/1137553742349.html now for some thoughts expressed by some citizens of the US.. "The spirit of the times..will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion." - Thomas Jefferson "In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. - Thomas Jefferson "It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error." - Robert H Jackson (US Supreme Court Justice) and some Russian dude.. "The second basic thesis is that intellectual freedom is essential to human society - freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economics and culture." -Sakharov k
