Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

http://nation.foxnews.com/big-brother/2012/01/10/homeland-security-monitoring-journalists-online

This is just the first step in all of us losing our privacy and our freedom, as I bet they won’t stop with just journalists. It used to be illegal to monitor someone with out a warrant and keep their personal information, but I guess it is all part of the Hopey Changey thing that our current President promised. Anyone else remember the Cold War and the KGB monitoring all citizens


Put your on and read this

KGB Chieftain Finds Home at Homeland Security
http://dissidentvoice.org/Jan05/Whitney0121.htm

This happened in 2005

Here is another link you might find interesting

http://thechristianobserver.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=2

TRUTH IN MEDIA, THE REAL STORY
Do you know what your children are doing? The government does!

Our privacy is going away and no one screaming about it. They just take it a bit at a time and once you are used to it they just take a little bit more and more and more until we have not privacy or rights whatsoever.

Something else to think about

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/norman-wolfe/leading-living-organization/catch-wild-pig-society-parable-and-lessons-leaders

How do you catch wild pigs?

A chemistry professor at a large college had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?' The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again.

You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat; you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught.

Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms -- just a little at a time.

This is an interesting topic. Does a journalist have a privacy right that prevents DHS from monitoring his “social media activity”?

First, allow me to apologize in advance for all the typos that are likely to result from typing this one-handed because acknowledging that Obama’s DHS may not be in the wrong here (at least not yet) obliges me to hold my nose with the other hand.

Now where was I? - - - Oh, Yes! - - - Depends upon what the definitions of “monitoring” and “social media activity” are, for starters. The very thought of being monitored by the government makes my stomach churn. But really, using (for the time being) the simplest understanding of these terms and eschewing dark connotations, I assume the “social media” is facebook, twitter, and maybe blogs and forum boards such as VGOF. Whether we like it or not, we have no expectation of privacy when we participate in these activities. I guess government snoops have just as much right to read what people post in these forums as any of the other trolls who lurk there; not to mention regular citizens. Here at VGOF, we all use screen names and that’s the rules of the forum. But as I understand it, people go on facebook and twitter and tell the whole world about things I would consider private and never even consider publishing to the world. There are all kinds of stories about people telling stuff on themselves that got them in various trouble - - including jail. This is just one old curmudgeon’s opinion, I guess, but I think they have rocks in their heads.

Freedom of the press, one might well argue, has nothing to do with this. Indeed, the whole notion of freedom of the press is to be able to have THE WHOLE WORLD know what you think and what you say about a given subject (assuming you can get someone who owns a press to publish it). The constitution doesn’t say anything about a right to anonymity, and in fact, all editors that I am aware of refuse to publish letters submitted to them anonymously.

The real question, I guess, is when this monitoring activity by DHS DOES cross the line. When they call on allingeneral and demand personal information and IP addresses on all of us? What if it is only those of us who have criticized BHO? What if it is only those of us who have used a smilie with a machine gun? I could pose these questions all day. Suffice to say there are things that are clearly OVER the line and things that are not. But where is “THE LINE”?

But as to the matter at hand, I find that I have NO sympathy for members of the press who complain about having whoever wants to do so read what they post on a public forum.

My point to all of this is that 20 or 30 years ago the goverment I am sure they were doing the same thing but they were not as overt as they are today. I truly believe that there would have been an outcry then, but with todays The Goverment wil protect you and make you safe but in order to do this you have to give up your privacy.

Taggure wrote:My point to all of this is that 20 or 30 years ago the goverment I am sure they were doing the same thing but they were not as overt as they are today. I truly believe that there would have been an outcry then, but with todays The Goverment wil protect you and make you safe but in order to do this you have to give up your privacy.

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Well, I'll suggest that 20 or 30 years ago, we expected far less of the government in the way of protection and keeping us safe and were, as a people, more willing and able to accept responsibility for our own protection and safety. But we have now come to look to the federal government to get involved in everything whether it's any of their damned business or not. And the goverment has become better at assuming our protection than acheiving it.

And in these days of the world wide web, anybody who can get signed onto Yahoo in effect owns a printing press and can expose himself to more scrutiny than he intends or can cope with. It's sort of the information technology equivalent of the old argument about the changing nature of the right to keep and bear arms in a world with uzis and RPGs.