...though not nothing.

According to a NYTimes article, the program is supposed to be used to analyze only foreign news/info sources. I don't find that promise all that reassuring: There's nothing in the technology that inherently prevents it from being used against Americans, and we have only their promise that it won't be. Given the Bush Regime's sorry record at restraining itself from spying on Americans, I don't trust that promise one bit. One of the people quoted in the article drew a parallel with Admiral Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness" program, and the comparison's apt. Knowledge is power, and both programs give the government impermissible power to monitor what people think. Information by itself is of little use to anybody; it must be acted upon, and what kind of actions would arise out of the knowledge of dissenting opinions and criticism?

Then there's the dodge "foreign news and information". That covers everybody, friend and foe alike, and we should question the propriety of monitoring citizens of other free societies. A double standard raises serious questions about the sincerity of the Bush Regime's protestations of love of freedom and democracy. If they consider citizens of other democracies to be fair game for monitoring, what's stopping them from applying the same tactics against Americans?

The boundary between permissible and impermissible monitoring of free speech gets so thin when you look at the issue closely, it's all but vanished. Factoring out all the spin and hype, what's left is just the finest possible distinction: We won't monitor Americans, but we'll happily monitor our friends who share our values and our way of life.

All in all, it's just a-nother brick in the wall...