Quote:
Originally Posted by acidzebra
Coming back to free speech, I wonder how 9/11 has affected that in the USA. Would you contend that there has been zero effect?
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If anything, I think it might have made it freer.
9/11 was a national trauma, and a wake up call for many people. But such disasters always produce divided opinions on how to deal with them, and how to insure they don't recur.
There is an awful lot of rhetoric being tossed around over here on the topic. I know many people with strong opinions. I know of very few reluctant to express them.
I
have run into a few folks who fear that saying what they honestly think will bring The Powers That Be down upon them, and are afraid of their mail being snooped on and their conversations in public forums monitored. For the most part, my response is "You
wish you were important enough that anyone in power could be
bothered to do that!"
I have a web based GMail account, and prefer the web interface and leaving the mail on Google's servers. Sure, google or someone could theoretically read my mail. I don't
care. "What" Thou woulds't go through two gigabytes of archived email? Go to, my bucko!" Unless you're me, with my particular set of interests, you're be mystified or terminally bored. I've never considered email a secure medium, and I don't say things in email I'd be all that unhappy about were they to become public. The same goes for what I say in any other public forum.
There are only so many people in <pick whichever three letter acronym Federal agency you prefer> that do that, and all have far more important uses for their time than paying attention to me. I don't matter. I'm not important. They don't care what I think. That suits me just fine.
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Dennis