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First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

We are all well aware of the tragic events that took place on September 11th. The parallel between the downing of the Twin Towers and the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 is obvious to any student of history, the US was attacked completely by surprise in both instances, causing a tragic loss of innocent lives. Furthermore, in both instances we declared war not only against the aggressor in each incident, but on the American people themselves. For those of you sitting here scratching your head, let me explain.

Fearing that Japanese-American?s were subversives or saboteurs, in 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 and later Executive Order 9102 which empowered Lieut. General John L. DeWitt to round up 70,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese descent and 42,000 Japanese resident aliens in the eight states in his Western Defense Command. These innocent people were for all intents and purposes kept as prisoners of war until their release in 1945-46. 60 years ago, over 110,000 people were removed from their homes and kept in ?relocation camps? for over three years because of no other reason than their ethnicity. There was never any evidence against those interned, they were simply rounded up like so much cattle because of the prevailing attitude of the time that ?A Jap is a Jap.?

One would hope that we would learn from our mistakes. It was wrong to violate the rights of US Citizens then for the sake of War and it is wrong to do so now. Unfortunately, if the Homeland Security Act passes as it is now written, EVERY person living within this country will lose their rights to privacy. There are those who feel the only way to protect the citizens of this country from terrorism is to spy on the very citizens they are purporting to protect.

September 11, 2001 was a terrible tragedy and will always be remembered as such. Unfortunately, it is also marking a turning point in this country, a time when the freedoms of the besieged were denied under the guise of their own protection. You ask me, who do I fear more, those that live in caves thousands of miles away and plan nefarious plots against those of us here in America or our elected officials and the police state they have created? I fear my own government, because every day I lose a little more freedom and fear that it will be too late to ever regain them once the rest of America realizes what?s happening.

If this act passes, your life as you now know it is forfeit. Every action in your life will be recorded in a government database. As I write this, most of America sits idly by like so many lemmings, completely oblivious to the fact that the very freedoms our forefathers shed blood for are being slowly stripped away. Soon, very soon, Big Brother will be watching.

The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. -Benjamin Franklin

The following article appeared recently in the New York Times. Please take the time to read it, as goes into great detail into the effects the Homeland Security Act will have on YOUR personal freedoms.

You Are a Suspect
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

ASHINGTON ? If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend ? all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you ? passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance ? and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.

Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.

He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.

When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in defense of each person's medical, financial and communications privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not with the president.

This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act.

Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar overreach, Attorney General Ashhahahahaha tried his Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.

The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office reads "Scientia Est Potentia" ? "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.