If anyone questions whether the post-9-11 terrorist fear has been used as an excuse to spy on domestics, I refer them to the New York Times today, which features another entry in the long-running Talon saga. Talon is a secret program that the Defense Department has used to collect information on Americans who protest the war, usually on college campuses. Information on the program has recently come to light via use of the Freedom of Information Act.
To be fair, the DoD officials quoted in the article are rejecting the need to keep anti-war information and vowing to purge it, but I wonder. I often write about the defining principle of the Digital Age, which is that "data never disappears." Who wants to bet that this innuendo and slurring of students exercising their First Amendment rights won't show up again, someday in the future, when they least expect it. After all, as George Bush said, "There ought to be limits to Freedom."
Posted on November 21, 2006
