Too Much Secrecy

Each Tuesday President Obama selects a name from his "Kill List" and passes it to the CIA for them to *process*.  Some time later we hear about the drone strike that killed 8 or 18 or 80 civilians in Pakistan or elsewhere.

Obama's "Kill List" is built from analysis of intelligence - particularly communications intelligence that is undertaken by the CIA and others.

And the day to day communications of American citizens are now being *watched over* by big brother.  Apparently the entire email, messaging, browsing and voice record is captured for later perusal by the CIA - who are on the lookout for terrorists to add to the "Kill List".

It might surprise many Australian's to know that their email and other personal communications are subject to the same watchful eye as their US cousins.  Yahoo, Google, Apple, Microsoft and a raft of other US Corporations are feeding their government with your actual data.

Probably also Telstra, Optus and Vodafone - but they aren't US Corporations so you would have to ask them.

And I am pretty sure that your Pay-Pal, EBay, Visa and MasterCard transaction data is also finding its way into big brother data warehouses in the US.

Did they notify you of any of that when you signed up for the service?

Plus we already know that Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are being pursued via military courts and a secret Grand Jury in the US with the help of compliant governments in Britain and Australia.

And that Julia Gillard and Bob Carr are in on the US activity to extradite Assange - and they are pedalling furiously to avoid being pinged - but as usual they aren't clever enough to avoid total scrutiny.  Ms Gillard had to show the US that she was compliant by calling Assange's action *illegal* - when it wasn't.

And we have the special relationship between Prime Minister Gillard and President Obama - which has resulted in the establishment of a US military base in Darwin and *other* US facilities scattered across the nation.

So forget the sky falling in as a result of the carbon tax - and worry about the next drone strike because it might be in your backyard.

And given that Australians seem determined to elect a Coalition government when next we vote - someone might like to ask Mr Abbott what his view on all this is.