{"id":6158,"date":"2009-07-26T18:19:46","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T17:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/contributions\/big-brother-in-the-electronic-age\/6158\/"},"modified":"2009-07-26T18:19:46","modified_gmt":"2009-07-26T17:19:46","slug":"big-brother-in-the-electronic-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/contributions\/big-brother-in-the-electronic-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Brother in the electronic age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WE&#8217;RE a big country so I guess it&#8217;s understandable that not only is Big Brother watching &#8212; but now it&#8217;s Big Sister, Big Uncle, Big Aunt, Big Whoever. It&#8217;s becom ing a Big Mother of an operation.<\/p>\n<p>OK, we know about pat-downs at the airport that, for some of us, are the only time we have any physical body contact at all so let&#8217;s not knock that. But isn&#8217;t this whole invasion-of-privacy thing overdone? No place a private citizen can be private anymore. If a nice lady ends up in bed with a semi-nice guy in the so-called privacy of her own nice bedroom, she still can&#8217;t be sure she&#8217;s not being filmed. Spooks tell you super-mini-cameras can be tucked not only behind a painting or in a light fixture but in your ear, up your nose, between your toes or, with the greatest respect, God knows.<\/p>\n<p>E-mail. The new generation doesn&#8217;t even know how to write longhand. Stationery has gone the way of papyrus. Stamps may be going up but letters are going down. Everyone e-mails. A guy&#8217;s breaking up with his longtime live-in? He does it by e-mail. You&#8217;re receiving a legal document? Comes by e-mail. A dumb married South Carolina governor getting it on with an overheated unmarried lady in downtown Argentina upchucks about the wonders of scratching her itch &#8212; on e-mail! Lawyers warn that you must be careful of e-mail. That there&#8217;s no way to ever get rid of it. That it&#8217;ll remain there longer than a hair transplant.<\/p>\n<p>ATMs? These machines have big mouths. They know what you took and where you were when you took it. Can&#8217;t tell the missus you were in Cleveland on business when your ATM will state that on such-and-such particular Thursday you were in hot Buenos Aires pulling cash for a hot time on a hot bod.<\/p>\n<p>NEW YORK POST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WE&#8217;RE a big country so I guess it&#8217;s understandable that not only is Big Brother watching &#8212; but now it&#8217;s Big Sister, Big Uncle, Big Aunt, Big Whoever. It&#8217;s becom ing a Big Mother of an operation. OK, we know about pat-downs at the airport that, for some of us, are the only time we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-contributions","7":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}