Crimminey(SP?), that's a joke right? The NuCons have been in power, what, a week, and already you're scared? Come on, Al, we though you were made of sterner stuff(Mr. I-wear-shorts-in-ice-storms).
Infowar is an equal oppurtunity employer. If it isn't the West will always lose. At some point you have to trust that the people in charge in the military aren't the same oppurunists in charge of Parliament or Congress. Guys like JoA for instance, or Sanger. I've met a score of them that make me unafraid of it. And, are you aware that the PRC already has a netbrigade set up to do just this, where's the unrestrained horror at that? Infowar HAS to be an equal oppurtunity employer.

Your position has been noted by a braod cross-section of the information gathering community.

I think it is very dangerous to believe that "At some point you have to trust that the people in charge in the military aren't the same oppurunists in charge of Parliament or Congress." We pretty much *can* assume that the people in charge of *anything* are opportunists in the same way; that's not cynicism, it's a defence mechanism. The managerial, CYA mentality inevitably infects any bureaucratic system, of which the Canadian Forces is one.

Just to be clear, I don't think our new rural overlords or their Defence Department staff are major players in the surveillance game or misinformation - despite my bulging file with them. I think the quotation above is clearly focused at larger forces in the world more closly related to ry and his peeps. I take further advice on this point from the weekly TV expose in the style of a rockumentary entitled "E-Ring".

Embrace the information gathering and revel in it, Alan. One of these days, I'm going to have to get a copy of my RCMP file. I have two Royal Visit press passes to my name from a previous professional life, and I'm curious to see what else there might be. The only question is whether or not I'll be disappointed if there's nothing ... LOL

I would like to see the notes on me as a 14 year old getting schedules from Moscow. I even had my questions answered on the air by them! During the Brezhnev era no less.

Wow. I was a bit of a pest for various departments testing the Access to Information regs, too ... The RCMP was among them .. LOL

I also find it's rather amusing to go through US customs with two Cuban immigration stamps in them .. LOL

Agents of the Flea need not worry. You forget who is writing the dossier.

Excellent. That tidbit will never be caught by the autobots for filing, either.

Real problem with Johnny Nemo.
That kinda leaves you only with Anarchism, no? At some point, at some level, it always comes down to you being able to trust whether it be gov't, military, or law enforcement. This 'defense mechanism' is really for those you don't trust. Cynicism or skepticism is one thing, but being fundementalist about it is something else entirely.

As I've said on the 9/11 placement thread this comes from a deep seated, and in many instances an irrational, fear of a gov't conspiracy to get you. I've got an FBI file. It comes from being associated with some of the people I know. So what? It's a white blood cell response. You can't always rely on the 'skin' to get the job done and so you need an internal mechanism to keep things working.
The real problem is abuse, which is fine to fear, but abuse is NOT inevitable(and I'm relying on numbers/set theory here to prove my point---you don't know everything in the given set so you cannot make a definitive statement about it.).