Two American ISPs (Lavabit and Silent Circle) have announced they are shutting down and laying off all their workers, because they have been hit by NSA subpoenas that also have gag orders attached to them so they are not even allowed to talk about it.
Gag orders have become a government tactic to perform searches and seizures without the person or company being searched being permitted to talk about the search, or even reveal that a search has been done. These gag orders were originally used to prevent someone from tipping off a supposed "terrorist" that the government was using an investigation, but more and more often they are being used to prevent a person or company from being able to mount a defense in court, to examine probable cause for a search, or even to see the search warrant. (The Fourth Amendment prohibits this, and the Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions that such gag orders violate the First Amendment as well, but that doesn't seem to matter.)
On top of that, the NSA spying is beginning to hurt the US economy. According to a report issued by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation called "How Much Will PRISM Cost the US Cloud Computing Industry?", US-based cloud storage companies and ISPs will lose about $20 billion to $35 billion in revenue over the next 2-3 years as US companies stop using them in favor of cloud hosting companies outside the US.
Cloud storage companies in the US are subject to warrantless NSA spying and to gag orders preventing the companies from informing their customers that their information has been released to the NSA. US companies, concerned about the number of NSA government contractors with easy access to the information, are worried about losing trade secrets and other proprietary information, and so are no longer using US-based ISPs and providers.
But naah, it's all to catch terrorists, and it won't really affect anyone but terrorists, right?
Meanwhile, the Washington Post recently ran an interesting article that points out statistically, you are more likely to be killed by a toddler than a terrorist.
Yep, you read that right. Even factoring in 9/11 and the Boston bombings, you are:
- 1,048 times more likely to be killed in a car accident than by a terrorist.
- 404 times more likely to be killed by slipping and falling than by a terrorist.
- 12 times more likely to accidentally suffocate under your covers in your bed than be killed by a terrorist.
- 8 times more likely to be accidentally killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.
- 3 times more likely to be accidentally killed by a toddler than by a terrorist.
Can someone explain to me why we are so scared of terrorists that we are willing to turn the rule of law and the US constitution into toilet paper, spy on our own citizens, cost American businesses billions of dollars in revenue, and ignore the US Supreme Court just to "fight terrorism"?
