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Analyst's note:  Absolutely must read.  Germany learned the hard way about what happens when the government has too much personal data on its citizens.  Please be sure and follow the trails of the embedded URLs in this article for fascinating details.  What can be learned from just your pocket tracker (cell phone) is amazing.  Please read on and consider the question, "Will the country embrace the arrogance and fear of “hope and change,” or will voters see the failed ideas driving these scandals and take action to reverse America’s descent into democratic despotism?"  Are you still wondering ‘What Would Tyranny Look Like in America? Look Around’.

We have also reported that ‘Obamacare Data Hub’ Will Put NSA Data Mining to Shame in order to help you put this all in perspective.

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The term “metadata” has been tossed around lately, especially after the leak about the NSA’s classified programs last month. It’s a collection of allegedly harmless — and nothing too specific — data from phone and Internet companies. But what if that’s not quite true?

Prior to leak about the NSA, TheBlaze detailed just what this information could show about an individual when the government investigating phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors was a hot button issue. But now a German politician has taken it a step further, using six months of his own metadata to give a visual of what this information really depicts.

Malte Spitz, a member of Germany’s Green party, sued the telecommunication company Deutsche Telekom to give up 35,830 records of his data from 2009 into 2010. Zeit Online then compiled these six months of Spitz’s life on a map showing how many incoming and outgoing calls and text messages were had and how long he used the Internet.

[....] records revealed the movements of a single individual; now imagine if you had access to millions of similar data sets. You could easily draw maps, tracing communication and movement. You could see which individuals, families or groups were communicating with one another. You could identify any social group and determine its major actors,” he continued later in his op-ed.

[....] “When courts and judges negotiate secretly, when direct data transfers occur without limits, when huge data storage rather than targeted pursuit of individuals becomes the norm, all sense of proportionality and accountability is lost,” he said.

As of right now, Spitz said the “trust and credibility” Obama once had in Germany has now been undermined.

Spitz ends his op-ed suggesting Obama should have included in his speech not James Madison’s quote that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,” but Benjamin Franklin saying “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

 

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Here are highlights from Path to Tyranny: How Big Government Progressivism Threatens Everything that relate to the above article as well as other current events related to our U.S. national security.

[....] Outside of their potential criminality and/or questionable legality, what do the IRS’s abuse of conservatives, the NSA’s spying on Americans, the DOJ’s abuse of the press, the murder of a U.S. ambassador in Benghazi and myriad other controversies (and, no, we haven’t forgotten about Fast & Furious) have in common?

[....] many scandals are revealing to Americans that following the out-of-control, Big Government progressive road is a threat to liberty.

[....] Conservatives have long warned about the dangers of such government expansion, and the Obama administration’s recent tangle of scandals illustrates those fears, effectively demonstrating how Big Government lends itself to an abhorrent abuse of power.

[....] The implication here is that the government has gotten so big that low-level bureaucrats can freely use their entrusted authority to pursue personal and political agendas without question.

[....] THE GROWING REGULATORY STATE: The greatest threat posed by Big Government today has little to do with partisanship or political ideology — it has to do with human nature.

While Barack Obama encourages people to “reject” any notion that “tyranny is always lurking just around the corner,” the Founding Fathers knew better. They specifically designed a system of diffused power to counteract man’s inherent hunger for power; a system where checks and balances would neutralize special interests and transparency would ensure accountability to voters.

[....] According to Obama’s progressive ideology, government of, by and for the people cannot become tyrannical because the government is the people. Reject warnings of tyranny, he says, because a self-governing people would surely never tyrannize themselves.

[....] The Bill of Rights was drafted to constrain the government with a cautious assumption of guilt. As a result, the government is expressly prohibited from infringing on the rights of its citizens, regardless how benevolent or justified its claims may seem. But modern progressives and their partiality toward group identity over individual rights necessitates that the “outdated” Constitution must yield to the evolving demands of societal progress. This common thread ties together each of the administration’s current scandals and many of its most controversial policies.

[....] The brewing scandals and Obama’s fondness for Big Government aren’t just about an entrenched, entitled political class shielding its unearned power and privilege from accountability, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, recently wrote in an op-ed at FoxNews.com. “They’re frankly also about the Republican Party’s own enablement of that power and privilege, and our failure to effectively advance and apply the conservative principles that would protect the country from their abuse.

[....] “The Founders knew that, over time, either the people would control the government or the government would control the people,” Lee wrote. “That’s why they bequeathed to us a constitutionally limited government. … The way to keep it is not to demonize Barack Obama, but to expose the truth about the dangers of progressivism.”

Will the country embrace the arrogance and fear of “hope and change,” or will voters see the failed ideas driving these scandals and take action to reverse America’s descent into democratic despotism?

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