FBI

I guess the FBI thinks they are above the law, and they're not afraid of telling people about it either. Apparently, pesky things like subpoenas shouldn't have to bother anyone, just do what we say instead. We'll (not) deal with the legal stuff.
Seriously, how much longer will this continue? There's a reason why people in the US are allowed to own guns, and that's to overthrow an oppressive government. You're living under one of the most oppressive regimes in the world people, it's time you unlocked your gun cabinets and did something about it! One day the people of this world are going to wake up, and it'll be 1984 times a million. George Orwell might have been off on the date when he wrote the book, but not by much. I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of thought crime was made illegal within the next 20-30 years. Maybe even sooner. This is fucking nuts. This shit makes cold war Russia seem like Disney land.
The only thing separating the US from North Korea is the fact that most us citizens have running water, and there's not an import restriction on iPods.

Things are not as they Seem

I might have been a bit off the mark the other day when I claimed that the laws the British passed raped our collective civil liberties less that the American counterparts.
I believe I wrote something like:

The US pass laws that are disgusting violations of our civil liberties, the UK does the same, but on a smaller scale.

Well, I stand corrected. It turns out that unless you are willing to surrender pretty much every piece of information available (or not available) about yourself to the government, you will not be allowed to leave the country, except as a boat refuge. Great Britain will, from March 26th, stop issuing passports to anyone who refuses to bend over and take surveillance so far up their ass that the metal casing of the cameras tickle their mouths.

It turns out that my home country isn't much better. A recent bill proposes to let the communications arm of the military (FRA - Försvarets Radioanstalt) wiretap anyone they damn well please with absolutely no judicial oversight. It's not clear who proposed this bill, other than "the government", but there seems, luckily, to be many vocal critics of this bill such as the head of the Bar Association, the head of Säpo (Swedish Secret Police), and others. I doubt it will pass, but the very idea to propose something like this is atrocious as best.
As if this wasn't enough, it was discovered when this bill was proposed that FRA has been doing these sorts of things without oversight for decades anyway. Apparently up until the point when the telephone company became privately owned.

I will admit that I don't know what goes down behind closed doors here in the Netherlands, but I can't possibly imagine that it could be as bad as any of the atrocities I have just described.