Welcome to the USSA

We are now the United Surveilled States of America. And screw us if we don’t like it.

The government is slowly but surely starting to look like Soviet Russia.

Early on in the Snowden leaks, it was revealed that Snowden himself was using email services from an operation called Lavabit, which offered extremely secure email. However, today Lavabit’s owner, Ladar Levison, shut down the service, claiming it was necessary to do so to avoid becoming “complicit in crimes against the American people.” Not much more information is given, other than announced plans to fight against the government in court. Reading between the lines, it seems rather obvious that Lavabit has been ordered to either disclose private information or grant access to its secure email accounts, and the company is taking a stand and shutting down the service while continuing the legal fight. It’s also clear that the court has a gag order on Levison, limiting what can be said.

Here’s what the owner of Lavabit wrote:

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

The government officials who are spying on Americans insult the people who object to this overweening surveillance of American citizens without cause.

And President Obama thinks he is the president of a nation of morons. He nominates the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, to set up the committee that’s going to be the “independent” and “outside” committee to investigate the surveillance of Americans by the NSA. This, mind you, is the same James Clapper who deliberately lied to Congress when he said the NSA wasn’t collecting data on U.S. citizens.

The Patriot Act was bad enough. That it was passed for another four years without debate–because debate was deliberately shut down by the Administration and its allies in Congress–shows us that Congress really doesn’t care about the Constitution they swore an oath to protect.

As for that Patriot Act–the one that gave us the TSA, which agency, we’re told, protects us against deadly terrorist threats? Well, they saved New Yorkers from the dreaded scourge of–nail polish remover. Between that, and confiscating nail clippers, the terrorists are totally on the run. Except when they force the closure of nearly two dozen U.S. embassies in Muslim nations.

But hey–keep on checking American citizens’ emails. Because that’s keeping us safe from terrorism. It’s not like they’re laughing at us now for closing our embassies or anything.

What the hell happened to my country? This started with Bush and has gone on steroids with Obama. When will we get a loud enough backlash to restore our Fourth Amendment rights?