Someone wrote in to /. and had this to say:
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]"This weekend my mother bought a grille lighter, something like this [a href="vny!://www.broilkingbbq.com/grillpro/products.asp?CID=16"]butane lighter[/a]. The self-scanner at Kroger's locked itself up and paged a clerk, who had to enter our drivers license numbers into her kiosk before we could continue. Last week my girlfriend bought four peaches. An alert came up stating that peaches were a restricted item and she had to identify herself before being able to purchase such a decidedly high quantity of the dangerous fruit. [a href="vny!://www.rootkit.com/blog.php?newsid=358"]My video games spy on me[/a], reporting the applications I run, the websites I visit, the accounts of the people I IM. My ISP [a href="vny!://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/02/1238237&tid=158"]is being strong-armed[/a] into a two-year archive of each action I take online under the guise of catching pedophiles, [a href="vny!://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=17180"]the companies I trust to free information are my enemies[/a], [a href="vny!://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/15/1922209&tid=158"]the people looking out for me are being watched[/a]. As if that weren't enough, [a href="vny!://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060608002958907"]my own computer spies on me daily[/a], [a href="vny!://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062300167.html"]my bank has been compromised[/a], [a href="vny!://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5399264"]my phone is tapped[/a]--has been for [a href="vny!://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=abIV0cO64zJE&refer=#"]years[/a]--and [a href="vny!://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/21/1718219&tid=158"]my phone company is A-OK with it[/a]. What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs?"
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The sad state of affairs is that Big Brother probably became a quiet part of our lives a lot earlier. The big question now is: how much worse can it get?
