You can judge a man by his enemies.

I realize there are many people who despise the new President but in the course of their opposition to him they are tacitly validating some truly horrific moves by the different organs of the government. Perhaps you think I am overstating it but if so you should read this article:

None of these allegations has been independently verified. Every one of them came from anonymous sources within the sprawling federal bureaucracies (16 in total) that go by the reassuringly benign euphemism “the intelligence community.” And the flood of leaks to journalists haven't been limited to Russia and the election. Former National Security Agency analyst John Schindler tweeted on Wednesday morning that an anonymous source in the IC told him the time had come to “go nuclear” against the president, who would “die in jail.” Later the same day, a Twitter account maintained by the FBI records division randomly released nearly 400 pages of documents related to an investigation of charges of racial discrimination against Trump properties more than four decades ago.

Let’s put it in this light, if the intelligence arms of our nation can decide to act in this manner then they become the shadow government. They’re not elected and the truth is that action like this can have chilling implications for all of us and our freedoms.

Let us not forget, we know the national security apparatus has shown to be actively going into people’s emails and eavesdropping on phone conversations. That’s actually one of the scariest things to contemplate that our government can be so very intrusive into our digital lives.

In an age where people’s lives are centered around social media the potential for abuse of privacy has taken on new dimensions. I doubt many will be concerned about this but it makes me think about those stories of slowly bringing the water to a boil when cooking a lobster as opposed to tossing it in to an already boiling pot. There is no shock to the system until it is too late.

Civil and human rights groups issued denunciations and some cybersecurity experts urged their clients to stop using the popular Yahoo Mail service after a news agency reported Tuesday that the internet service provider had secretly scanned hundreds of millions of clients’ emails at the behest of U.S. intelligence agencies.

 Or, how about this old chestnut:

While you were drinking eggnog on Christmas Eve, the National Security Agency released hundreds of pages of heavily redacted documents detailing instances of improper surveillance on U.S. citizens in the last 12 years. The batch of documents, stretching from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013, was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. While some of the information was already publicly known, the reports shed more light on instances in which NSA employees either intentionally or unintentionally violated the law and collected the private data of American citizens.

And let’s remember this before we buy one of those things for the house that talks back to you:

As the Guardian reported, Clapper made clear that the internet of things – the many devices like thermostats, cameras and other appliances that are increasingly connected to the internet – are providing ample opportunity for intelligence agencies to spy on targets, and possibly the masses. And it’s a danger that many consumers who buy these products may be wholly unaware of.

 Fun times folks, fun times. Big brother has arrived.