Reasons to forego that Masters in Library Science

Once again, the real journalists over at Wired have brought attention to the abuses of power our government gets away with on a daily basis. The whole National Security Letter thing, by which the FBI can "request" private information about individuals without getting a court authorization, scares me pretty bad. They've been using them indiscriminately to illegally obtain phone, library and email records, and so far it seems only the Librarians have been standing up to them. Let me say this: if the FBI looks up my library records (which they might have; I've been to Israel which is technically in the Mideast and still can't get on a plane without extra scrutiny) they would find some sketchy-sounding books. Last semester I took out Che Guevara's "Guerrilla Warfare", a book called "Small Wars" by a 19th century British army major, and at least four other books with "guerrilla" right in the title. I'm sure that, looking at my internet records, they'd find that I read military and defense-oriented blogs, and my reading on Wikipedia might turn up searches for Cordite and Gelagnite, both WWI-era explosives. They don't seem to need much evidence to do what they want, so for all I know they've already tapped my phone.

Of course that's paranoid. I know that. But then, considering that I do get "randomly" selected for extra screening every time I fly (and I'm a scrawny little white Jew, by the by) I wonder what else about me they check. I mean, if they're willing to take a couple of Librarians to court, what else might they do? Not only that, there's apparently a 5-year jail term for speaking out when such a thing does happen to you. So we may never know how many people stood up to the lawbreakers. It's a tragedy. (or is that travesty?)