I know this story was on Slashdot (Bruce Schneier Blasts Politicians, Media), so some of you have seen it already, but I decided to reproduce it in its entirety because it reflects perfectly my own feelings on the subject.
What ever happened to “We have nothing to fear but fear itself?” I think that the people who support giving the government ever-increasing power to invade our privacy and control our lives in the name of the war on terror are the worst kind of cowards. Terrorists can kill us, but they can’t make us give up our liberty and our way of life, only we can surrender that.
My personal favorite example showed up on BoingBoing a couple of months ago (US bans sale of chemicals to hobbyists without $1K license)… After all of the work we put into getting people enthusiastic and educated about science during the Cold War, are we going to prevent people from learning chemistry in the name of the war on terror? As a fireworks hobbyist who likes to use chemicals to make pretty things, I find the increasingly absurd restrictions on chemicals to be personally threatening.