It is time for us to say to our government, “No. This we will not allow.”

For those of you who don’t like clicking links, I’ll summarize: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wants to require all ISPs to keep records of ALL of your online activity, for purposes of catching pedophiles and, presumably, tur’rists.

Here’s the problem. Senator Stevens has made it very clear that our government does not understand technology. Now, I’m no hAxx0r but I do seem to recall a technology called “IP spoofing” that makes internet traffic look like it’s coming from someplace other than its actual source. So, what happens when someone trolling online for kiddie porn uses a spoofed IP address that happens to point to the computer grannie uses to e-mail her bridge partners? Or some al-Qaeda sympathizer spoofs the IP address of some random Arabic college student?

This isn’t even touching on the potential for willful misuse of this kind of information. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but considering how much of our day-to-day life is conducted online these days — business, commerce, communication — there’s an enormous potential for abuse. Not to mention simple, ham-fisted, governmental incompetence.

I hate sounding like a foil-hatter, honestly I do, but I’m starting to worry that these tiny nudges on the boundaries of our civil rights are not the random flailings of an incompetent administration, but rather calculated straining at the bumper of the juggernaut of fascism.

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