We know everything about you.

For about 15 years, until 2000, life and work was based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
A beautiful city.

During those years in that city and society two major developments took place.

One was that the society drastically changed.
It used to be a community where people lived based on shared moral and ethical codes.
The essence of those codes was the togetherness.
The personal interest could only go as far as where it would not negatively affect the interest of a fellow citizen.
People were considered.

This changed rather rapidly.
Because of materialism, dechristianization and economic prosperity, people became not only egoists but hedonists as well.
Highest priority became the own personal well being even if that would damage the well being of another person.
Consideration became a virtue only applicable for the self.
Within a short time a fine matrix of a harmonious society disappeared and was replaced by a brute system of everyone for himself.

The second major development in Amsterdam was that there was a high influx of people from abroad.
From Morocco, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan.
Eventually, the original population of Amsterdam became a minority in their own town.
People from other countries having different ways of living came to dominate life.
Who were not having any traditional binding or identification with the city and used it like a rented car.

These two major developments in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, were the fundamental reasons to decide to leave that town and country.

One of the aspects of life in Amsterdam in those years was a strong rise of violence and crime.
People who are not integrated in a society and community are more likely not to respect laws and moral codes.
People who are obsessed by materialism neither.

Living in one of the best areas of town, in a beautiful and big house, all the people in that neighbourhood were getting more and more afraid and paranoia.
They had a lot to loose and started to protect themselves.
Houses were equipped with alarm systems.
Front doors getting several locks and steel plates and strips.
Security and monitor cameras installed.

However, there was one man who did not want to give in to this madness.
He had a ground floor apartment along one of the beautiful canals in central Amsterdam.
An area of high crime.
The man refused to follow what everybody there was doing: barricading their houses.
He did the opposite.
Everything in his house of value, he sold or gave away.
The TV, the DVD player, his CD collection.
And as of then, he never locked the front door of his house anymore.
Whether he was there or not.
Anybody could come in but there was nothing to steal.
The magical but maybe logical thing happened that he was able to live peacefully.
Without any fear or paranoia.
Because it was known that in his place there was nothing of value.
Occasionally someone would open the door and walk in and the man would make a cup of tea for that person and have a chat.

Paradoxical behaviour sometimes makes sense.

Maybe also in a current situation facing not the population of a town like Amsterdam in the Netherlands, but the 303,357,581 persons living in the United States.

Last week was a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Maybe some fervent and loyal blog readers have missed the report on that event.
In that case it is good to read this blog because something very important has been revealed during that hearing that will affect every one of the 303,357,581 Americans deeply.

Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, made a most important statement during the hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.


This top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States change their definition of privacy.
“Privacy no longer can mean anonymity”, says Donald Kerr.
“Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information”.

Originally a law from 1978 required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans' privacy.
That is going to change now.

The new legislation will shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a court order between 2001 and 2007.
In other words, the US-government listens to phone conversations and read the e-mails of their citizens from the past and in the future.
The privacy of the 303,357,581 Americans does not exist anymore.

How realistic is this monitoring of the US citizens?
Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.
Klein said that the US-government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco.
This statement he made under oath for the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington last week.

There is an expression:
“If you always tell the truth, you never need to lie”.
This loss of privacy is no big deal when most people decide to act like the man in Amsterdam.
If everybody speaks openly and freely, lives without secrets, there is nothing to hide and to be afraid of.
The question is if a government is needed to make people have that attitude.
And the biggest question is in how far a government can be trusted collecting and keeping the information from the private lives of its citizens.







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