Let the feds into every cell phone? No way! Let Mobile Freedom Ring, Baby - by Jack Larrison.

© Copyright 2016-2018, Jack Larrison and The DICTION AERIE.™  All Rights Reserved.

Bloody hell, I hate them... I detest smart phones with a passion that is visceral and beyond.  So much, in fact, that I've enjoyed a recurring dream of late that brings me to wakening, many mornings, with a glorious grin and a feeling of rested joy. 

I'm at a party in some cavernous club, a noisy holiday bash, and suddenly a gorgeous young blonde -- she's tall, slim with perfect breasts, elegant cheek bones and alabaster skin, emerald green eyes and a bountiful she-horse pony tail that goes "fwap-fwap" across her shoulder blades as she runs -- bounds into view like an irresistible wood sprite, clad in a clinging forest-green unitard that leaves little to the imagination.  She motions for me to follow her and scampers away, rounding corner after corner -- wham, swoop -- turning to make electrifying eye contact several times with a look that gives me butterflies.   Then in a whoosh, I stumble after her and trip over some chair leg, landing on a huge foam pad in a dim room lit with pink and orange lamps.  This wanton wood nymph slams the door shut and we're alone, prone on this foam and laughing like school kids who spiked the prom punch.  Then we spring to our feet, smiling happily.  She hands me a long-handled hoe, and grabs one for herself, and we begin swinging wildly at thousands of cell phones -- a staggering fortune in iPhones and Androids in jeweled cases -- stacked on tables and shelves anywhere we turn.  We are utterly drunk with delight as we batter and smash millions upon millions of dollars in high-tech mobile phones that each emit a meaty satisfying sigh -- like a "tchoof!" -- when mortally wounded.  (Okay, dream done.  Back to irksome reality.)

Yes I do hate smart phones, especially when I need to pry them off the noses of humans, after exchanging only two sentences, when a conversation with full eye contact is necessary.  So, to keep my business partners and best friends from melting down, I only use a smart phone when I'm on the road for work.  Or heading to meet them.  Therefore my hyperbolic outrage on this topic is barely warranted, and based only on a desire to alert my fellow Americans to a gathering infection that could cripple our Bill of Rights.    Recent news accounts from Washington DC -- where the Obama Drama Queens are recommending we all just chuck the Fourth Amendment into a rubbish bin -- are raising serious hackles once again.

Our Lame-Ducky President Barack Hussein Obama is waddling into the thicket of civil liberties once more, and leaving his usual wake of ducky detritus, as he gnaws determinedly with ducky bill at the American Bill of Rights.  But since "he's Da Man" and he's leaving office soon, his bevy of cuticle-chewing spin doctors is chilling now in Who-Gives-a-Rip Mode, utterly unworried whether he wanders wantonly from the platform his party promised us both times he ran for the highest elective office in the Free World. 

"We need to find a way forward to make sure that we can stop terrorists while protecting the privacy, and liberty, of innocent Americans,"  Mr. Obama pontificated as a U.S. Senator in 2006, when he voted to nix Michael Hayden’s confirmation for CIA director.  "As a nation we have to find the right balance between privacy and security, between executive authority to face threats and uncontrolled power.  What protects us, and what distinguishes us, are the procedures we put in place to protect that balance, namely judicial warrants and congressional review.... These are concrete safeguards to make sure surveillance hasn’t gone too far."

During both his presidential campaigns Mr. Obama flapped eloquent gums, pledging to "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age and … harness the power of technology to hold government and business accountable for violations of personal privacy."

Now fast forward to March 11, 2016, when Mr. Obama argued passionately for mobile operating systems to allow security agents to gain access to any personal data -- any time they need it -- to prevent a terrorist attack or enforce tax laws.  At the South by Southwest festival in Austin Texas, Mr. Obama refused to comment on the legal case now pending in which the FBI is pushing to force Apple Inc. to allow access to an iPhone linked to San Bernardino terrorist/gunman Rizwan Farook.   But the Prez said his "commitment to Americans' right to privacy and civil liberties" was not absolute, because he believes "a balance was needed to allow some intrusion when needed."

What ho, me hearties?  Could this be yet another freshly steaming heap of spin, custom-crafted for the evening news cycle?   Balance?   You mean bald-faced unlimited access to any mobile device, any time, anywhere in America -- is balance?   Perhaps 7 years as U.S. president have so altered Mr. Obama's sense of equilibrium that he's not unlike the teeter-totter titan back in kindergarten, so massive that once he sits on his end you're marooned aloft, dangling up near the leafline until the fat kid jumps -- and you come crashing to the pavement.

This whole spin charade is like asking Mr. Obama, most powerful office-holder on the planet, a simple question, " Do you still after 7 years give a hoot about American civil liberties, sir?" -- to which he replies "now that's a definite maybe."

Hang it on your beak, Mr. President.  You are daft, and we reject your dangerous idea entirely.  For all time.  Sure, we all want to protect our homeland from terrorists and organized crime, but let's not steer America closer to some New Nazi Ethic of Extreme Intrusion, in dubious exchange for a digital leg up on the bad guys, from ISIS to tax cheats to child-porn moguls.   But your plan, Mr. Obama, lifts a dog leg on our U.S. Constitution.  In short, what Apple is so wisely resisting – this “back door” to all cell phone OS code -- is too damn sweeping for any true democracy to sustain and still be faithful to its founding ideals of freedom, due process and individual privacy.

Let's harness those young tech minds you're so avidly courting, Mr. Obama, to find novel ways to zero in with deadly surgical precision -- just like you do with cruise missiles -- on the malevolent bastards who truly mean our country harm; without all of us surrendering to some sick Big Brother evil eye embedded in every doorjamb in our private homes, our offices, our churches and our nurseries.  These are a few  places our mobiles go every day, eh?!

Barack Hussein Obama's case is bogus, baloney, the yammering of a moral wimp; and only being released now because his 2nd term is hurtling to a close.  It's like, "hey, I'm almost done with my 8 years; I've got a lifetime pension now suckers, so to hell with this nation I took an oath to protect and defend."  This makes me sick to my soul to see.  Such situation ethics are reminiscent of brown shirts and black flags.   Not the red, white and blue.

So Mr. President, 'fess up -- have you been reading Prince Machiavelli and Vladimir Lenin lately or what?  Ladies and gents of the electorate, take note.  See through this sly strategy.  Mr. Obama would not have dared release such un-American Orwellian prattle before his 2nd term, during the 2012 campaign when he was pretending to be a conscientious progressive.   To cloak what his crony Mrs Clinton would likely agree to, to get her dirty work done for her as a parting lame-duck shot, the president is pushing for this Back Door Spy-on-Everybody software while the whole nation is distracted by some liver-lipped Manhattan madman with a frontier varmint pelt for a wig.

Can you imagine the gall?  Mr. Obama chides us everyday citizens for caring so much about our cherished American right to privacy, for worrying about this sacred pillar of American life that distinguishes us from most of the government-infested planet.  This so-called progressive prez is dismissing our concern as some foolish "fetish for your phone."   Fetish?   FETISH??  

It's the U.S. Constitution we are talking about here, Mr. President.  The bloody Bill of RIGHTS, not The Bill of Sorta Helpful Suggestions.   These are foundational rights of the greatest democracy this world has ever known, flawed but noble and well worth protecting with a keen-eyed green-eyed jealously.
 
Google “Bill of Rights,” dear friends.  Read the whole thing from start to finish.  It's quick; go on... This is the bedrock document that anchored our great nation, the moral and constructive backbone of our entire way of life.  Go on, READ IT!  Here it is, word for word, our precious Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution...

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Dear ladies and gents of the Great Electorate, while primaries are still pending across the USA, start READING, pay attention folks!  Democracy is the province of the involved. It's the meat of the day not casual dessert for spoon-fed pantywaists.  Before you vote, before you commit to the most vital electoral / existential choice you may ever make, first check Hillary and Bernie, then check  Trump and Cruz -- learn what they actually believe.  Ask them, or their handlers...

Is it acceptable to give your government, to give the bodies elected to SERVE the people not enslave them, to give them permanent unbridled access to all  personal mobile  messages for all time?  Do you truly want Big Brother listening in on anything you say, whenever they please?  If you answer yes, then hop into Sherman’s Way-Back Machine, guys, and slither back to 1936 Berlin.  Don't even bother to call your Congress reps.

What are you thinking, Mr. Obama?   Since when did the 4th Amendment -- a cornerstone of our Bill of Rights -- become the moral equivalent of a handiwipe to you?  How dare you even suggest this idea?  You are more dangerous to our American way of life than any sand-lashed Shariah-worshiping fundamentalist.  You seek to snare our cherished privacy in a giant steel cage, then douse it with the gas of Group Think, then burn it alive in full view of the brain-dead rabble.

Just wait until November, guys.  The clock of what rock goddess Chrissie Hynde calls "Time the Avenger" is ticking away.  Can you also hear the gathering roar, listen, there it is, just over the horizon?  Oh yes, distinctly there, just put an ear to the good hard ground of your Homeland, folks...

Mark my words:  come November 2016, it ain't “all heaven” about to bust loose across America, from sea to shining sea.

Editor's Note:  Man.  Now in retrospect, seems ol' Jack was a pre-cog.  Eerie stuff...