Stupid Fear Mongering

This week, at a location that I go to, a person that goes to the same location announced to me and another person that Google made a deal with the government, the federal government, that allows the government to spy on our email. I was dubious, but didn't bother to ask clarifying questions about the source of the information. Despite lying to me several times, and despite the fact that we both know about the lies, this person gets real defensive when I display any skepticism of any claims.

I figured that a deal of that kind would show up on the news websites that I read, but I didn't see anything about it. So, today, I searched for 'federal government can read gmail' and got to an article about some people who are suing Google because they think someone there is reading their email. You can read the details of that case yourself, but the interesting part of this article came at the end, with a note about a letter from 11 Republican members of Congress to the President about a proposed executive order.

Proposed, not executed, not signed, but proposed, which means that it is not in effect yet, nor has Google done anything to comply. But, having once been a Government Documents Reference Librarian, or, if I want to sound like I speak Klingon, since I once worked the Ref Desk at Gov Docs, I did a little searching to find all Executive Orders. I started at Thomas.gov, which is linked on the right, used a few of the links to find the Executive Branch site, then did a search on there to find out that the Executive Orders are on the White House's site.

Can you guess which one isn't there? Yeah, that's right.

Furthermore, because it is proposed, we, the people, can use our knowledge of the proposal to urge our president to not sign it. Funny thing, us having a democracy and all. All we have to do is, you know, participate in it.