Big brother is watching. This time, it isn't a cautionary tale. The U.S. government, under the guise of protecting national security, is putting in place a monitoring system through out the internet. This system, to be fully in place in four years and controlled by the FBI is to prevent foreign powers from devestating a key sector through a concerted attack on our 'information super highway'.

The system, while arguably a necessary evil, will allow the government to collect information on every user of the internet. The only real protection an indivual would have is the glut of information. But if one individual was selected to be monitored, every key website, every email, every bit of information that individual entered in on the internet could be accessed.

Conspiracy and privacy rights activists all over the country are up in arms. That battle will be waged in the courts. On a different tact, what is protecting 'this' system from those same foreign powers who would want to disrupt the U.S. banking industry? Wouldn't this system be just as vulnerable as everything else?

If not, why not apply the 'software hardening' this system has to other critical areas? One of the key ideas of the internet was to create a computer network that wasn't reliant on core systems to work. Now the centralization, the belief that a system will protect it, work against that very wise concept.