Is our privacy being hijacked?

For those who are unaware, President Obama spoke from the heartland Tuesday.

"Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1%," he said. "That's the height of unfairness."

My head turned as I heard these words. In his address to the nation, Obama set a foundation upon which his re-election campaign is expected to be built.

But this article is not about Mr. Obama.

In his speech, the president used moralistic language imbibed from the growing Occupy Movement across the nation, employing such  phrases as "income inequality," "fairness" and even "the 1%."

I would like to state that this article is not in support of the Occupy Movement, or any other movement, other than the progressive movement of we the people. This article is about our rights as Americans to free speech, due process and privacy.

Obama's platform sets its stage amidst unprecedented mistrust of the American government by its people. Only in the last few weeks have news stories covered the impending legislation Congress is attempting to pass that will directly result in the loss of some of our most basic rights.

In addition, Congress has proposed another bill intrusive on Americans' liberties. The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the "blacklist bill" because "it would ‘allow the U.S. government and private corporations to create a blacklist of censored websites, and cut many more off from their ad networks and payment providers,'" says a source at businessinsider.com.

This piece of legislation is particularly dangerous to the right to free speech. Internet censorship is something you read about existing in China and North Korea, not here. This is some seriously scary business, folks.

With all this frightening legislation, new evidence has surfaced that reveals mobile carriers have been keeping tabs on their customers. Carrier IQ is the company who has patented the software, and it is allegedly installed in Androids, BlackBerrys and perhaps even iPhones via the phones' manufacturers.

"Carrier IQ's software is installed in your phone at the deepest level. You don't know it's there," says gizmodo.com "You are never warned this is happening. You can't opt-in and you certainly can't opt-out."

There's not much you can do to avoid this interception of your privacy.