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Since being at the First Amendment rally yesterday, I have civil liberties on my mind. At the same time, I feel like I'm already dead to a government that I think would probably encourage my elimination as well as the elimination of most of the people I met yesterday. There should have been thousands in attendance; sadly there were too few. It was good to be out with people who care about what is happening, baring witness to it. Among the latest proposals to attempt to destroy civil liberties in New York is a law that may go into effect as soon as August. Under the proposed law, filmmakers, videographers and photographers would be required to get a permit to shoot on city streets if there is more than one person filming, or if this person or crew is shooting for longer than 30 minutes in the same location. No one person would be allowed to shoot for a longer period (or with a tripod) unless he or she had a permit and $1,000,000 in insurance. Most people think that the proposal is purposefully written in a way that is too vague, therefore affording police opportunities to enforce it at will to whomever they want to keep walking. I think that the law is more an effort to keep people from coming together in an assembly and discussing and documenting their activities. Like most of what goes on these days, the proposal is a contridiction: at the same time they want to silence the citizenry, government and private businesses are covering the city with thousands of video cameras for our protection.