The SOPA/PIPA Internet censorship bills are awful, and the widespread protest blackouts today are justified.

Here are three other things you need to know about and spread to other Americans ASAP:

1. Backscatter x-ray vans, which allow for "drive-by" snooping of the contents of your vehicle (and even your home and your person) are already in use by the United States government.

Via Forbes: "Privacy-conscious travelers may cringe to think of the full-body scanners finding their way into dozens of airport checkpoints around the country. Most likely aren't aware that the same technology, capable of seeing through walls and clothes, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets."

Makes you feel all warm inside, doesn't it?

2. Guantanamo Bay, one of the creepiest things our government has running (even a decade after 9/11!), currently holds prisoners as young as 13 years old. The U.S. currently has 21 children imprisoned at Guantanamo.

More than 200 FBI agents have reported abusive treatment of prisoners there. 8 prisoners have died while in custody. While the Bush administration released 532 of the poor souls detained there, the Obama administration has only released 68 so far.

All of these statistics are courtesy of the ACLU's January 9th, 2012 infographic on Guantanamo, published here. Some of the other numbers there are even more disturbing.

3. President Obama really did sign the NDAA into law on New Year's Eve, while most of us were distracted with celebrations and (too much) champagne.

It really does contain an indefinite detention provision, which according to law professor Jonathan Turley in The Guardian (and nearly everyone else!), allows the government to detain its own citizens without trial, and without charge.

"It was a symbolic moment, to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country … and citizens partied in unwitting bliss into the New Year," he wrote.

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