Stalkerazzi Arrested

FINALLY, some semblance of justice prevails in the sordid case(s) of Schmidt and Gittleman, who conspired to extort money from Tom Cruise. Schmidt is a known extortionist who was behind the Colin Farrel love tapes, as well as selling items and images of one Miss Paris Hilton. Gittleman was a data recovery expert from LA who contacted Schmidt after he came into possession of photos from Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes.

According to reports, the wedding's official photographer came to Gittleman for help in recovering wedding pictures from a computer. Once he had done so, Gittleman contacted Schmidt and the two repeatedly requested in excess of $1 million from the actor or else they would sell the photos on the black market.

Both men were arrested in July and could face between two and five years in prison.

Regardless of what some may tell you, not all press is good press and not all celebrities manipulate the paparazzi and media the way one Miss Paris Hilton does. While some of them definitely schmooze the yellow papers and journalists, others prefer to stay to themselves and even though "it's not in the Constitution," one's right to privacy is a basic human right!

Have you noticed how many snake-arounds they come up with to avoid this? "It's not in the Constitution," "You give up your right to privacy in public," "Celebrities belong to the public," on and on. What they are really doing is desensitizing us to a permanent, Big Brother-style invasion of privacy on all levels. It sounds conspiratorial, but don't all of these things until 10 years down the road, when everyone is saying, "if only we'd known then what we do now"?

How far does this all go, exactly? Now maybe you should have thought about wearing panties when you decided to wear that skirt, but does that really give someone the right to take pictures of your undercarriage? Britney and Paris may engage in such behavior in order to get their... faces?.. splashed (gag) all over the news, but most people don't have such things in mind when they go out.

This whole thing is being played-out in this fashion in order to get us used to the idea of constant surveillance from all angles. Is it working?

Google Earth, anyone?