Re: So what, would you rather be blown up?
A more worrying and likely scenario....baaa
The campaign against evil underwear packers never ends........it just becomes a constant onslaught on people's freedom and their right to privacy.
We steadily give up more and more liberty in exchange for more "safety" from a largely invisible "foe". And like the despised "foe", we relentlessly pursue soft. squishy things like privacy... with boots on human faces, detention camps. dossiers on citizens etc..
And after everyone's communications are wide open, everyone has been profiled, all suspicious elements and rabble rousers tagged for future reference.....
A truly psychotic ass-hat gets elected........ (I know that's hard to imagine... but let's try). Said ass-hat now has access to all that information and .... can do whatever he wants with it in the name of national security, of course.
Might not be much at first ... a trumped-up or real drug charge here ... a smear campaign there.... a pedophilia accusation there..... a freedom of information activist committing suicide here.... you get the picture
But the ass hat has some strange and twisted dreams and now imagines it on a more massive scale.
How's that lack of privacy thingy working for you now?
<YOUR FUTURE>
Meeh.....
There seems to be a problem with your thumb-print and bar code, citizen.
Are you sure you didn't vote the wrong way last time ?
Let me just check ..... clickety click.----- hmmmm
Ah you know citizen... with these massive databases at our disposal... a clerk with rudimentary sorting skills can now fully automate the herding process. Ever since public education was abolished (got to keep that war against Oceania going, you know) good people are getting harder and harder to find.
In fact, they now say that nearly all of the remaining skilled people have gone black or are in custody.
But we'll find them, don't you worry.
Gotta finish Skynet, after all.
Ok, citizen, everything is in order.
Here are you meal vouchers. You have a nice day.
<END OF YOUR FUTURE>
You know, I'd honestly rather take my chances with the underwear packers, fly less often (maybe after a quick body frisk or wand wave) .... and try to keep what little is left of our privacy.
That is why, I want to be sure that VERY strict protections are in place (like warrants in front of real judges keeping actual public records) before anyone violates what is left of our privacy.
I want all personal data stored in government and commercial databases to be secured. anonymous, fire-walled and deleted after a fixed amount of retention time. In fact, the more data protection laws in place, the better.
Otherwise, the temptation to perform lazy, ass-hat fishing expeditions will just become too great.
Have you ever wondered why new laws always seem more bent on prying further into our private lives, rather than protecting them? That's because it's all about power baby, and the less power you have, the easier it is to take away.
So if keeping privacy enshrined as a human right means a few bad guys get to run around a little longer, I say tough titty.
People who need total security should move to North Korea or China.
And they can take their tame congress people with them, they'll love it there.
When underwear packers have become such a threat that we need to throw out the constitution .... we should just declare martial law and be done with it.
Because we can't just watch everybody all the time and hope nothing bad will ever happen again.
It is just not worth it.
There are people in power who believe that if total surveillance had been in place before, there would have been no WTC, no need to invade other countries, no need to lie about it and wreck the economy in the process. And probably be less school shootings and crime too. I don't want to give people who think like that unfettered access to my digital and physical life.
Anonymous for perfectly good reasons and the freedom to rant.... so please don't give it away...