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FTC Abandons Call for Stronger Privacy Laws
Anonymous Coward writes: "Found this article on CNN explaining that the FTC has decided to not seek stronger consumer privacy laws in the wake of the events of last month. The article also details how several companies broke their own privacy policies by voluntarily giving customer data to federal authorities." The NY Times has an article about this as well, with a couple of good comments from interested parties.
"If the speech was delivered on September 10, it would have been viewed as a negative event in the privacy community," Ponemon said. "Now that it's delivered after the 11th, it's a crisis. It looks like we've lost federal government support."
Never a more true statement than that one. It really is a shame that the end result of the terrorist attacks will be not only loss of life and property but also the loss of some important freedom. Dubya said it best himself when he said the terrorist attack was "an attack on freedom itself," and it seems as if the September 11 tragedy is only going to be used as a weapon in continued attacks.
~ now you know
Maybe what you say may happen, if you did something wrong. Otherwise, it's "Move along, nothing to see here".
Perhaps you've heard of McCarthyism? If not check it out. Simply because one was suspected of associating with someone who exercised their free speech rights to support communism led to real consequences in one's life. Like loss of their job and inability to find work. Civil rights trampled to fight the red menance.
Perhaps you are aware of the practise during world war two of rounding up American citizens of Japanese decent and putting them in interment camps. If not you should brush up on your history. Civil rights trampled because of a knee jerk reaction.
Perhaps you've heard of J. Edgar Hoover, former director of the FBI? If not you may want to look him up. Kept files on politicians, celebraties, civil rights leaders, and more. Apparently wasn't afraid to use this info to get what he wanted. Civil rights trampled for personal power.
Perhaps you've heard of Richard M. Nixon? If not, do a little research on something called 'Watergate'. Seens Tricky Dicky had no qualms about using any info he good get to further his political ambitions. Civil rights trampled for political power.
Have you noticed a theme here? People who did nothing wrong suffering real consequences of those in power.
Government is made up of humans. Humans tend to focus on their own self interest. The writers of the US constitution recognized this and did tried to build safeguards against governmental abuse of power. Because they knew power would be abused. So they built in the checks and balances of three branches of government. And they penned the bill of rights to limit what government could do to individuals.
Now we again have calls for restrictions on civil liberties. I'm sure that the people asking for them believe that they are doing the right thing. They have a job to do and they want to do it well. They, like you, feel that those who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear.
As the examples above show, they are wrong.
I believe it was Ben Franklin who once said, "Those who trade liberty for security wind up with neither."
I'm not willing to trade.
And yes, I know people directly impacted by the events of 9/11/02001.
Steve M