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Do You Know Where Your Privacy Is?
blankmange writes "CNET is reporting coverage of the Computers Freedom and Privacy Conference, being held in San Francisco this week. 'The conference, normally a forum for digerati to pose a series of frightening "what if" scenarios, has morphed into an event where participants' worst surveillance nightmares may be poised to come true following the terrorist attacks.' Sounds like we may want to listen for any definitive solutions that come from this conference."
And this was before 9/11! What privacy do you have to save? These people are just engaging in mental masturbation, there is no privacy, the point is moot.
I just fail to see how any monitoring of people's personal transmissions, web site viewing habits, etc. can help law enforcement against terrorists. Since 9/11 it isn't only the governmental agencies who are being more cautious about goings on around them, but also the terrorists. I would assume that terror rings, knowing the FBI, CIA, and other national security agencies are monitoring for possible terrorist activities on the internet will be more careful in the future to use public internet terminals, web email accounts, and encryption. This is just another ill fated attempt at law enforcement trying to get more power while they can, using public fears to convince the general population that it is needed.
"Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Will you be willing to give up your car if it means preventing automobile accidents? Or the ability to recieve mail if it means it will prevent the possible spread of Anthrax through the postal system? Everyone agrees that the terror attacks were a truly terrible thing to have happen, but this isn't treating the root cause of terrorism, it is only giving the government another way to intrude into the general population's right to privacy, and people who really want to find a way around it will.
Add to that:
Identity cards may prove identity. What we need to know about is behaviour. Identity tells you nothing about behaviour.
If you take the idiotically simplistic notion that people are either "good" or "evil-doers", then you make behaviour some timeless abstract "inate" feature of identity. Based on that premise then, identity is useful because it allows you to separate evil-doers from do-gooders.
In the real world however, behaviour (good or evil) depends on environment, past history and future circumstances and opportunity. It also changes. A do-gooder today can become an evil-doer tomorrow (say, if an innocent relative of theirs is killed by a "smart bomb"). It is even possible (gasp) for an evil-doer to become a do-gooder (blatantly optimistic tree-hugging belief in "rehabilitation"?).
Case in point: Richard "Explosive Sneakers" Reid, had a past history (the only element an identity can point to) that was totally clean. His identity was never doubted, his past history contained no violence or terrorism. They knew who he was, they just didn't know what he was about to do. Unless you assume that behaviour such as belonging to a mosque or being a muslim, makes you a potential "evil-doer" (we generally refer to that kind of association as "prejudice", or sometimes "racism"), then identity is useless.
In the larger context therefore, establishing identity, at a time when mind-reading and behaviour-guessing is impossible, is simply a different way of enabling "prejudice". Prejudice, meaning literally, pre-judging someone on past behaviour.
Obviously, in some very limited cases, identity provides knowledge about highly relevant past criminal activity. For those cases, identity would be useful, although it can be "fooled" as described by the ACLU. Unfortunatelly though, this whole argument is trying to push identity using the narrow case, in order to pursue or enable the broader prejudicial, racist, discriminatory policy which is characteristic of the anti-Arab backlash after the attacks. Hating "them" is just as narrow minded as "them" hating "us".
Is the right of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to be here now considered an "essential liberty"?
Funny, there was a time when there was no illegal immigration - everybody was welcome. Personally, I find that the right to travel wherever my feet take me is indeed an essential liberty, and I'm sure the Framers thought likewise. But it would seem that those who prefer a false sense of security to God-given freedoms followed the patriots to America and set up shop.
People have used that phrase to justify alot, and frankly, I'm not buying it this time either.
Justify what? The granting of freedoms? Actually, the only time that phrase gets mentioned is when people attempt to take away liberties we already have. What are you talking about, exactly?
Toss out everyone who is here illegally, and we wouldn't have need of this crackpot National ID card.
Riiight...it's those damn furriners who are causing all the trouble. Except, of course, for Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, the KKK, etc. PC has nothing to do with it, pal - the problem is we live in a free society, and that scares people who can't deal with the responsibilities of freedom. Illegal immigrants aren't the problem - criminals exploiting the vulnerabilities inherent in a free society are the problem. And you solve the problem by going after the criminals, not by locking down the free society, be it through immigration or national ID cards. Your 'solution' is not only too simple-minded, but further imposes restrictions of freedom in an increasingly oppressive society.
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.