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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."
The people question at the FBI raid of the chicago 2600 meeting were threatened with the death penality under the patriot act...
another law do to mass hysteria and paranoia
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Heh, with a wifi card and a connection to the net, not at 64k feet anymore. I could trade CC numbers while I fly across the US :)
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
From the ACLU
A national ID would not prevent terrorism. An identity card is only as good as the information that establishes identity in the first place. Terrorists and criminals will continue to be able to obtain -- by legal and illegal means -- the documents needed to get a government ID, such as birth certificates and social security numbers. A national ID would create a false sense of security because it would enable individuals with an ID -- who may in fact be terrorists -- to avoid heightened security measures.
A national ID would depend on a massive bureaucracy that would limit our basic freedoms. A national ID system would depend on both the issuance of an ID card and the integration of huge amounts of personal information included in state and federal government databases. One employee mistake, an underlying database error or common fraud could take away an individual's ability to move freely from place to place or even make them unemployable until the government fixed their "file."
A national ID could require all Americans to carry an internal passport at all times, compromising our privacy, limiting our freedom, and exposing us to unfair discrimination based on national origin or religion. A national ID would foster new forms of discrimination and harassment. The ID could be used to stop, question, or challenge anyone perceived as looking or sounding "foreign" or individuals of certain religious affiliations.
By the way you can send a free fax to your congressmen opposing the national ID at the aclu's website at:
http://www.aclu.org/action/id107.html
I say we do everything possible to run their faxes outta toner.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
..that one of the new 'what if' topics to come up will be the US Government mulling over whether to use Microsofts Passport as a national ID system (for the USA at least) as detailed in the earlier thread.
That is quite alarming.. Microsoft are not renowned for having 'the best interest of the consumer at heart' - how long till you start getting bombarded with junk mail and trial CD's for MSN, or the latest version of Windows because of your National ID? Scary..
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
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.
Yes, but does it really help much to prevent terrorist attacks?
Fact is bills like this have always been going around, but now, as a result of the attacks, some of these bills are getting past. The actual propositions were not a result of the attacks.
Political problems, political solutions: we need to take political action to combat this stuff.
Privacy needs to be made a right, and we need to push back against being stripped of our rights at political levels: no amount of encryption in the world can stop you going to jail for using it.
Support GeekPAC - the beginnings of our voice in Washington.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
"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.
While this may sound a fair trade on the surface, the consequences of what you suggest scare the hell out of me.
With each week passing the powers that be seem to be pushing for small, yet significant, reductions in privacy in the name of preventing future terrorist attacks.
While obviously the Sept. 11 attacks were horrific, and I truly feel for the families who were involved, the long term consequences of a continued, gradual loss of our basic rights is something far, far worse.
It seems to me Bush, Blair and co. are jumping on the bandwagon and using Sept 11 as leverage to push through new laws and changes to already exisiting privacy acts.
Fair enough, it may mean a reduction in another (as grand a scale) attack succeeding - but at what cost?
"The homeland security budget is pork for the IT industry," said Andrew Schulman, chief researcher of the Privacy Foundation.
Thank God.
Throw some of that pork my way. I'm tired of the current job market.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
When software can install itself without asking, and you're automatically bound by a EULA that gives it the RIGHT to do what its made to do, be it downloading your CCNs or checking your pr0n archives, we have little privacy. Sure, none of this is going to get back to anyone I know, but the information being out there is a nightmare. Imagine if you went to a pr0n site and started getting snail-spam from that site. Or you go to another site, and it automatically starts printing ads. Where does it end?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
...there's a website that monitors it 24 hours a day with a webcam.
Yeah. It'll prevent terrorist attacks.
While your naïvete is touching, it worries me that you could think it to be true.
Look at a half-century of wiretaps. They were supposed to prevent terrorism too. They were never used against terrorists. In fact, they were only used against serious criminals around 2% of the time.
Wiretaps were used in the phoney "war on drugs", they were used to spy on opposition politicians, they were used to spy on civil rights campaigners.
Yes, these new powers will weasel their way in by convincing an ignorant public that (a) they stand a chance of working, (b) that they were even designed to stop terrorism, (c) that they won't be abused, and (d) that they'll be used to target terrorists.
Right. I've invented a new form of clue-stick, and it consists of a slashdot-connected webcam in the bedroom of everyone who thinks ubiquitous surveillance is a good idea. "It's the price of preventing terrorist attacks" you can tell the wife.
The problem is that we have identified our vulnerabilities (a huge one of which is illegal immigrants) but refuse to confront them out of fear of the PC crowd. Toss out everyone who is here illegally, and we wouldn't have need of this crackpot National ID card.
I know I'll probably be modded down for this, even though fundamentally I wholeheartedly disagree with a National ID card, but it has to be said by someone.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
My privacy is right here, close at hand, safely put away in
~/.mozilla/default/3i7x8mr8.slt/cookies.txt
"Provided by the management for your protection."
That being said, the problem with even the naming of the "Patriot Act" is that I consider myself a patriot to the United States, however I do NOT like the implications of this legislation. However, to speak out against it, the sheeple (those who don't know/care about the issues being raised) are feed the line that if you don't agree with this act, then you must be a terrorist.
Ok ... so if I'm forced to go along with it, at what point do we have to say NO MORE? By the time that we get some prominent voices logically explaining the situation to the masses, it will be too late. In Micro$oft we're forced to trust. We opted you in for your own good.
One problem is that if I attempt to start encrypting my email (to preserve my freedoms), two things would happen. One, I would have a really tough time convincing my Non-Technical friends to do the same, so we could carry on conversations. And two, I would be branded a terrorist, since I'm not following the herd.
This isn't the only thing to do, however it's a fairly easy concept to get across.
IF, and that is a big if, there was a large enough group together (in philosophy), we maybe able to stop this runaway train before it's too late.
Another problem with this whole area of legislation, is ... Who monitors the monitors? (to quote Enemy of the State).
Obviously, carnivore and it's brethern IS being used for survallance, but who is making sure that it's being used for good? Likewise, who would make sure that our MS Passports aren't hacked into? The CIA/NSA/FBI should be able to be trusted, but are they trustworthy? Microsoft ... well we all know where Microsoft stands in this matter.
I know that this is preaching to the choir ... just some points that I believe ...
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Its in the proverbial toilet along with my other civil rights like gun ownership, (2nd), freedom of assembly (1st), freedom from Government searches [i.e., searches at airports by federal employees] (4th) and Federally imposed mandates on the state I live in (10th).
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I have doubts to the veracity of this. Frankly, it smacks of troll. But then, there's no pro-Microsoft pro-Intel pro-whatever the the latest 'it's evil!' fad is today stuff. ;)
At any rate, I strongly disagree with the notion that a national ID will stop terrorist attacks. The attackers already had false state and other IDs of various natures.
What I think a nation ID could do.. is make life a whole lot easier and more convenient for people. A national driver's license.. That would be nice, no more out of state bars/officers/people taking your checks gawking at your state DL, attempting to decipher whether or not it's real.
A passport. No more fumbling around for yet another document while travelling.
An easy way to prove identity when attempting to get hired. It beats carrying around unneccesary extranneous documents.
At any rate, would we be giving up our privacy with a national ID? I think not. We must, of course, realize the fact that it can't be mandatory. Right now, there are people over the age of (insert your state's legal driving age) who don't have driver's licenses. People without social security cards (and/or numbers).
If it wasn't mandatory, I'd go for it. It'd be quite convenient. And, frankly, I wouldn't be giving up any more privacy than I already am. Do you shop online? If you use a credit card, they're seeing where you shop. You can bet your arse that they look at that for direct advertising as well. Use a discount card at Wegman's/Food Lion/What have you? You can bet they're seeing what's most popular and adjusting sales accordingly.
Fill out information for an account with a public forum on the internet? Surf with cookies enabled?
The fact is, the current hype about privacy is FUD. Nothing but. We already give up so much of our supposed privacy, that it isn't funny.
..And I'd trust the government more with information about me than I would a corporation.
Is there a rule on slashdot now that when anyone slings out this quote, they get a +5?
BilldaCat
Unfortunately, I doubt any "difinitive solutions" will come from this conference. I have never known any solutions to come from any conference of this type. Ideas perhaps, new discussions started, new alliances and enmities forged. But not solutions.
Privacy has always been and will always be shaped by three opposing forces: freedom, convenience, and safety. It's the job of the citizenry to ensure that these forces remain in relative balance and that none is given undue weight.
Too much emphasis on freedom, perhaps you are inconvenienced and perhaps your safety is compromised (wild west). Too much emphasis on convenience, and perhaps your safety and freedom are compromised to provide that convenience. Too much emphasis on safety, and certainly your freedom and comfort will be sacrificed somewhat to keep you absolutely safe.
So, are monitoring technologies in the hands of law enforcement going to abolish our freedoms and privacy? Not if we temper their use, as we have done with everything from personal search to wiretapping.
I'm not particularly worried, but I am certainly glad that there are people who are, for they are the ones maintaining that delicate balance that keeps those forces in opposition.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
Remember way back some two years ago when Sun CEO Scott McNealy said "You have no privacy, get over it." To think, how far we've all come since then.
I stole this Sig
/me checks pockets....
Well, I had it a minute ago...maybe I dropped it on the bus?
------
Today's Top Deals
Ashcroft decided to clean house at some major airports, including SLC, before the Winter Games. Quite a few illegal immigrants were detained, arrested, and (of course) fired for having false info about their citizenship.
Fine, you say. They broke the law. They should be punished.
In theory, that's fine. However, I believe this was Ashcroft grand-standing, rather than for anyone's safety. It was selective. Did they clean out any illegal immigrants from the many downtown hotels? Hell no -- the hotel industry in SLC would shut down if they did that. (I'm sure this is the case in many cities.) Even the airport allegedly turned a blind eye (some allege they even helped with the paperwork) when the illegals were filling out the forms, so they could get cheap labor.
So Ashcroft ruined many lives here in SLC (those of the airport workers and the families they supported), because it looked good to the press. They didn't go after all the illegal immigrants because it would hurt big business during an especially profitable time.
If all laws were enforced 100% and without bias, then I'm all for 'em. However, as long as pricks like Ashcroft run the show, our laws should be left alone and not made even more broad in the name of "security".
I'm happily willing to live life knowing that I might be the victim of a random terrorist attack if it means that I can retain what's left of my remaining privacy and freedom. If I had to choose between a life of 100% certainty of safety in which I had to give up my right to own/carry a gun and have my purchases/travel/etc/opinions tracked or a life with a n% certainty of safety (where n < 100 -- even below 50%) but with my freedoms, I'd take the latter in a heartbeat.
Method of processing duck feet
Toss out all the illegal aliens and who will do the crap that nobody else wants to? Besides the 0.0001% of illegally enterant people in this country who are here for espionage and terrorism, what is their harm? They are filling out the lowest classes of society, doing whatever they can to make a living.
Plus you say throw out all those who are here illegally, well duh! How do you do that? You make an infoulable way to tell the legitimacy of the carrier's identity.
I am not disagreeing with your conclusions, just the logic you used to get their.
Bye!
Second that. I have my doubts that a national id card would help, and would definitley fall into my personal definition of invasion of privacy. I certainly don't want the incompetents that currently fuck up the system to have access to stronger weapons. Hell look at the people who work for the government, do you want them in charge of YOUR identity.
Oh yeah boycott the boycott of the boycott of the Great Slashdot Blackout.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
(Preamble)A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, (Law) the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The part of "law" in the 2nd Amendment is "The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed". If this was not true, the 2nd would have been worded to "A well regulated milities is necessary to the security of a free state thus citizens have the right to keep and bear arms if they are a part of that militia". Our founders did not state the 2nd in that manner. The militia section was the reasoning why *all* citizens have the right to bear arms.
Also, the United States of America was funded by pot growing, gun nuts. If they didn't have the guns, they would have never been able to get the English off their collective backs.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I'm not disagreeing with your ideas just your ability to spell them. ;)
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
On the issue of privacy:
Would it be possible to trade privacy for guaranteed freedoms? Such a thing might require a constitutional amendment, but hypothetically, suppose in exchange for your privacy you were given certain guarantees.
What limits would you place on the use of the information?
Of course, for many, privacy maybe a way to limit embarassment over certain things. Suppose EVERTHING were out-in-the-open. Would certain socially embarassing things become more acceptable? Would this give everyone a truer picture of human behavior?
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.
The second question, although I think I know the answer is how do these laws continue to get passed. It's almost as if we (in the US) don't really have the power to influence our government. Things get passed and there's nothing we can do. You can blame apathy, but does that really work? The voice of the irritated minority gets louder when most people are apathetic. Mob mentality? What?
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Because we all know that whenever someone famous says something it's automatically true! I'm so sick of seeing that damn quote. If you want to be safe, you don't deserve to be safe!
I'm sure that there are also plenty of quotes out there from famous people that say the opposite of that, but nobody ever quotes THOSE...
Fuck off, I'm willing to let the grocery store keep track of what I buy in exchange for cheaper groceries. I'm willing to let the government store my information (not that they don't already have it all anyawys) if it means even a minute increase in safety.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
That's nice of you; but what you really
mean is "I am willing to force everyone
else to give up their privacy too",
isn't it?
Considered harmful.
I think what was so perfidious about the 9-11 incidents was that the attackers seemed to have achieved what could have been one of their goals: Disturbing a civil society to that extent that it questions its fundamentals and arrange its changing ideals around fear.
If somebody has attacked the basis of your community, and now it must be changed for defense - It's sad, but this is some strange kind of victory.
I am sorry for the trauma Americans are living with. It makes them do strange, cruel and even some stupid things from my point of view. Giving up privacy is such a thing.
Much Like our own Revolutionary War. But I am an extremist, believing that people have the right to bear all arms, not just ones sanctioned by the totalitarians in government.
Own a tank? Sure
Own an Uzi? Sure
Own an F16? Sure
Atom Bomb ? Sure
Besides if people aren't willing to die (and kill)for freedom, then they have already won!
People complain all the time about their rights being taken away, one at a time. Sure they are, but what are you willing to do to stop them? Nothing? Vote for corrupt politicians (they ALL have been bought)? Or just sit at home playing RPGs, wacking off to Pr0n, and watching Friends?
I am an advocate of Revolution against everyone standing in the way of True Liberty and Freedom, which by the way is only to be had by resposible people. What I find interesting is that nobody is willing to be responsible anymore, which makes a higher authority responsible for everything.
Which is the core problem as being described by people like you. You just don't like the consequences (ie take responsibility) for the actions you have taken.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It saddens me that we've gotten to the point where it's okay to have a lower class and the pomposity to think that no American should have to stoop to such work, but it's perfectly acceptable for the "dirty foreigners" to do it.
America needs to start setting an example by cleaning up and solving its own problems, instead of the grandstanding and righteousness.
Okay, the heretical question of the day: Is privacy a right?
I don't think it is. Every other legitimate right that I am aware of hinges upon the ownership of property, including the ownership of the self. Do I own the information that pertains to me? Do I own Spamcentral's database entry that lists my email address? Do I own Megamart's correlations into my shopping habits? I don't think so.
Privacy is one of those things, like reputation, that one has to protect through other mechanisms than legal rights. Rule one: if you don't want people to know your email address, don't send email. Rule two: if you don't want Safeway to know your shopping habits, don't use your Safeway card. Rule three: if you don't want the government to know your travel destinations, don't take an airplane. It's damn inconvenient, but the fact remains that once you place your personal information into the public's domain, it becomes public domain.
Privacy is what you make of it.
The government should have no right to search your luggage at airports, because that luggage is your property. But the only thing stopping them from tracking your movements is propriety and decency, two traits which have been lacking in every government since Hammurabi's.
p.s. I find it somewhat ironic that the same community that argues that information should be free is the same community that screams the loudest when their personal information gets traded on the open market.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
On behalf of all those who have been reading Slashdot for more than 2 hours - shut the fsck up. It's been said time after time after time, and it's *still* used incorrectly.
As the poster said, I'd be perfectly willing to give up some privacy if it would increase security. The amount of privacy I'd be willing to give up wouldn't even border on an "essential" liberty, but I'd be willing to give up some. The safety I'd have to receive would have to be a permanent reduction in terrorists attacks that could hurt me. The proof that the reduction in attacks was linked to the giving up of said privacy would have to be backed by well-conducted research. Therefore I am neither giving up an essential liberty, nor accepting temporary safety.
Hell, according to Mr Franklin, I could give up an essential liberty like freedom of speech if it were to give me some *permanent* safety, or I could give up hundreds of "non-essential" liberties for a permanent increase in safety from accidentally falling out of a window. While the adage works well in many situations, please don't use your post-bot to toss it into any YRO discussion.
</rant>
Last post!
In Canada we've been starting to get, in the newspapers, dozens of cases where Canadians have been living in the States, legally or illegally, and have been detained by the FBI for six months, been tortured and beaten, without access to a lawyer or being told why they were detained.
In the Toronto Star today there was a large story in the A section about a Canadian citizen living illegally in the States being held for months by the FBI, with out being told why, in solitary confinement 23.5 hours a day, with out being allowed to talk to a lawyer, a doctor, the embassy or any family members. He was beaten by the FBI in questioning sessions. He was mislead in to signing a wavier that rejected help from the Canadian Embassy, being told that they would deport him as soon as he signed it. That was a lie. He was sent to Canada on an airplane in the past few days, with only his prison issue clothes. All of his money and ID was kept by the FBI. He is now broke and has no place to live.
This sounds more like Nazi Germany or Maoist China than the US.
Have you thought about what you're looking at today?
But I am an extremist, believing that people have the right to bear all arms, not just ones sanctioned by the totalitarians in government.
So, why not move to the UK then? You can get a licence for damn near anything. You just need to deal with assloads of paperwork before you can get a simple shotgun, never mind the hoops you have to jump through to get automatic weapons. But, if you persevere, and you're not a criminal, or a loony, and *really* like filling in forms, you can get a gun licence for pretty much whatever you like.
Umm, when you refer to "You All", please don't include me!
I'm always been an advocate of preserving the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to keep and bear firearms!
What's sad is that the framers of the Constitution didn't have the ability to envision today's society with gigantic computer databases capable of data-mining. Nor did they forsee parabolic microphones that can eavesdrop on conversations from hundreds of feet away, infra-red cameras that let you see past walls and curtains, and many other things. If they lived in this world, I think you'd see a pronounced right to privacy in there too.
Anyway, the right for individual citizens to own and carry firearms was a key piece of the "freedom" puzzle back then, and still is today. The bottom line is, without this right, citizens will always be forced to bow down to government that still has ready access to these instruments controlling immediate "life or death".
The gun control advocates are looking at the "big picture" with tunnel vision. They see killing (and accidental death) as a bad thing which clearly gets lessened if you take away citizens access to firearms. I don't really have an argument with that. It's just a question of values. Do we strive for freedom and liberty, or do we strive for control and safety? It's pretty easy to design a safe world, at the expense of almost all individual rights. But sorry pal, that's not the world I want to live in!
The reason most of these plans settle for tracking identities and not individual behaviors is because humans are largely unpredictable.
Government already attempts to database individual behavior, largely with disasterous consequences!
Case in point:
My wife and I just had our first kid (a baby girl). Before we even got out of the hospital, we got a visit from the "Dept. of Social Services". The lady acted friendly enough, but both of us were rather confused as to why she was visiting us. She started asking a number of questions, starting out with where I worked, and proceeded to psycho-analyze my wife, followed by signing us up (despite our protests) to have a nurse come check on our daughter every week for the first year or two.
Only when we got a chance to look at a copy of the notes she jotted down (she accidently left them in our room) did we realize what was going on. When my wife was 15 years old, she tried to commit suicide. After that, one psychologist she went to was convinced she was mentally unstable and made notes to that effect in her medical records. (Other psychologists refuted that claim, and said she was simply a normal but upset teenager.) Apparently, the state automatically gets social services involved when they see someone "marked" in this way is having a baby.
Considering she's almost 30 years old now (as am I), this is insanity. I, too, had a difficult time growing up and often thought about suicide. So what? Am I unfit to be a parent now because of it? I dare say I'm better equipped to handle it if my child grows up having similar thoughts and problems!
Several people have more than one credit card.
Some pay cash sometimes, credit card other times.
There is enough variability to make invasive data mining difficult at best.
A lot of myprivacy comes from my neighbors' unpredictability.
I'm guessing this is the guy I replied to, since his inability to reason cogently is well-balanced by the fact that he posts AC when he wants to talk some shit. Chicken. :)
And as far as I'm concerned, we have a couple hundred thousand criminals here who have no business being here. If you don't like our laws and find them oppressive, I suggest you either find a way to change them or leave.
Remember, they're only criminals because we make 'em out that way now. A hundred years ago, they weren't 'criminals' - they were 'New Americans'. And I wonder if all the shit that goes down isn't a result of our inability (or rather, your inability) to cope with new people, and the ideas they bring with them. Just a thought.
And as for finding a way to change laws - well, they'd have to become legalized citizens to vote and do that. But have you looked at how tough it is to get naturalized nowadays? It's not just memorize the Pledge of Allegiance and sign a few forms - it's a difficult, nasty, brutish process that favors wealthy people with the means to process all the paperwork and support themselves in the meantime. "Illegal" immigrants are those who can't support their family for a year-and-a-half (which is about what it takes) while waiting for the clodhoppers at INS to pull their thumbs out and do their job. And because they prefer working for shit wages (usually less than minimum wage, because hey, they're illegal - who will they complain to?) to whatever hellhole country they just left, they do it, and become 'criminals' in the mind of half-witted retards such as yourself.
Think about that - these people think that America is so great that they're willing to come over, earn half of nothing and get treated like less-than-human slime from some uppity asshole. Not because they're dumb, but because in spite of all the shit these immigrants have to put up with, it's still better than wherever they came from. That should make you proud that the U.S. is doing something right - torturing Canadians notwithstanding.
On the positive side, I got enough +1 mods to put me at the karma cap for dusting your sorry arguments off, so thanks! And next time, you'll get more respect (and less flamage) if you'll find your balls and post under your real name, ok?
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
This sounds more like Nazi Germany or Maoist China than the US.
:)
I would agree, and I'll have to go look up the article. For God's sake, I hope it's a mistake, but the way the DOJ is run now, I'm afraid it might not be. Whatever the case, that guy's civil rights were violated, and there's no excuse for that. This is where the "we'll do anything to stop the terrorists" argument comes all-the-way apart.
God I hope you're lying.
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
A major step forward in online privacy, P3P, was recently made a recommendation by the W3C.
Also - when we (well, I) talk about privacy from the government, it's not that I don't want the data existing - I simply don't want anyone (except me) to have trivial access to it, and I want to be able to see it and know who knows what about me. Currently, your own personal information is protected as IP by the companies who "own" it - essentially, YOU don't get privacy, but they do. Thats wrong, and the UK laws on this make alot more sense.
There are too many cowards in America to risk my life for them.
I condone violent revolution because our country was founded by it. If you don't condone violent revolution, then move to a country that wasn't, otherwise you yourself are condoning it, whether or not you realize it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.