No ID Cards in the Future

dmf writes "Throw away your identification cards! CNet is running a commentary piece on what the author perceives to be contradictions of privacy as technology continues to evolve our future. What boggles the mind is how social forecasters can so easily bypass longstanding privacy concerns by simply ignoring the horrific examples of abusive governments throughout history. How can a responsible thinker so easily shrug off the need to protect oneself from the unknown abuses of the future just because one may think things are relatively agreeable at present?"

Comments

Re:the detail

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Now I disagree with the NRA's support of the "war on drugs"

As do many of the (millions of) members. Unfortunately, the current NRA administration is from the laws-and-orders faction.

and their concept that we generally need more imprisonment of all sorts of criminals (as opposed to basic economic changes that reduce the incentives for criminal behavior)

Actually that got started as a response to the left-wingers running a revolving-door justice system (so the violent offenders were constantly being dumped back on the streets), then using the resulting mayhem to call for more gun laws (allegedly to disarm these violent criminals, thus making the streets safe again). Of course since the gun laws just disarm the victims this leads to still more mayhem, in never-ending positive feedback.

The NRA "winning team"'s response was to call for keeping the violent offenders in the clink, in order to help take the pressure off the gunnies.

Of course now that it has been thoroughly proven that relaxing the gun laws so a small fraction of the population is carrying concealed at any given time REDUCES both crime and violence, and this fact is beginning to penetrate the general awareness, such a program is counter-productive.