Presidential Candidates and Online Privacy

noiseordinance writes "I'd like to know everyone's opinion about which presidential candidate seems most likely to preserve Internet privacy." We haven't officially started election coverage on Slashdot yet, but I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to start tossing out questions like this as we get closer to the primaries. Try to stay on the subject of on-line privacy- we can run more stories on other topics in the future.

Comments

Ron Paul

[mulhollandj]

He is the only one who believes in this &#&@* piece of paper called the Constitution. It takes a great man to realize and accept that there are limits on his power and let others govern themselves.

Re:Ron Paul

[timster]

What are you talking about? The Constitution says nothing about Internet privacy, so Ron Paul would leave that issue to local control or the free market. Consider his position on the FDA -- he says that it's not necessary for any government body to ensure that drugs or supplements are safe because people will stop buying from companies that sell dangerous ones. Such a president wouldn't care if Google is snooping your search results -- they'd tell you to deal with it or use some other search engine.

Don't get me wrong -- Ron Paul is an interesting candidate, and there are great advantages to a constitutional form of government. I just think that he's becoming the new Ralph Nader, with this underground movement which considers him the solution to all of our problems. He's certainly not the solution to Internet privacy concerns.

Re:Ron Paul

[rk]

Ignoring the strawman* you've erected for the moment, let's talk about the war on drugs and tell me how you expect to stop the flow of drugs. My brother-in-law got busted for smoking pot in September. Trouble was, at the time he was already in a maximum security prison, and has been for nearly seventeen years now. So please tell me: If we can't keep illicit drugs away from felons in a maximum security prison, how do you propose we keep them away from 300 million people in the third largest country in the world, geographically speaking? If your answer is to turn the entire country into a giant ultra-supermax gulag, you've pretty much admitted defeat in my eyes, as I find that wholly unacceptable.

* - I have a friend who had a terrible heroin addiction for years. He's been clean for about six years now, but I'm still opposed to the war on drugs. Also, compare and contrast: isolationist vs. non-interventionist. Pat Buchanan is an isolationist. Most libertarians are non-interventionists... though it is a fair cop to say some have isolationist tendencies.

Dennis Kucinich

[_bug_]

Haven't seen or heard anything specific to online privacy. I'd be willing to be it's low on the list of issues for most.

I'd guess Dennis Kucinich given his website statements regarding the Patriot Act and other government policies that deal with (directly or indirectly) an individual's privacy. I would expect that view extends to the online world.

Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

Ron Paul's stance on Privacy and Personal Liberty.

"The biggest threat to your privacy is the government. We must drastically limit the ability of government to collect and store data regarding citizens' personal matters."

Re:Remember

[Dr. Donuts]

You've got it exactly backwards, and unfortunately many folks have a hard time understanding Constitutional logic.

First, you have *ALL* rights. ALL means ALL. Whether they are enumerated/defined or not, you have them. The Constitution was written specifically in this manner, so not to suggest that the People got their rights from the Government or laws, but rather the other way around.

The impact of such logical construction of the Constitution means that rights that were undefinable or even unfathomable back then were *automatically* protected from infringement by the Government.

Amendment 10 further extended this logic, by actually explicitly stating all rights are reserved by the People and the States, rather than just implying it.