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Mexican Government To Document Cell Phone Use
Alyssey writes "The Mexican government wants to have a database to track every cellphone number in the country (in Spanish, Google translation) and whom it belongs to. They want to tie in the CURP (Unique Registration Population Code in Spanish, like the Social Security Number in the US) with cellphone numbers. If Mexicans don't send in their number and CURP via SMS before April 10, 2010, their cellphone number will be blocked. The new law was published back in February and is going into effect now."
Respond via SMS?
Sounds Phishy
I don't have any information on prepaid phone providers in Mexico; if they're as prevalent as they are here in the States, how will this affect those users? Can you just register the phone as belonging to Inigo Montoya and be done with it?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I assume this doesn't apply to PAYG phones bought in the US? What a way to not affect criminals in the least.
All they require is that you text your CURP? So just text someone else's CURP. Make one up for that matter. How do they plan to verify the person using the phone is identical to the CURP associated with it?
With an already corrupt government and police force this benefits the people how..?
here where I live. I just pay them a hundred pesos to buy a chip for me. He'll be leaving town in a few months, and I got my phone. Repeat as needed. With a legitimate name and my phone is stolen, lots of luck defending yourself against false accusations here. Luckily the old system of "justice" is still in place. Una mordidita para las polis y ya.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
And how exactly do they plan to prevent people from SMS texting random or other peoples IDs to the registry?
We don't need no stinkin' log file! How dare they keep records of everything. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint would never do that! No way! If our telecoms actually kept records they would bill me for every minute I log any time on the network so that they could over charge me. In America, we know how to lie about the truth so we can steal from our customers, and then turn em into the Feds! We better build a bigger wall so their cellular towers don't vector any of our border towns!
Stories like this always make me very, very glad that I've never bothered to buy a cell phone. I mean sure, I know my government will track me somehow anyway, but at least I have the satisfaction of making the bastards work for their data.
no me gusta!
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
So US citizens living or working in mexico can no longer get a cell phone in Mexico?
In AZ prepaid long distance cards covering "international" calls to Mexico are cheap and insanely popular. Mexico will not prevent US phones from roaming, so I am guessing pre-paid "International" cell phones will be here too.
I live in Mexico and I can tell you that one of the intentions of the law is to reduce the crimes that use cellphones to coordinate and execute (like kidnappings and drug deals).
The problem with this is the implementation, the law clearly specifies that your cellphone provider must take an ID and your fingerprint, but the most popular provider Telcel lets you register sending a SMS with your name and birth date. Essentially rendering the registration useless.
don't ya think?
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I cant understand what this will solve for the Mexican Government. Does this have anything to do with all the violent crime linked to the Mexican drug trade? Do they really think sending a CURP via SMS is a secure and infallible method? Good luck to them.
Oh and here is a possible theory: The USA could use this system to track illegals who might have bought their cell phones into the US. Doesent sound all that plausable but hey its a theory.
I predict 1 million users registering this month. The other 69 million users will try to register on the last hour of the last day before lines get deactivated. Let's hope they aren't showing Latin American Idol that night, phone networks would evaporate.
Another likely scenario, 3-4 months from now some big story breaks out on how someone stole (read, bought) the database and used it to do very naughty things. Public outrage. Common sense wins round 2. Database scrapped.
So...now that we have more and more technology and more and more capability for governments to track every aspect of their priso..citizens there should be a few things noted. This is nothing new. Advancing technology has ALWAYS resulted in governments trying to leverage it for this very purpose. I seriously doubt this will ever change despite various groups flag waving about how THEIR country would never do this and pointing at other countries that have implemented things like this. As such, all the bitching and moaning in the world is not likely to stop this. A number of countries throughout history have "reset" their governments abilities through various revolutions (some rather bloody, others bloodless). Unfortunately the bloody type ones have typically been the most likely to result in destruction of government records by one side or the other. (Which is why the whole 2nd Amendment thing was put there, the notion that we are supposed to use our right to bear arms to protect ourselves from our fellow citizens is a warping of reality...it was meant ensure an armed citizenry to discourage government abuse. Of course this is all moot when the majority happily embraces this kind of "safety" measure.)
At the end of the day with technology constantly advancing and the "here there be monsters" parts of the map becoming non-existent there is only one way to ensure our future freedoms. My daughter will know how to execute SQL injections by the time she is 10! We live in an era where your average teenager is more capable of destroying/manipulating government plans/records/whathaveyou than any pitchfork and torch wielding mob has had since the days of the caveman!
Disclaimer: Parents, be careful with this plan, you wouldn't want to have your records swapped with (notorious threat of the day) for grounding your kid.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Seriously, how is one going to properly use 'whom' rather than 'who', but still end a sentence in a preposition?
The measure of a cellphone number database is to identify who is the user of the cellphone, this is intended to reduce the criminal movements of drugdealers and mafias all over the mexican country.
Well it's a good idea, but the mexican government didn't saw the real issues of relate cellphones and users: the institutions that will have access to the databases are corrupt far beyond solution, we all know in Mexico that institutions like AFI (similar to FBI in USA) and others are full of double-agents of organized crime.
So, from now on, organized crime will be aware of my phone number, my residence and another bunch of personal data. Great, just great. (Yeah, I live in Mexico if you haven't noticed by now.)
In the totally corrupt government we have, this is completely idiotic. The mafias will get access to all this data a couple of days after government officials get it. We all Mexicans know that. But even if that weren't the case, just on principle alone, I won't submitt to big brother. When that deadline comes, all the cellphones in my house will cease to be. I'm not a number, I'm a free man!
In my experience, there's several people who due to poverty or lack of concern are not registered with the relatively new CURP system. Thus I wonder, how will it affect those people? Will they shell out 20 pesos to pay some kid with internet access to get it for them, or will they stop using cell phones?
I believe (and hope) this law will fail in epic proportions. Mainly due to Telcel, pretty much the only cellphone provider, losing too many costumers over it. Also, there seems to be much opposition: there are very few comments supporting the law on the article linked.
Mexico does need a way to get rid of our infamy before the eyes of the world, a police state will only make us even worse. We don't need this kind of stupidity coming from our government, however corrupt it may be.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
Seems pointless. You only need to know 2 things and they are both available without registering the phones.
1) where the person is, and
2) what they said.
Knowing their name (fake or true) is largely useless as most of the criminals will just use an alias and most ordinary/nonviolent criminals will just add a lot of noise to the databases.
Plus you risk criminals abducting or killing people to get their hands on legitimate cell phones. Terrible idea.
It was due the surge of virtual kidnapping. Millions of Mexicans receive SMS or calls indicating some kind of extortion: "your son is kidnapped, deposit $$ pesos to this phone number", etc. Now every user is responsible for the use of their phone.
Government is fingerpring also cellphone users also.
It was due the surge of virtual kidnapping. Millions of Mexicans receive SMS or calls indicating some kind of extortion: "your son is kidnapped, deposit $$ pesos to this phone number", etc. Now every user is responsible in theory for the use of their phone.
Government is fingerprinting cellphone users also.
Re-posting because forgot I had an account here :p.
Let me use your phone for a minute...
Why?
You know...battery is dead again.
Oh, sure.
I'd imagine this has something to do with an attempt to crack down on the drug running cartels that threaten to grow so powerful as to destabilize the government. A threatened government is a dangerous thing.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Don't even have to change gadgets. That takes care of the average citizen who would be fine with consumer-grade privacy.
One could add complexity by creating multiple Skype land-phone-accessible numbers, and push them through Grand Central. Or get sexy by using VOIP over a VPN connection to a stateside proxy.
The nontechnological solution: "Hey, amigo, lemme use your phone for a minute - I left mine in my Mercedes."
Yep this is another stupid law passed under the guise of trying to fix a national security problem. The truth is it is just another way for the government to get another Nationwide Database of us Mexicans. Let us count how many we have.
1) We have the CURP. (national ID number)
2) We have the IFE. (national voting card)
3) We have the RFC. (national Tax Number, complete with electronic digital certificate plus you need to fingerprint your 10 digita for that one)
4) We have Cartilla de Vacunacion (national medical card, needed for most hospitals and free health services)
5) We have drivers license (again taging all the above)
5) We have CLABE (national bank account database... all your Financial info are belong to us linked to the Mexican Tax Sistem)
6) We have the Afore (national retirement account number)
7) Some states have a secondary voting card (since the national one could be untrustworthy)
8) We have birth certificate records with the CRIP (a longer version of the CURP)
9) National Military Card (for all males 18 and older which technically makes all of Male Mexicans National Reserve and you need to have it for the next database one, the passport)
10) Passports, (not required by law but do require #9 to get one and will also be required if you ever need to leave this place.)
woohoo.. so much for freedom of speech.
Most of them have all your personal info in them, plus fingerprints, plus anything and everything to tag you. There was the defunct RENAVE which was the national car ID. That was pass under the guise of people commit felony's on stolen cars.
Now a National Celular Id, what is next a National Phone Id, since people also commit crimes on the phone. Or maybe a National Public Phone id, since criminals could also use Public Phones. Or a National Internet Users Id while you are at it. Or a National Credit Card registry since credit cards are used in scams. No wait we have that one also (chalk it as number 11)
Maybe a national knife owners id, so in the supermarket when you buy a knife it will be registered in your name.
Now seriously, the main problem in this is that one more database to cross reference you by will not solve the crime problem. I used to work for a telemarketing firm, and they had bought half of the Databases mentioned above, so the information contained in those database is readily available thanks to corrupt officials. Some of them are even online like the CURP. (one XSS away from full access).
If you are Mexican, don't worry about all the databases, organized crime already have them all. That is how they target you. I know of cases where the criminals even know how much money you have in your bank account and suggest it to you if you try to say you don't have any money.
Now the implementation, you can send a SMS with what ever info you want. Want to become your neighbor, look his CURP up online here:
http://www.emexico.gob.mx/wb2/eMex/eMex_Consulta_tu_CURP
(just need his name and his birthday).
Seriously the problem is the Corrupt Mexican Government, why don't they pass laws to fix that, and maybe we wouldn't need just another national public database.
Here in Mexico they passed a law to instantly tax your deposits in the bank, if you get a cash deposit of 25000 pesos or more (like 2000 dls) instead of going after the known tax evaders. So honest folk pay taxes for the criminals which never do, and the criminals either don't care, have lawyers, or use bribes. Do you think criminals have money in the bank, come on.
This database will get abused like all the others and it is not in the public's interest. Criminals will now have access to all you family's cellular phone numbers so they know who to ask ransoms to.
MEXICAN GOVERNMENT, solve the problem don't make another stupid law that will not solve the problem.
In Soviet Mexico are belong to us, all your information.
Only in the USA do they lock/tailor the phones to some sort of "plan". Everywhere else you just open an account then buy yourself a handset in a 'phone shop.
No sig today...
This is interesting and disappointing.
US Cell carriers have your SSN already if you ever had a 1year or longer contract. The central databases being Equifax, Transunion and such.
I'm actually surprised mexico did not do this.
Even Canada does this.
No ssn, no credit, 400$ deposit required. Unless you are on the blacklisting, in which case the deposit can go into the thousands of dollars.
If you have a bad credit history, you can't sign up for services for like 7 years.
There is simply nothing that stops you from grab the CURP from anyone, send the sms and get your phone linked to other person, then you can carry on with whatever illegal activities you plan to do and have the other person blamed.
It is insane, and I asked someone I know that works at Telcel and you can have more than one phone number linked to a single CURP.
Yes, this is supposed to difficult the coordination of illegal groups, such as drug dealers and kidnapers, but I fail to see how will this help unless we would do as the law says, be required to go on a cellphone center and provide our fingerprint.
And, personally, I completely dislike this measure, just for civil disobedience I'll go to somewhere where the CURP it's required, memorize a number of a random person (fortunately I can memorize long numbers easily), and send a sms with that number.
In Italy is already this way: you cannot buy a SIM without proper identification.
And if you sell or give it away, both parties should update the registration details.
Since 1994. We are ahead!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
There already is a very similar thing in Bulgaria (and probably in other countries). Here, the cellphone providers, the ISPs and all traveling agencies must keep detailed records in electronic format and grant access to them for the authorities at any time, without any warning. It's basically a human rights violation, but it seems that no one affected gives a damn. Maybe it's because the non-tech people don't realize the threat.
global fascism over the horizont
Sent via SMS (just now):
"Hello! My name is Ignito Montoya, you killed my father, my new number is ...."
Hmmm. Anyone familiar with slippery slope arguments? I think it's fairly simple to fathom this as being the beginning of a slippery slope.
All,
Hail Calderon
Hail Calderon
Hail Calderon
If only we had a numbering system for the internet that was big enough to uniquely identify every person on the planet...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yup, same in Spain. Comes into force in November, I think.
Erm, is it just me or will this lead to nothing but huge increases in mobile theft with various degrees of violence? Perhaps I missed something.
.
This post is begging for a flamebait.
Even if you're an anonymoys coward, I have to agree with you. On both counts.
If we legalize Mary Jane and Nose Candy now, the "hip, with it" people will move to something else that is way too dangerous to be legal (crystal meth, anyone?). That will create a lucrative market for it.
The real solution would be to have a new kind of culture, that doesn't glorify delinquency and criminality. That'll be the day...
By keeping Marijuana illegal we make teens think they're living on the edge when they toke a joint. The fans of rock stars (if not the stars themselves) think they're out there, when they get busted for coke. They could be dealing with much more dangerous substances, and there is absolutely no way of completely blocking a supply for something that has such high-dollar demand.
It all comes back to how much freedom we can allow ourselves.
And not to be completely offtopic, a word about the phone deal: It is where we are going everywhere. ISPs forced to keep an IP log forever and other Patriot Act features that are now permanent. UK tracking all internet traffic (if not being able to analyze it all yet). China (among others) controlling what regular surfers see on the 'Net.
This are not alarmist FUD, they're today's reality. Increasing capacity of PCs will enable ever more complete tracking of everything we do online - and eventually analyzing and compiling relevant data to central databases; your whole life is an open book to the Big Brother). Orwell was eerily correct in his predictions. What he got wrong were the year and who would be behind it. It turns out that it was the most conservative Congress and President, who sold the whole thing, because we are afraid. Very, very afraid. Besides, you never know when seemingly benign activities turn out to be preparation for terrorism, so we'll have to keep track of everybody all the time. (Google Panopticon.)
When I was a kid, I heard a joke:
Q: What is the difference between capitalism and communism?
A: In capitalism some people exploit others; in communism it's the other way.
Either way, taken to the extreme, you end up in totalitarianism.
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
Remove prohibition and even the most powerfull and influential drug lords will disappear into the dustbin of history.
Uhh.. Not quite. The Capone argument is a fallacy, since although his organization took some serious hits, organized crime never went anywhere. It just changed its face. It's not your Italian-American bookie now. It's the tagger in the 'hood, that sells you pot, coke and rock, plus a trick with his favorite hooked-up girl, who does it to get high.
Again, contraband will always be in demand.
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
So what happens if you buy and activate a prepaid cellphone in the US or Guatemala, then use it in Mexico??
Simple: Your prepaid phone will work only as long as it has a connection with a carrier that has a roaming contract with yours. Many, if not most, prepaids don't work internationally unless you register them (often for a fee), because international calls are hard to charge on prepaids (at least, where receiving one is charged to your account). Sure, you can use a fake ID, but pretty soon that will be considered a premeditated action to conceal illegal/terrorist activity.
Slam goes the door!
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
So, our neighbors to the South are getting ahead of us on something, eh? I must say, given the slow but steady trend of the U.S. towards ever increasing surveillance, one thing that has puzzled me is why our government has not yet implemented something like this. If you're going to go so far as to use warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of the domestic phone system to keep tabs on your own citizens, it can't be very effective if anyone can walk into a Wal-Mart or 7-11, use cash to buy a cheap prepaid cellphone with a number and talk time already set up for it, and use it -- no ID, no registration, no way to know who belongs to that number. Criminals make wide use of these anonymous and more or less disposable phone accounts, and it is astounding that no legislators have yet played the "if you use one of these phones, you must have something bad to hide" card and passed a law similar to what Mexico is proposing.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Seems that any way the political winds turn, they always lead back to totalitarianism (and eventually to total xenophobia, because of point two below). And it's always sold under the same pretexts:
Orwell just got the year wrong. Otherwise he was eerily prophetic. Advances in computer science will make meaningful analyzing of data and collecting them in central databases possible in much larger scale than what is done today. Makes me want to go offline for good and start a subsistence-living only farm. Then again, encrypting most of our communications will postpone the advent of the final dystopia.
"Anything you do, anything you say, I'll be watching you..."
But wait. Everything that can be used to do good can be used to do evil. Potential is potential. We determine the direction it takes. Sure, it will make society more complex, but we'll need a lot of safeguards against unreasonable invasions. We just have to determine unreasonable. And that is a political back-and-forth, that is ongoing, and lasts forever.
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
Actually,
I think what officials want to target with this meassure is "Narcomenudeo".
Meaning, Highschoolers and college undergrads that are bullied (or some do it by choice) by the narcolords into selling small ammounts of drugs and use them as distribution channels.
Once they have the distribution figured out, you can trace the cash flow back to the head honchos. The ones that even know carry like ten phones and switch SIM chips like crazy.
Fact is, Mexico is at war with the organized crime, and every bit of intel helps save lives.
...CURP (Unique Registration Population Code in Spanish, like the Social Security Number in the US) ...
Not by a long shot. CURP consists of four sections:
1. Four letter acronym - last name, mother's maiden name, first name and second name (or second letter from first name).
2. Six digits indicating your birth date.
3. Three letters indicating your state of birth.
4. Three letters and three digits, seemingly random but actually a predictable tag, to differentiate you from others sharing the first three sections, all very similar.
Many commercial apps in Mexico have the "CURP function" installed, you just type in the first three criteria, and out comes the full CURP. I believe even some legit Mexican websites provide this function. It's not intended to be secret and it's not tied in with your personal finances in any way.
Little or nothing to see here, folks, move along.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Your CURP or your life! Oh, never mind, you don't have to decide. I'll just take both.
So when alcohol was legalized in the 30's, everyone ran out and started doing heroin? I think you were doing heroin before you suggested this.
First of all, I'm no fan of the "privacy at all cost" crowd Slashdot seems to attract. This can be done in Mexico because the values concerning privacy are different than the norm in the US, and you don't have a small, outspoken "privacy at all cost" crowd.
That said, if you know someone's full name, date of birth, and the state they were born in, making a bogus Mexican CURP number is pretty trivial.
My experience living in Mexico is that records are poorly kept (one geek project I had recently was generating a bunch of bogus CURP numbers for a database at work) and that the criminals shouldn't have a problem putting bogus names and CURP numbers in the cell phone database. This will be about as reliable as one's New York Times registration information being reliable.
Since pre-paid anonymous cell phones are almost always used for no good and legal purpose this sounds like a great idea for that kind of phone.
I have an anonymous tracfone. I got it not because I am evil, but because I am cheap. My phone has lasted me 18 months for a total of $140 or $7.78/month. Tell me the cell plan that would be cheaper than this.
I'm sure the telcos would agree that not paying at least $50 every month should be illegal. Don't worry, I'm sure in a few more years it will be.
The collateral damage of crime surrounding narcotics is so much worse than the actual damage that the narcotics cause. Even your "way too dangerous" drug, the most dangerous thing about it is the production of it. I agree meth ravages a person and isn't something someone should be taking, but instead of throwing them in a pound-them-in-the-ass federal prison, we should be giving them counseling.
Look at tobacco and alcohol, two things that are legal, and please realize that everything you wrote is completely nonsensical. Your entire argument reads like a pro-prohibitionists argument during the 1920's. Absolutely nothing is solved by making narcotics illegal and thousands of problems are created.
By keeping Marijuana illegal we make teens think they're living on the edge when they toke a joint.
This sentence is the most ignorant of all. It sums up your complete incomprehension of the motivation of teenagers with your lack of the ability to see the major problems that prohibition causes. Just like this bill will do nothing to deter criminals in Mexico and only put more innocent people in harms way as the incentive to mug someone for their cellphone has just increased tenfold.
Get a plan in the US that is not pre-paid without your social. Good luck. Sure, it may be in your mom's name, much like the basement you inhabit, but not a stretch to find you regardless...
At first, I was going to moan about how awful that you have 10 different numbers to keep track of. Then I thought a bit about it. That actually makes more sense and should in theory be more secure than our system of just using the SSN everywhere. In the US, we are only really required to have a SSN, DL, Birth Cert, Marriage Cert & tax records to get by in life. The SSC has no real useful info on it. Your name and a number. The DL is the most dangerous one, it has you name, address, and physical info. Our birth certs are kinda of joke as an id medium. They've got like name, a baby foot print, and parents name, or and doctor/medical place that you were born. You can't really use that to ID an adult, but we pretend that's o.k. ;) Marriage Certs don't really give much info. It tells the names of two partners, the religious person/government official that performed the ceremony, the place, and witnesses. You'd almost think that photos of all involved and other tracking numbers other than a name would be on the document, nope. Tax records, have your name, address and how much you've made from various sources. That's the other dangerous one, but it is kept private as far as I'm aware of.
Here it seems like dozens of places that you need to hand out your SSN as a form of ID or to be entered into their private little DB because they are too lazy to make their own key number for you!
I have an really weird private idea that /. would utterly hate, but I think would solve all these data breaches and privacy concerns. Require all these various DBs to be publicly available and search able by anyone through the internet. It'd basically be everyone living in a glass data box. My case for something along those lines is that you and others claim criminals or others that shouldn't have any access to the data already do. So what's the theory behind trying to hide all this data that only the government and criminals know? Oh, yes to keep the citizens in the dark. Basically, I think of a lot of this stuff as sort of like the phone book. It's more useful if we all had access rather than only the folks at the phone companies and a handful of government employees.
I'm Mexican. I don't think it's that bad of a law. What's wrong with it?. After all, don't Americans, for example, need to provide their SSN for EVERYTHING? You do it before you buy a cell phone. You do it before you get a credit card to buy a cell phone. The police asked me for my cell phone number, birth date, license plates, and make and year of car yesterday just to help me recharge the battery of my car, and they did not even know how to do it and left me by myself...I had to get wires and call a friend.
9) National Military Card (for all males 18 and older which technically makes all of Male Mexicans National Reserve and you need to have it for the next database one, the passport)
10) Passports, (not required by law but do require #9 to get one and will also be required if you ever need to leave this place.)
No, we don't need it since a long time ago, see this.
OK. We get it. You call Marijuana "Mary Jane". and Cocaine "Nose Candy". You use the word "hip". You speculate what "hip" people would do in ways that make it painfully evident that you have exactly zero insight into what it is like to be one of those people. You are not hip, and never will be. You didn't have to go so far out of your way to make the point. You did not have to make a statement like the above to prove that you have no reason or excuse for speculating on matters oif this nature, since you have zero experience with same. We get it. We really do.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Here in Sunnyvale, CA, we have 10 cop cars and 3 big fire trucks show up at the scene of every minor traffic accident.
At the same time, nobody ever gets a ticket for running a red light : they are waiting for a big accident to justify traffic light cameras.
Cops in Mexico are extremely corrupt on a personal level. In the US, the corruption is more a system dynamic : pass enough laws == create criminals , the entire law enforcement and prison system benefits.
All cell phone number in here must be registered with national id. And that includes prepaid services.
It's not much of a problems to implement and since then has reduced cellphone related crime.
This is just another "genius" way to spend tax money, a way to give a job to some politician relatives and say "we are doing everything we can to fight criminals" ... which is completely false, but, every time that the government start doing something like this, in a few months the public find that a relative of some high politician was charging a HUGE quantity for a lousy Access database... that the database is not working as intended, but, the govs would still not drop this thing... because some politician cousin/brother/father/husband/lover is the national director and he is winning a lot money doing nothing...
Just think about this people, in Mexico, we pay a tax for the right to have a car each year (Tenencia), this tax was intended to just help to pay for the Mexican Olimpics of ... 1968 !!!
And we still pay it... because the government needs money to pay for this kind of amazing ideas.
Something similar happened with my brother-in-law as the alleged victim and his aunt as the dupe. Unfortunately, the criminals actually got some money out of her.
Shit I like this law, now I don't have to try and smuggle guns across the border but I can bring a shit load of pre-paid cells to Mexico and making a killing... hope no one else get the same idea...
Just to talk back a little: I know damn well I'm not hip, cool or whatever the current hip jargon is for that. I dropped out of it in the 1970s.
And yes, I did it all. Booze, pot and onward. Most of my friends from that period of my life are dead and buried (ODs, shootings, stabbings - all connected with drug buys/busts or then people totally losing it on a mixture of narcotics and running amok).
I just know the reasons I did it. I grew up, but a lot of my friends didn't. And to most of us, although there was the thrill of getting high, it felt edgier to be doing something illegal (few of us inhaled vapors of industrial or household solvents - we weren't stupid as much as we were rebellious).
So I won't buy all the above without some bargaining, although many good points were made.
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
So did Carlos Slim Helú get the exclusive distribution and consulting rights for all of the major database and hardware vendors' products in Mexico or something?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I will take you at your word that you did drugs. I will also take you at your word that you did them for all the wrong reasons. You are totally lost in this absurd idea that people do drugs because of peer pressure or to "look hip". You obviously had this as your foundation and so there is no surprise that it didn't work out for you. Reality is for people who can't handle drugs. Reality is for you ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I am sure an adequately funded lobby group could work wonders.
I would argue the most dangerous aspect of it is not its effects on the health (as you pointed out) or its manufacture (your stated hypothesis) but rather the way people behave while they are under its influence. Especially in cases of prolonged usage.
If we were to legalize crystal meth, it would probably be best to distribute it for free, in strictly controlled government boarding/work facillities staffed by psychologists and other types of researchers.
There would need to be safeguards in place to ensure people were able and encouraged to "get clean" long term.
It would certianly be an interesting experiment
I don't want to make this another religion-bashing thread, but I really don't consider policy and religion necessarily inextricably twined. Common sense is common sense. Any rock band would do, if they had some other attractions besides delinquency.
OTOH, one example of legalization comes from my native country, that had a prohibition around the same time the US did, and repealed it around the same time, too. After the repeal, alcohol consumption spiked up, and kept growing until the WWII, which caused a decline in availability. After that, during the reconstruction boom, people had more money for discretionary spending than ever (this coincided with a major shift from agrarian/subsistence to urban/industrial). This lead to another upsurge.
40 years ago, alcohol sales limitations were cut much deeper (removing state monopoly from beer, among other things) with the idea, that people would learn more moderate habits, when the "forbidden fruit" factor was further removed. 40 years later alcohol is the #1 direct cause of death among men of 25 to 60 years old, followed by cardiac arrest and colorectal cancers, which are both linked to high alcohol consumption.
Alcohol-fueled violence is at its highest since early 19th century, when a peasant rebellion was partially caused by government restrictions on alcohol distilleries. Current alcohol-fueled violence follows the same pattern overwhelmingly: A group of people gather in a home, tavern or something, start drinking, and 6 hours later someone has been shot, stabbed or bludgeoned within an inch of his (usually his) life or dead. Alternately, this doesn't happen until bars close between 2 and 5 AM, and people congregate on the sidewalk, were the smallest perceived slight is enough to spark a free-for-all.
Make of it what you will. We can hardly solve this by arguing anyway.
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de