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Norwegian Police, Seeking Info On 2 Bloggers, Take Data From 7,000 Accounts
xiando writes "Norwegian police were asked by officials in Italy to get personal information about two bloggers who were using a server in Oslo. The police decided the best thing to do would be to take the server's hard drive, along with personal information from about 7,000 other users (Google translation of Norwegian original). Other ISPs say this is standard operating procedure in Norway these days."
If you think that only "socialists" do these things, you are desperately naive. Unless of course you're using the definition of socialism which seems to be quite popular among so-called conservatives these days, "any policy I currently don't like."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Could this happen? Will it happen?
Yes and yes, of course. In particular, invoke any of the magic words "terrorism," "national security," "child pornography," "drug dealing," or "intellectual property," and the Constitution no longer applies. The kind of large-scale fishing expedition you describe is entirely in keeping with this policy.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
What can you say except welcome to Socialism at work? Trust us, we're the government, we know what's best.
Actually it sounds like fascism to me.
One of socialism's (purported) goals is to reduce levels of government and government power overall in place of individual or collective power.
Did the Op also denounce capitalism when it was discovered that America was viciously torturing prisoners at Guantanamo?
It is trivial to point out that to explore socialism one must also explore political theory. No one suggested otherwise. However, it is wrong to view it as a model of government. Governments have people in power. "Socialism" does has no comment here. Perhaps the state is a socialist oligarchy, or a monarchy, or a democracy, or a dictatorship, or even a communist state!
Governments work to expand their powers regardless of the economic model being applied. Conflating the two is dangerous because people end up thinking like the OP: that socialism results in police grabbing power.
Socialism has no causal force here beyond the fore common to all such systems. The problem is that people are willing to trade liberty for security, which results in police forces being granted far more power than is necessary or safe.
Conservativism today means: I take any govermental service as long as my boss doesn't have to pay taxes.
It's the completely fucked up idea that one has to protect the rich and the powerful, because one could one day be rich and powerful too, and then one might not like to pay taxes. But the idea that one day one could be poor and unable to help oneself gets refused because if that is something that only happens to other people.