Harassing innocent people by forcing them to stop and follow orders to find out if they're innocent is something I'd consider very intrusive, and not something I'd expect from any free country.
The positives outweigh the negatives by orders of magnitude.
Only if you don't care about things such as being presumed innocent or freedom in general. But hey, this wouldn't be the first time that people pretended that violating people's freedoms in a certain way isn't actually a violation of people's freedoms just so they can justify and trivialize the violations. I do not think the ends justify the means. Safety is irrelevant to me.
is much, much better than letting people get away with driving drunk.
And I suppose molesting people at airports and spying on just about everyone's communications is much, much better than letting terrorists get away? I think to people who care about freedom, this sort of thing is unacceptable.
It's like saying we should condone arbitrary, abusive security theatre at an airport because terrrsm, and everyone "accepted" that they could be mistreated in those ways by buying a ticket so they have no grounds for complaint.
Actually... didn't they argue exactly that to justify the TSA? I wonder how good this logic would look to people if it were applied to entire cities, states, or even the whole country. "You chose to remain in $location, so you consented to having your constitutional rights violated!"
They have absolutely zero probable cause or reason to stop random people just to see if they're innocent. Harassing people to check their innocence is a terrifying concept, and not something I'd expect from what a country that's supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Since when has driving drunk been an inalienable right?
What a straw man. If they had evidence that each individual they stopped had been driving under the influence, then you'd have a point. Unfortunately for you, they're stopping people randomly, thereby harassing them and violating their rights.
I'm perfectly OK with booze buses because they do reduce the number of real deaths from drink drivers.
I think that shows a lack of principles on your part, that you would sacrifice freedom for security, all to get at a few drunk drivers. Whatever happened to not harassing innocent people?
I'm not happy to share the roads with people who drink drive.
But apparently, you're happy to give the government even more power to violate innocent people's rights.
The courts have outlawed this in the past then someone said if they announce it, you are volunteering for the search by not going around it and they allowed it.
I wonder if they could apply this logic to entire cities. Just declare them to be constitution-free zones ahead of time!
I think they used similar logic to try to justify the TSA, as far as I remember.
There is no one forcing you to get behind the wheel.
Just like there's no one forcing you to get on airplanes, or there's no one forcing you to live in a particular city. Does this mean the government should be able to harass people to find out if they've broken laws? I don't think so.
I don't think he is blowing this out of proportion. When the government violates people's rights, I see that as a very serious issue.
But first of all, it is in fact the job of the police to act on suspicion, and suspicion is a subjective term.
Then I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you're okay with the TSA, NSA, and a host of other nonsense.
As for the suspicion part - an amazingly high proportion of drivers, and perhaps professional drivers in particular, are found to drive under the influence of something
Even if true, that doesn't mean you can harass innocent people to see if they're innocent or not. I do not believe that is how any free country should operate. Do you have any sort of proof whatsoever that this specific individual is breaking the law? No? Then vanish, thug.
This is no different from stopping drivers to check their tyres or other things.
I do not believe that should happen either. Stop harassing people.
Blowing in a breathalyzer is not an unreasonably onerous task, so you might say refusing to do so does look a bit suspicious.
If you have nothing to hide, what do you have to fear? Just do what the thugs tell you; they're just harassing you to find out if you're innocent. Exactly what I'd expect from the land of the free and the home of the brave.
They certainly fall within my definition of harassment, just like the TSA does. I don't like it when government thugs harass innocent people just to see whether or not they're innocent.
The governments freedom of information and polices towards restricting information do relate to when it violates peoples rights...
No, they don't. I said that I care most about freedom, and then you asked me completely irrelevant questions about whether or not I have the desire to give away information and weapons, which has nothing to do with the government infringing upon individual liberties. Nice try.
its your obligation to prove that removing the efforts would improve social welfare
What!? The burden of proof isn't on the ones who impose these restrictions and waste taxpayer dollars, but upon the people who just want the government to leave people alone? Interesting. I have a magical rock that keeps a grand majority of terrorists away, and I plan to rent it out to the government for a million dollars a day. It's on you to prove that it doesn't work!
I'm not trying to argue with you
That's exactly what you're doing.
its logical for me to say, "if you don't have anything useful to say, don't say anything". The points I posted I seldom read anywhere. My points also speak to your credibility.. Which with me is rating very low.
How is that logical? You also haven't said anything I'd consider useful; that sort of thing happens all the time. If people only spoke when you considered it 'useful,' people would rarely at all.
And what credibility? I simply spoke my opinion and put forth my arguments for all to see. Credibility is irrelevant here.
If you let anyone do what ever they want, they will hurt other people.
That's a straw man. No one suggested anarchy.
Wow, you need to learn to read more
I do? You're using it however you please, to mean whatever you want it to. You don't even comprehend what I'm talking about.
Being stopped at the border and searched, does not prevent you from being free
In fact, I think it does. Many of these stops also violate the US constitution. Now who's saying that they want to let anyone (meaning the government) do whatever they want? If they're not even bound by the document that lists the powers they have, they're not bound by anything.
If border searches violate certain freedoms, and they do, then you're less free than before. We used to make fun of the Soviet Union for less than this.
you don't care enough to go into politics.
What politics? Get rid of the NSA, TSA, constitutional-free zones, free speech zones, warrantless searching and wiretapping in general, and gag orders, to start with.
Clearly, you don't understand the connections being made
No, you're just attacking straw men and spewing forth irrelevancies constantly. Other countries are irrelevant to what the US is doing. I did not propose anarchy. That's just two things off the top of my head.
For example, that the government is trampling your rights with out any dentition for how its doing so. Plus, you brought up killing babies, which I think is a bit strange?
You asked something to the effect of, "Which country is more free than the US?" This is 100% irrelevant and has nothing to do with anything. The "killing babies" part is called an analogy, and I used it because I found it probable enough that you were using that ridiculous "If X is better than Y, then X is automatically good!" arguments when you tried to ask me if I knew of any countries more free than the US.
Your the one claiming the government is hurting you by taking away your freedoms..i.e the harm your claiming..
Right. Please try to keep up. Clearly this conversation was about terrorism, so try to use your brain to figure out how the government has been violating people's rights in the name of stopping it.
the US government has never been able to use mass surveillance as an effective tool of repression.
Maybe not yet. But even if they can't harass a huge number of people, they can still do so for select people.
And yet all Slashdot seems to be in full-panic mode about the NSA, while ignoring stop-and-frisk.
I don't know about other people, but I don't ignore it. The reason people are focusing on the NSA is because it's such a widespread violation of people's rights. I would imagine that people who actually care about this sort of thing also care about stop-and-frisk.
OTOH, the Courts just ruled stop-and-frisk is legal.
Just yet another example of how even the courts often don't care about people's rights.
For example, if you get a ticket for parking your car the government mails you a ticket, as you own the car you are responsible for the ticket. Again, freedom is important, but it requires a balance to security, just as you likely don't want someone with a gun to shoot you, you just expect that the government will balance out how it controls guns. However, you seem to have allot of expectations with out any concern for how those expectations come to be put in place. (More on that below..)
Oh, and don't assume I agree with random things that the government does at present.
The government has your address, in some cases you cell phone, and allot of other information about you.
And? This has absolutely nothing to do with the government violating people's rights. Try to keep up.
The reason theres not a problem in the US is because of the efforts that are taken.
That's what you'd like to believe, but have no evidence of. The real reason is because of my anti-terrorist rock.
Your the one explaining your point
And you're spewing forth straw men and irrelevancies and generally misinterpreting me.
There are limits, and those limits impact the overall type of government that exists.
What's this nonsense about anarchy now? I do not believe fundamental freedoms should be infringed upon, even for safety. The end.
A government is just a group of people who agree to certain things.
And the things that they do can be seen as morally wrong. What is your point, except to point out the obvious and then somehow tie it in with the rest of your nonsense about "balance"?
Please see social contract for more information.
I can't, because that's just something that means whatever people want it to mean. That said, the government should probably read the constitution.
Some times life requires compromise in order to achieve certain things, like for example having a safe place to live.
I do not compromise on fundamental freedoms. I am not required to do such a thing. The end.
Yet again, nothing helpful or useful to say.
That's how I feel about your entire comments. They're eyesores that are filled with irrelevancies, straw men, and statements of the obvious.
If every country except one was killing 100 babies, where would you go live ?
Again, this is irrelevant to the discussion of the government violating people's rights, and whether or not the 'best' country has flaws that must be fixed. I merely pointed that out. Read my comment again if you still do not understand.
You haven't offered one solution to a problem
What problem?
or even suggest a reason for why there's are where they are which would benefit the people reading it.
What? I don't even know what that was supposed to be. Are you attempting to appeal to the status quo or something?
its hardly useful if your points don't make sense to a person
If freedom is the most important thing, Will you post your address on here ? Will you give me your full name ? WIll you give me your cell phone number? How about, would you give a crazy person a gun ?
What? That makes absolutely zero sense. I said that freedom is most important to me, and now you're asking me to waste my time posting information about myself? How does this at all relate to the government violating people's rights? Spoiler: It doesn't.
How do you define waste ?
As in... wasting money on killing people and starting pointless wars.
If you feel there's not a problem
I said that the problem is nearly nonexistent. I live in the US. The problem is nearly nonexistent.
You clearly lack intelligence of what the over seas situation is like.
You clearly lack intelligence of the point I was making.
Its also worth noting you would probably say we are wasting money on border security.
Considering that they violate people's rights too, yeah.
How does trusting people violate your principals ?
What violates my principles is when the government violates people's freedoms in the name of security.
More importantly what principals do you have ?
That freedom is worth taking risks for. That we should not sacrifice freedom for security a grand majority of the time.
Clearly, you have never lived anywhere other then the United States.
I don't know how you reach these nonsensical conclusions, and even more, I have no idea how any of this is relevant. Such garbage.
If you have visited one of the countries in the euro zone, please stop and remember there social policies have them in a bit of a physical crunch. Also, keep in mind there history.
What's this!? More irrelevancies!? It can't be!
Is there a country you think has more freedom then the United States ?
Saying that X is better than Y does not make X good. Killing ten babies might be 'better' than killing 100 babies, but neither are good things to me. Likewise, just because the US is better in some ways compared to other countries does not mean its negatives should be ignored. Bringing up other countries is utterly irrelevant. Enough with the irrelevancies.
We have entire groups dedicated to stopping car deaths. There are also projects to help reduce lighting deaths.
Both of which are probably nothing compared to how much we waste on 'security' and the military.
and the only defense to fear is a sense of security.
Which means that violating people's rights and spending trillions of dollars trying to stop a problem that's nearly nonexistent probably isn't a very good idea.
There is of course a balance of how much fear there is vs how much freedom people should have.
Balance? To me, freedom is the absolute top priority. Safety isn't even near the top for me.
I think people forget to be realistic and focus on the logistics of protecting our way of life.
We won't even have a way of life if we discard it for security. What happened to having principles? What happened to being the land of the free and the home of the brave? What happened to not being complete cowards? Nothing happened. People are as naive and idiotic as ever, I'd say.
it would give the person and the corporation 2 voices instead of one. Aka, one man, two votes.
Uh... no, it wouldn't. People are responsible for those voices, and since corporations aren't somehow sentient beings, those people still only have one voice.
Free Speech is a right of individuals, not of "groups".
Individuals make up groups. I don't want the government to be able to violate people's rights just because they decide to form groups when speaking.
Because lots of people despise freedom and the constitution.
Oh, and words can hurt emotionally, I suppose. Problem is, it's utterly subjective and anyone can be offended or hurt by anything. As for reputation, it's not the words that do that, but imbeciles who choose to believe them.
If American democracy can survive that particular travesty it can survive the NSA knowing that you have no life.
It's not a question of whether we can survive. I see you're trying to trivialize this egregious violation of people's rights, or at least it appears that way. Why?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not intrusive.
Harassing innocent people by forcing them to stop and follow orders to find out if they're innocent is something I'd consider very intrusive, and not something I'd expect from any free country.
The positives outweigh the negatives by orders of magnitude.
Only if you don't care about things such as being presumed innocent or freedom in general. But hey, this wouldn't be the first time that people pretended that violating people's freedoms in a certain way isn't actually a violation of people's freedoms just so they can justify and trivialize the violations. I do not think the ends justify the means. Safety is irrelevant to me.
is much, much better than letting people get away with driving drunk.
And I suppose molesting people at airports and spying on just about everyone's communications is much, much better than letting terrorists get away? I think to people who care about freedom, this sort of thing is unacceptable.
While this case seems to go far over the line there is a line somewhere and balancing rights close to that line is hard.
I think whether a line exists or not heavily depends on the right in question.
It's like saying we should condone arbitrary, abusive security theatre at an airport because terrrsm, and everyone "accepted" that they could be mistreated in those ways by buying a ticket so they have no grounds for complaint.
Actually... didn't they argue exactly that to justify the TSA? I wonder how good this logic would look to people if it were applied to entire cities, states, or even the whole country. "You chose to remain in $location, so you consented to having your constitutional rights violated!"
What liberty?
They have absolutely zero probable cause or reason to stop random people just to see if they're innocent. Harassing people to check their innocence is a terrifying concept, and not something I'd expect from what a country that's supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Since when has driving drunk been an inalienable right?
What a straw man. If they had evidence that each individual they stopped had been driving under the influence, then you'd have a point. Unfortunately for you, they're stopping people randomly, thereby harassing them and violating their rights.
I'm perfectly OK with booze buses because they do reduce the number of real deaths from drink drivers.
I think that shows a lack of principles on your part, that you would sacrifice freedom for security, all to get at a few drunk drivers. Whatever happened to not harassing innocent people?
I'm not happy to share the roads with people who drink drive.
But apparently, you're happy to give the government even more power to violate innocent people's rights.
The courts have outlawed this in the past then someone said if they announce it, you are volunteering for the search by not going around it and they allowed it.
I wonder if they could apply this logic to entire cities. Just declare them to be constitution-free zones ahead of time!
I think they used similar logic to try to justify the TSA, as far as I remember.
There is no one forcing you to get behind the wheel.
Just like there's no one forcing you to get on airplanes, or there's no one forcing you to live in a particular city. Does this mean the government should be able to harass people to find out if they've broken laws? I don't think so.
I honestly don't think there could ever be proper cause for that to begin with, since I believe the war on drugs is fundamentally wrong.
I think you are blowing this out of proportion.
I don't think he is blowing this out of proportion. When the government violates people's rights, I see that as a very serious issue.
But first of all, it is in fact the job of the police to act on suspicion, and suspicion is a subjective term.
Then I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you're okay with the TSA, NSA, and a host of other nonsense.
As for the suspicion part - an amazingly high proportion of drivers, and perhaps professional drivers in particular, are found to drive under the influence of something
Even if true, that doesn't mean you can harass innocent people to see if they're innocent or not. I do not believe that is how any free country should operate. Do you have any sort of proof whatsoever that this specific individual is breaking the law? No? Then vanish, thug.
This is no different from stopping drivers to check their tyres or other things.
I do not believe that should happen either. Stop harassing people.
Blowing in a breathalyzer is not an unreasonably onerous task, so you might say refusing to do so does look a bit suspicious.
If you have nothing to hide, what do you have to fear? Just do what the thugs tell you; they're just harassing you to find out if you're innocent. Exactly what I'd expect from the land of the free and the home of the brave.
They certainly fall within my definition of harassment, just like the TSA does. I don't like it when government thugs harass innocent people just to see whether or not they're innocent.
Above the law? They practically make the law.
The governments freedom of information and polices towards restricting information do relate to when it violates peoples rights...
No, they don't. I said that I care most about freedom, and then you asked me completely irrelevant questions about whether or not I have the desire to give away information and weapons, which has nothing to do with the government infringing upon individual liberties. Nice try.
its your obligation to prove that removing the efforts would improve social welfare
What!? The burden of proof isn't on the ones who impose these restrictions and waste taxpayer dollars, but upon the people who just want the government to leave people alone? Interesting. I have a magical rock that keeps a grand majority of terrorists away, and I plan to rent it out to the government for a million dollars a day. It's on you to prove that it doesn't work!
I'm not trying to argue with you
That's exactly what you're doing.
its logical for me to say, "if you don't have anything useful to say, don't say anything". The points I posted I seldom read anywhere. My points also speak to your credibility.. Which with me is rating very low.
How is that logical? You also haven't said anything I'd consider useful; that sort of thing happens all the time. If people only spoke when you considered it 'useful,' people would rarely at all.
And what credibility? I simply spoke my opinion and put forth my arguments for all to see. Credibility is irrelevant here.
If you let anyone do what ever they want, they will hurt other people.
That's a straw man. No one suggested anarchy.
Wow, you need to learn to read more
I do? You're using it however you please, to mean whatever you want it to. You don't even comprehend what I'm talking about.
Being stopped at the border and searched, does not prevent you from being free
In fact, I think it does. Many of these stops also violate the US constitution. Now who's saying that they want to let anyone (meaning the government) do whatever they want? If they're not even bound by the document that lists the powers they have, they're not bound by anything.
If border searches violate certain freedoms, and they do, then you're less free than before. We used to make fun of the Soviet Union for less than this.
you don't care enough to go into politics.
What politics? Get rid of the NSA, TSA, constitutional-free zones, free speech zones, warrantless searching and wiretapping in general, and gag orders, to start with.
Clearly, you don't understand the connections being made
No, you're just attacking straw men and spewing forth irrelevancies constantly. Other countries are irrelevant to what the US is doing. I did not propose anarchy. That's just two things off the top of my head.
For example, that the government is trampling your rights with out any dentition for how its doing so. Plus, you brought up killing babies, which I think is a bit strange?
You asked something to the effect of, "Which country is more free than the US?" This is 100% irrelevant and has nothing to do with anything. The "killing babies" part is called an analogy, and I used it because I found it probable enough that you were using that ridiculous "If X is better than Y, then X is automatically good!" arguments when you tried to ask me if I knew of any countries more free than the US.
Your the one claiming the government is hurting you by taking away your freedoms..i.e the harm your claiming..
Right. Please try to keep up. Clearly this conversation was about terrorism, so try to use your brain to figure out how the government has been violating people's rights in the name of stopping it.
the US government has never been able to use mass surveillance as an effective tool of repression.
Maybe not yet. But even if they can't harass a huge number of people, they can still do so for select people.
And yet all Slashdot seems to be in full-panic mode about the NSA, while ignoring stop-and-frisk.
I don't know about other people, but I don't ignore it. The reason people are focusing on the NSA is because it's such a widespread violation of people's rights. I would imagine that people who actually care about this sort of thing also care about stop-and-frisk.
OTOH, the Courts just ruled stop-and-frisk is legal.
Just yet another example of how even the courts often don't care about people's rights.
For example, if you get a ticket for parking your car the government mails you a ticket, as you own the car you are responsible for the ticket. Again, freedom is important, but it requires a balance to security, just as you likely don't want someone with a gun to shoot you, you just expect that the government will balance out how it controls guns. However, you seem to have allot of expectations with out any concern for how those expectations come to be put in place. (More on that below..)
Oh, and don't assume I agree with random things that the government does at present.
The government has your address, in some cases you cell phone, and allot of other information about you.
And? This has absolutely nothing to do with the government violating people's rights. Try to keep up.
The reason theres not a problem in the US is because of the efforts that are taken.
That's what you'd like to believe, but have no evidence of. The real reason is because of my anti-terrorist rock.
Your the one explaining your point
And you're spewing forth straw men and irrelevancies and generally misinterpreting me.
There are limits, and those limits impact the overall type of government that exists.
What's this nonsense about anarchy now? I do not believe fundamental freedoms should be infringed upon, even for safety. The end.
A government is just a group of people who agree to certain things.
And the things that they do can be seen as morally wrong. What is your point, except to point out the obvious and then somehow tie it in with the rest of your nonsense about "balance"?
Please see social contract for more information.
I can't, because that's just something that means whatever people want it to mean. That said, the government should probably read the constitution.
Some times life requires compromise in order to achieve certain things, like for example having a safe place to live.
I do not compromise on fundamental freedoms. I am not required to do such a thing. The end.
Yet again, nothing helpful or useful to say.
That's how I feel about your entire comments. They're eyesores that are filled with irrelevancies, straw men, and statements of the obvious.
If every country except one was killing 100 babies, where would you go live ?
Again, this is irrelevant to the discussion of the government violating people's rights, and whether or not the 'best' country has flaws that must be fixed. I merely pointed that out. Read my comment again if you still do not understand.
You haven't offered one solution to a problem
What problem?
or even suggest a reason for why there's are where they are which would benefit the people reading it.
What? I don't even know what that was supposed to be. Are you attempting to appeal to the status quo or something?
its hardly useful if your points don't make sense to a person
100% agreed.
Always likely.
If freedom is the most important thing, Will you post your address on here ? Will you give me your full name ? WIll you give me your cell phone number? How about, would you give a crazy person a gun ?
What? That makes absolutely zero sense. I said that freedom is most important to me, and now you're asking me to waste my time posting information about myself? How does this at all relate to the government violating people's rights? Spoiler: It doesn't.
How do you define waste ?
As in... wasting money on killing people and starting pointless wars.
If you feel there's not a problem
I said that the problem is nearly nonexistent. I live in the US. The problem is nearly nonexistent.
You clearly lack intelligence of what the over seas situation is like.
You clearly lack intelligence of the point I was making.
Its also worth noting you would probably say we are wasting money on border security.
Considering that they violate people's rights too, yeah.
How does trusting people violate your principals ?
What violates my principles is when the government violates people's freedoms in the name of security.
More importantly what principals do you have ?
That freedom is worth taking risks for. That we should not sacrifice freedom for security a grand majority of the time.
Clearly, you have never lived anywhere other then the United States.
I don't know how you reach these nonsensical conclusions, and even more, I have no idea how any of this is relevant. Such garbage.
If you have visited one of the countries in the euro zone, please stop and remember there social policies have them in a bit of a physical crunch. Also, keep in mind there history.
What's this!? More irrelevancies!? It can't be!
Is there a country you think has more freedom then the United States ?
Saying that X is better than Y does not make X good. Killing ten babies might be 'better' than killing 100 babies, but neither are good things to me. Likewise, just because the US is better in some ways compared to other countries does not mean its negatives should be ignored. Bringing up other countries is utterly irrelevant. Enough with the irrelevancies.
We have entire groups dedicated to stopping car deaths. There are also projects to help reduce lighting deaths.
Both of which are probably nothing compared to how much we waste on 'security' and the military.
and the only defense to fear is a sense of security.
Which means that violating people's rights and spending trillions of dollars trying to stop a problem that's nearly nonexistent probably isn't a very good idea.
There is of course a balance of how much fear there is vs how much freedom people should have.
Balance? To me, freedom is the absolute top priority. Safety isn't even near the top for me.
I think people forget to be realistic and focus on the logistics of protecting our way of life.
We won't even have a way of life if we discard it for security. What happened to having principles? What happened to being the land of the free and the home of the brave? What happened to not being complete cowards? Nothing happened. People are as naive and idiotic as ever, I'd say.
I suck at golf, does that make me a bogeyman?
No, but if you're one of the many imaginary terrorists, you might just be a bogeyman.
And I think the government did more to inconvenience and harass most people after the bombing than the actual terrorists did.
Bogeymen are generally considered imaginary and don't have a body count.
Fortunately for us, most terrorists do indeed seem to be bogeymen.
it would give the person and the corporation 2 voices instead of one. Aka, one man, two votes.
Uh... no, it wouldn't. People are responsible for those voices, and since corporations aren't somehow sentient beings, those people still only have one voice.
Free Speech is a right of individuals, not of "groups".
Individuals make up groups. I don't want the government to be able to violate people's rights just because they decide to form groups when speaking.
Because lots of people despise freedom and the constitution.
Oh, and words can hurt emotionally, I suppose. Problem is, it's utterly subjective and anyone can be offended or hurt by anything. As for reputation, it's not the words that do that, but imbeciles who choose to believe them.
I'd say this is quite necessary, as precedent may need to be set. Mere laws are unlikely to do much.
I know Americans love to over-use hyperbole
Is that like how some people love to generalize?
If American democracy can survive that particular travesty it can survive the NSA knowing that you have no life.
It's not a question of whether we can survive. I see you're trying to trivialize this egregious violation of people's rights, or at least it appears that way. Why?