How about a mandatory 3-strikes law for speeders? 3rd strike and you lose your license permanently.
I love that argument. Let's make it more illeagal. These people already don't care about the law! They didn't care that it was illeagal to drive under the influence, but they will care about driving without a license? Come on!
Putting breathalyzers and other gizmos in cars isn't the answer either. These people that have lost their licenses, their insurance and their cars just go buy old beaters out of the paper for $500 bucks and drive them till they break/get confiscated/whatever without registering them. You don't want them drinking and driving? Put them on monitored house arrest (hell, put a monitor at their place of work too), or put them in jail.
You don't want your face scanned - don't buy an airline ticket. You don't want your e-mail read - don't send any. You have a free way to travel - you can walk. You have a free way to communicate - travel to whomever you want to talk to to and start flapping your gums. Identifying your face when you get on an airplane does not eliminate your freedom. It increases it. It does this because it helps to protect your life. You know, that self-evident freedom, along with liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I know, I know. The police might ask for your ID if you don't look right when you are out walking. You can't yell 'FIRE' in a crowded movie house. The principles that apply in the U.S. are that your freedoms are pretty much absolute unless (and this is a big unless) the rights of someone else are threatened. I'd say that being killed as part of a terrorist act is a pretty big threat. If the government wants to know that I went to Disneyland with the kids on an airplane, I'm okay with that. If I want to plot to overthrow the government and the big meeting is in East Bumfsck, I would probably not get on the plane. Hmmm... Maybe this would make terrorism a little more difficult?
So many of these arguments about freedoms are based on the argument "I don't want the government to know what I'm doing." Why? Are you embarrassed? Are you afraid that you might be doing something wrong? If you are, then why should you be able to get away with it? If you are not, why worry? If the government makes a mistake (this is the fear that I understand) more records would HELP YOU! If the government has a db entry that I went to some terrorist meeting on such-and-such a date, I would love to pull out e-mail records (preferably with PGP signatures!), atm records, toll both records, credit card receipts and more that all show that I wasn't there!
I keep seeing the phrase that 'information wants to be free'. So why not this kind of information?
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I love that argument. Let's make it more illeagal. These people already don't care about the law! They didn't care that it was illeagal to drive under the influence, but they will care about driving without a license? Come on!
Putting breathalyzers and other gizmos in cars isn't the answer either. These people that have lost their licenses, their insurance and their cars just go buy old beaters out of the paper for $500 bucks and drive them till they break/get confiscated/whatever without registering them. You don't want them drinking and driving? Put them on monitored house arrest (hell, put a monitor at their place of work too), or put them in jail.
Unless you are running a recent version of Windows, which puts a Windows icon on the bottom left, on the Start button.
You don't want your face scanned - don't buy an airline ticket. You don't want your e-mail read - don't send any. You have a free way to travel - you can walk. You have a free way to communicate - travel to whomever you want to talk to to and start flapping your gums. Identifying your face when you get on an airplane does not eliminate your freedom. It increases it. It does this because it helps to protect your life. You know, that self-evident freedom, along with liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I know, I know. The police might ask for your ID if you don't look right when you are out walking. You can't yell 'FIRE' in a crowded movie house. The principles that apply in the U.S. are that your freedoms are pretty much absolute unless (and this is a big unless) the rights of someone else are threatened. I'd say that being killed as part of a terrorist act is a pretty big threat. If the government wants to know that I went to Disneyland with the kids on an airplane, I'm okay with that. If I want to plot to overthrow the government and the big meeting is in East Bumfsck, I would probably not get on the plane. Hmmm... Maybe this would make terrorism a little more difficult?
So many of these arguments about freedoms are based on the argument "I don't want the government to know what I'm doing." Why? Are you embarrassed? Are you afraid that you might be doing something wrong? If you are, then why should you be able to get away with it? If you are not, why worry? If the government makes a mistake (this is the fear that I understand) more records would HELP YOU! If the government has a db entry that I went to some terrorist meeting on such-and-such a date, I would love to pull out e-mail records (preferably with PGP signatures!), atm records, toll both records, credit card receipts and more that all show that I wasn't there!
I keep seeing the phrase that 'information wants to be free'. So why not this kind of information?