Several disagreements with that article.

Post #28,387 by Brandioch 2/14/02 2:34:34 PM Reply	Several disagreements with that article. Having MULTIPLE national ID cards? Won't work. Over time, they will drop until only one exists. That will result in a single, centralized database. Your driver's license is NOT a national ID card. A trusted flier program through the airlines, for instance, will be much like supermarket check-out clubs, at first. Sorry, I don't use either. It will be an extra benefit for those who undergo the inconvenience of background checks. But rapidly, like the supermarket clubs, it will penalize those who don\ufffdt have one. Exactly. Why be penalized because you don't want the government to track you? Biometric-based I.D. cards for everybody are coming. Squint, look ahead 50 years and honestly tell me you can envision a world where such things are not simply assumed. Yep. But just because I can see that it will probably happen, does not mean that I have to accept it. The more people who fight it, the longer it will take to implement. The important factor is not whether such cards exist, but whether they are a tool for robbing us of things we want and need. Okay, remember this line and read the next quote. Every time our government has demanded new powers of sight, we have sought new powers of oversight, such as the Freedom of Information Act and open meetings laws. Inevitably, they turn around and try to eviscerate the measures we\ufffdve taken. The government will demand the tools to take our privacy and then try to "eviscerate" any protections from those tools. So, why not just fight to prevent the tools in the first place? If the government doesn't HAVE them, then we don't need protection FROM them. Besides, it's a LOT easier to deny the government a tool than it is to check that it isn't being abused once they have it. (Ollie and his paper shredder come to mind.) In fact, I see privacy and freedom as among the most important of all human values. History shows that we got them by increasing the amount that each of us, as a sovereign citizen, knows. We did not get them by frenetically trying to police what other people know. Welcome to 2002. May I introduce you to the concept of the "database"? NSA, anyone? There will be places and things that cannot, for reasons of national security, be available for scutiny by the average citizen. Now, the problem is human nature. Do you collect the information, hoping that someone not subject to scrutiny will NOT abuse it... -OR- Do you restrict the information collected so that, even if they were the kind to abuse it, they would not have it? Check out the FBI's history. Or the CIA's history.
Post #28,400 by Ashton 2/14/02 3:52:13 PM Reply	This topic may be a golden example of why it is that, logic (alone) is never enough ? (OK - as close to a golden example as can be.. 'logically deduced'? ;-) I'd rather run with your sententious 1-line sonnet, Welcome to 2002. May I introduce you to the concept of the "database"? Voila! precisamente and all that: and the Heart of my periodic fulminations about this so-called Information Age, which I insist is neither more nor less than YAN.. ..of an endless series of human follies, so aptly summarized by Bertie Russell. ..a near-prototype of our infinite capacity for EZ oversimplification of just about every complex situation we encounter ..ie It's another Black Tulip Craze. Period. {sigh} Anyway, I think the author 'feels' the built-in contradictions, kinda gets a gnawing sense that all our cute principles contain always the Reverse as well as the Obverse: of some nice idea we wish would 'settle things'. Now when the topic is really a meta-topic, ~ Information about Information (gathering? dissemination? security? access? ____?) Well, we can see where involution and recursion leave us: as far from [Truth] as usually we Are. Prediction [!] We shall see voluminous scholarly, pedantic, folksy, wishy-washy and surgically-keen.. essays next, as we- trod inexorably- down this- slippery Path: of trying to keep the checks&balances just slightly ahead... of the malevolently greed-besotted folks who will use Any technology ---> in pursuit of Ayn-Randish Ideals (or by any Other fav name). Be sure also to intermix theological Certainties of all those Possessors of Revealed Truth: to confound our extrication from the morass, the chasm which: I think I see Yawning like the event-horizon's periodic emissions nearby.. the Unviewable Black-Hole that draws us ---> in. Of Course I can envision no 'solution' next, any more than Bertie could. He chose to illustrate what-we-always-do, via a squiggly line-drawing of opposing armies hacking.. away at each other. I can't improve upon his brevity. Ashton it's.. all.. happening.. in.. s l o w m o t i o n. time for some Dickie Wagner, I think.
Post #28,414 by Brandioch 2/14/02 7:00:10 PM Reply	The weird thing is........ Yes, we'll see numerous "experts" on this subject. But I think that the old experts are still the best. 1984 Just because we can see it happening DOES NOT mean we have to accept it.

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