<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by jongar:
They - meaning the federal goverment - why would they care what moves you were making - those with nothing to hide lose nothing in a free society. Those who have the most to lose are those who wish to damage that society. [/B]</font>
This is dangerous thinking..My question would be: "if they (the gov't) don't care what moves I'm making, why do they even need to know??? "Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to lose"? Cummon! That's ridiculous. Would you agree with random drug searches, pat downs on the street, and polygraph tests at every job interview, even if you had nothing to hide.
The problem comes later when originally good-intentions become applied to more and more things. (don't argue that this does not happen, it always does in every country).
For example, here in arizona the state attorney general and the county prosecutor have just revived a special task force to deal with hate crimes, which is fine (although I've never understood the difference in murdering a guy cause of his race vs. murdering him to steal his wallet). As part of this task force, a special hotline as been set up for citizens to call in and report "suspicous" people. From the attorney general's own lips: (I paraphrase from memory) "we don't care if they've done anything yet, if they have attitudes or use epitats (sp?) we want to hear from you. WE JUST WANT TO KNOW WHO TO KEEP AN EYE ON". (emphasis added). Now, they are not asking for reports on crime or possible crime, they also want reports on people with undesireable opinions. Now this is all fine and good, but imagine 50 years in the future at how this type of monitoring can get all out of whack as we lose touch with the role of government. What will be an undesireable political viewpoint 50 years from now? Maybe yours. In the last 10 years or so, I have seen with my own eyes how law abiding gun owners have increasingly, and incrementally been somehow turned into violence loving, social liabilities, even in the face of strong evidence to the contrary, and it continues to this day. That's just one example. There are a lot of things to think about on this issue. I would urge everyone to look at history to teach us how these things play out, both in this country and others. There are lessons to be learned. Ok, that's my two cents....thanks