Originally posted by Rakshasa
Ever read 1984? Of course the horrible ideas about total surveillance developed there are quite as exaggerated as demands for an "inactive" government would be, but anyway it's the most important thing to find a certain balance between these extremes - and to keep the government from disrupting it, no matter how dangerous a political situation may be.
Well, maybe I'm just overreacting a little bit, but here in Germany some 
politicians seem to try to take advantage of the people's fears and suggest measures like including fingerprints in id cards, which probably will improve internal security by granting the government access to every cititzens biometric data. But would that really help to fight terrorism? Probably not...
Another politician declared that, in order to preserve our freedom, it would be necessary to strengthen the police's rights and allow the army to support them. But can you really save people's freedom and liberty by limiting their rights in favor of the police? Probably not...
Of course you might now tell me, that I'm just making "way too big deal about the government meddling in my business" - but I, for my part, would not trust any government so much that I would equip it with dictatorial powers, and if some "trusted government" listens to your phone calls, reads your mail and now even tries to take everyone's fingerprints, this sounds to me pretty much like a great step into this very direction.
yes, i agree with all of this. now, i don't normally have any faith in american society, but i'm confident it will never be a police state to this extreme degree. when i hear people worrying about the government having record of their fingerprints, etc, it just makes me think, "why are you so worried? if you're not murdering people, you have nothing to worry about. and if you are murdering people, then i want the government to have your goddamn fingerprints!"
let's get real -- if you're not caught up in shady dealings, you have nothing to worry about. the cops have better things to do than sit around listening to you tell your buddy over the phone about the chick you banged last night.
the current bills that are working their way through congress are not as egregious as some paranoid folks would have you believe. they cover things like, not having to get another warrant each time a suspected terrorist enters another county -- and that's
county, not country. i think it's ridiculous that you DO have to go through all that paperwork.
if there are more extreme proposals that i'm not aware of, you can bet that they'd never actually be passed. even in the midst of all this frenzy, a politician would never vote for it because it would come out in the next election cycle, and americans have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the words "censorship" and "big government."
it seems that when people fight for less government it's always in the vein of, "give me the right to harm myself." i understand in abstract terms why this is important, but at the same time...i find it annoying. just shut up and be happy your government wants to lessen the chance of you dying in a car accident, being mistakenly shot by a hunter, or contracting anthrax, for example.
