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Unimaginable. | by kelli217 | 2006-11-19 12:55:59 |
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Good article | by Kickstart | 2004-10-21 11:21:16 |
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Indeed | by PsychoI3oy | 2004-10-21 11:34:55 |
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If you're interested in libertariansism... | by kelli217 | 2004-10-21 11:50:23 |
| Interesting read |
by PsychoI3oy |
2004-10-21 12:48:44 |
and while I don't disagree with most of the points in it (I hate the patriot act as much as anyone else), I think the conclusion the author comes to is a tad extreme.
DR66 and tons of others will back me up on this, but when it comes to computer security, there's always an attempt to balance between security and convenience. e.g. longer and more complex passwords are more secure, but harder to remember; blocking all ports is more secure, but makes it dificult if not impossible to work from home, etc. There's a hundred other examples, and when it comes down to it, TPTB have to come to a decision about how secure vs how convenient they want the network/systems. Fortunately these kinds of situations are not a democracy otherwise passwords would be 4 characters long and all numbers (and everyone would use either their bank card PIN or the last 4 digits of their SSN, assuming the two were even different).
Magnified to a country-wide scale and switching from computers to general personal safety (which is what it boils down to; I'm no more dead because a terrorist killed me than I am because I got hit from a stray bullet in a drive-by), it becomes a much more slippery slope. The balance changes from security/convenience to security/freedom (as noted in the article). Much larger questions come into play about what TPTB can and can't say about our freedom/security.
On one extreme side of the slider, with no state-provided security, everyone must carry their own personal protection. While I believe in second amendment rights as much as DR66 or anyone else, I don't necesarily think that everyone should be trusted with a weapon, or should have to be responsible for one. This would be akin to making everyone in a company responsible for their own PC at their desk, including windows update, antivirus, popups, spam, spyware, etc. Sure there'd be those of us that'd run Linux and/or windows locked down tighter than a drum, just like there would be (and are) perfectly responsible (and darn accurate) gun owners. But I'd hazard to guess that there would be more accidental killings from people that just got spooked at the wrong time of the night by someone walking on the street behind them. Ultimately I think it is the responsibility of the government (local, with police forces; and federal with armed services) to provide certain levels of protection.
The author discussed the opposite side of the coin in the article, with the draconian police state concept, so I won't go into it.
Ultimately it's up to the voting public and the elected officials to strike that very fine balance between freedom and security. Obviously the slider was nudged a little too far after 9/11, but the challenge now is to ease it back the other way without reducing the national efforts to protect the country.
I have no idea how to do this properly, but from what I can see, neither do any of the candidates (major or otherwise).
I'm not entirely sure where I was going with this, but I'm hitting submit anyway because it took quite some time to type out and the concepts involved have been in my head for a while now. I'd be interested to hear what others think, though.
(references to DR66 are merely for example considering that he's both a computer security guy and a gun aficionado and his views on both are well known to the board) |
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