Cairo
Minmatar
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Posted - 2007.03.29 07:08:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Digital Solaris
Besides, what are you keeping on your harddrives you do not want Big Brother to know about at all costs, hm?
You're obviously entitled to your opinion (which I won't delve into further), but you might not want to use the above argument to support it because it seriously weakens your position as a supporter of what is already considered an unpopular opinion by many. Not that there is or even SHOULD be anything wrong with having an unpopular opinion in itself - sometimes opinions are unpopular simply because they go against whatever is considered or accepted as the "truth" at THAT time by some other party. Such as whomever consider themselves (and can make others believe) to be the "majority" or "experts" on the matter and who are unwilling to accept a dissenting thought.
What's wrong with using that argument is that it leads to a world where you do NOT have the right to an unpopular opinion or a dissenting thought. Where the freedoms of individuals are limited and the populace kept in check through methods OUR generation would consider a violation of our privacy but to which that FUTURE generation has grown used to one small bit at a time, not unlike the frog that boils to death because the heat has been turned up gradually. While today one can expect to have the right to an unpopular opinion or a private habbit some might consider weird, you appear to support the kind of system where everything is monitored, scrutinized and logged for some future use you can not possibly be privy to. "Freedom of Speech and How To Fight The System.doc" might not be a liability today in most countries (aside from being in a crappy proprietary format), but in some potential Big Brotherish future a log entry of your computer once having stored such might lead to trouble. "George W Bush gangbanged.jpg" might be a bit of good Photochopping fun today, but who's laughing when someone decides to raid your apartment for it?
Reminds me of that case where children were temporarely taken away from their mother, who was threatened with jailtime over wanting to have some photos of her breastfeeding her child developed. Sure, it was just a kneejerk reaction by a photo technician from Texas, but imagine if in an attempt to avoid such "public" review of your sensitive photographs (to which you should have EVERY right) you kept them on your PC - out of sight and not disturbing anyone - and your home got raided simply because the filename "Breastfeeding Lolita.jpg" got flagged and some underpaid, overworked IT worker and their paid-by-results manager thought it was suspicious or just plain WRONG and called the cops?
Honestly, the whole "What do you have to hide?" argument is a big, stinking pile of you-know-what. There's a ridiculous amount of data on computers out there, plenty of which people want to keep to themselves and that's none of anybody else's business. I bet you have such material on your computer, too, but naturally I wouldn't know about it because you want to keep it private. Fortunately for you I happen to support your right to that privacy.
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