So what would you call the guy who tried but failed to blow up an airplane full of people recently?
How about: A criminal? How about that word? Last time I checked, trying to kill hundreds of people was a crime. In his weird and sad way what he tried to do was probably not evil. So since evil stems from the perception/perspective of the one being submitted to it I think the entire word has to go out the window in discussions like this. Good and Evil are fairytale words that normally don't do reality justice in any way.
There are different kinds of evil doers. Some of them get themselves elected to public office or become so after they are elected. That isn't the same as someone flying airplanes into buildings or blowing them out of the sky.
How exactly is it different? If a strange person chooses to commit murder-suicide for religious reasons and goes on a plane to do it I can see little difference to an elected official sending other people to die for his religious beliefs. It's both wrong but supposedly done for the "good" cause.
Besides, do you really expect anything on the Internet to be private? If you want your messages to be private, learn to securely encrypt them, or whisper them into the ear of the recipient in a remote forest.
Agreed. The question is just: How much right will you grant a government to snoop on everyone? When does it stop? Following your argument I'd assume you'd say "Never" since there is always the possibility of some other "evil" deed to be done so that ordinary people can't live their lives in privacy anymore because we care too much about the few dozens that snap in a spectacular fashion. After all someone driving his car dead on into traffic or shooting their family is nothing better or worse than a planejacker only that it's more prominent to show us the bomber and make everyone panic. Ever thought about how your neighbor could stab you to death at any given moment? No? Why aren't there laws prohibitting my neighbors from owning knives? They're potential death threats to my community.
If you are not an evildoer, then it is unlikely that any law enforcement officer would have the remotest interest in your mundane life. They have better things to do to keep track of you and your life, unless of course you are involved in sex with minors.
How about you're a minor yourself? What if your telephone says you've had consentual sex with a girl/boy of the same age and because people in robes think that you should go to hell for that you will be subject to criminal prosecution. Or say, you have not paid your taxes in full, or sped over a red light, or took phone calls from the wrong people once, or used the wrong email host, had a website in the wrong place, wrote a displeasing text on the internet, made copies of music/movies and gave them to friends.
Law enforcement has LOTS of interest in you. After all, the smart criminals take a while to get caught. Someone has to employ the rest of the staff to get "something" done. Doesn't really matter what but once you read up on how surveillance is actually used in many cases you'd be surprised.
It is sad, but evil is very real in this world.
Sure it's real, unfortunately most people have forgotten what true evil actually looks/feels like. A desperate spoiled idiot with religious megalomania who gets on a plane single-handedly to blow himself up in martyrdom is not evil. If the same person got chosen (by democratically elected officials) to go to his bank job an blow up the economy for fast revenue
Would you rather that new frontiers to never be policed or surveilled ever?
I would rather people started fixing that fucked up thing we call a "society" instead of trying to stomp out the fire even harder. Our societies are at war with each other because we're still ruled by ignorance and greed. No one installs monitoring systems in the offices so why the hell wonder about terrorism? To take your "frontier" analogy a bit deeper into reality. Instead of building a fence thousands of miles long and trying to "monitor" what goes over it you could try to seolve the issues that drive people over such a barrier. But you're probably right, monitoring is way less dirty and can't be pinned to individual responsibility.
The fact is that criminals and other evildoers are using the internet and other technology for nefarious purposes as well as the good guys.
Oh come on, evildoers? Really? Where are we? Kindergarten? I had hoped that this word vanished with the imbecile who introduced it. There are more "evildoers" in public positions and among the ranks of history than ANY terrorist group will ever hire in the entire existence of the planet. Sure we all use the technology for what we can and to prevent our antagonists from beating us to it. The problem here is that we subject millions of people all over the world to ridiculously inept means of what we call "prevention" and "preemptive measures" that the tiny amount of actual victims is far outweighed by the hysteria riddled members of the public who are easily manipulated. How many Al Qaida operatives do they actually catch in New Zealand? Isn't this just another excuse to find means to control your population? I seriously don't know but as of late
I for one am glad for police and law enforcement agencies having the same powers as they would have in the offline world.
Then you, for one, don't understand that there is a difference between the "powers" in the offline world and the ones in the "online" world. Even if you wanted you need to put lots of effort into pinpointing someone's location in real life. The combined data from all our real world tech appliances on the other hand seem to erradicate that effort and give us instant access to whatever you need to know. At least in the olden times to find someone's hidden stash you would at least have to actually go to his place and break it open.
I wish you a happy 2010 and hope that you'll take a lesson in what people call "sarcasm". Getting it makes life on the interwebz much easier you know?
I'm assume you're being sarcastic. But typically buses, trains and planes with internet hook ups do it via a cellular card which is then connected to the WAP. So far it's the most reliable way of providing service. I suppose on planes or something where people don't move about they could use ethernet hooked up to a regular router, but generally WAP is well enough supported.
What is this sarcasm you are speaking of? For I come from the interwebs and have never heard of such a thing.
We warn the reader in advance that the proof presented here depends on a clever but highly unmotivated trick. -- Howard Anton, "Elementary Linear Algebra"
