February 24, 2009

It Takes a Police State To Raise a Child

So says Texas Senator John Cornyn (Republican, of course), who believes all online activity should be archived for the police to peruse at their leisure:
"Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level."
Background:
(CNET) -- Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, supporter of a bill that would require Internet user records to be saved for police.

The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates.
(HT: The Next Right, where I have ranted at greater length than here.)

Addendum 20090226. I just googled "inferring meaning in random data"[1]. At the bottom of the page, there was
In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org.
I don't know if the request is spurious or if Google's search engine is flawed, but I am entirely capable of navigating away from illegal material if I stumble into it. Except, of course, even if I do, I might get a visit from the police should Cornyn get his way.

And how long before people submit spurious complaints to search engines in order to suppress ideas they disagree with? I guess we'll have to hire more lawyers & more bureaucreats to assure that doesn't happen: everybody knows that the solution to a problem caused by big government is to make government bigger.
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[1] I had recently found but forgotten the words 'pareidolia' and 'apophenia', and was trying to remember them

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