The Plunk said:
Baresark said:
I can agree whole heartedly with the final sentiments of this article. Any government agency will use anything at their disposal to get what they want. This time it was a sex offender, in the future it may be any dissenting opinion about current "regimes".
/endparanoia
...I would like to ask the community to join me in thanking the hard working deputies that brought this fugitive in without incident.
We all know they wanted to shoot the guy. A lot of police officers feel they are part of some sort of military operation and love to be able to shoot people with little no repercussions. Cops in Detroit shoot and kill 4 year old girls sleeping on their grandmothers lap. A sex offender has a big target painted on him. They were probably pretty upset about not shooting.
Fwoo, got that off my chest. Now I feel better. The availability heuristic at work is a fine thing.
Either you're being ridiculously hyperbolic, or America is closer to an authoritarian dictatorship than I had thought.
I'm not really, but that does happen. I stated a fact about what happened to that little girl in Detroit, but all governments have a history of using information against people who the state consider to be a dissident. It is just something that historically happens. Like I said, it's not bad it was used to take down a sex offender, but I do think there should be limitations on what governments can use against citizens.
I'll give you a prime example, EZ Pass. It's great, and the states that use it originally promised it will not be used for tracking purposes. About a year after it went into use police organizations started sending tickets to people who traveled too quickly between toll locations. They were just fines and not actual license points as a speeding ticket would be, but theft by the state is still theft. Another prime example is Racketeering or the RICO act. They couldn't catch crime organizations doing anything wrong, so they made a broad spectrum set of laws that were so vague that the state can attribute it to just about any business organization they see fit to. Crime is too smart, so they simply made more things illegal. It's not about an authoritarian police state, it's making laws that fit a crime and then intentionally leaving them open to interpretation. That is something I have yet to see any government not do to some extent.
That's not to say that all government want or intend or will do evil things to their citizens. And by and large, it's not the governmental institutions that are guilty, but individuals with control over those things. That was a big part of the philosophy of the post revolution America. People are imperfect, so institutions must make up for peoples imperfections. But individuals put in charge of those institutions still err all the time. So you get police officers that kill little girls and face no repercussions for what is essentially an act of murder disguised under police action.... I'm rambling, my apologies. Suffice it to say, I see problems but I'm generally optimistic about most things.
PS. If there are mistakes in the that was written, I apologize. There is this obnoxious Clinique ad that is covering half of my type box, and I can't rid of it. Escapist, FIX YOUR ADS!
Edit: I was able to edit this without the Ad being in the way. So, it's been edited for coherence and I sometimes go comma crazy.
