lol. not too big of a fan of him, are you?
I kinda agree though, I just hope he just goes away and stays quiet.

Dansariki wrote:*Yawn*
I didn't bother reading the page.
Wadaya think blagoyavich is gonna do?

I don't think the Rod Blago-guy would keep quiet. In my experience, the most corrupt people fight for their so-called justice till their dying breath.

Democracy can be really effective if people take to the streets every time the government does something really wrong(or doesn't do anything, for the matter of fact). Like take the example of the Mumbai terror attacks. Initially, all the politicians responsible for neglecting intelligence on the attacks & making audacious statements after it, refused to resign. Every one of them. So scores of people took to the streets shouting slogans against the government & almost immediately heads began rolling. Every single politician, who we felt were responsible for the attacks got dismissed.
It's not just in case of terror attacks. There have been some high-profile cases (about 3 in recent times)where the accused initially got acquitted by the SC. People were damn angry & there were protests all over the country. The SC reopened the cases & the accused were then punished.

Obviously, one can't protest against all injustices. But if people protest against major injustices in a big way, the government does take notice. Everyone knows that the politicians just care for votes & when people threaten to deny them that, they sit up & take action. But it's really tough to get people to fight against the iniquities of the government. The media can play a big role here though. If they keep telecasting/printing the misconducts of the government in specific cases, people tend to wake up.

It's easy to motivate enough people to get something done when your city's been attacked by terrorists, the government ministers who should have been responsible haven't done anything, and the media's against them. But you try motivating people to take to the streets in protest against a new CCTV camera installation or a new "let's regulate the internet!" law or any of the other innumerable little erosions of our freedoms that pass with little opposition with the media gloating about how it's protecting the children. People are slaves to the media, never doing their own research, forming their own opinions. It's easy to sit by and buy all the justifications the government gives for denying your freedoms when your only source on the matter is the Daily Protect-The-Children-Ban-This-Sick-Filth Mail.

True. But I was talking about cases where the government does wrong & there's no doubt about it in people's mind. In that case, protests can work wonders. But in CCTV installations, you might see most parents agreeing with the governments proposal. Even if you did have an anarchist rule, people would be divided over this issue.

People agree with CCTV because they're manipulated by governmental and media scaremongering and bad statistics into believing that there is a problem and sacrificing their freedoms will actually help.
"Those who would give up liberty for a little security deserve neither."

*Applause*
And so I thought no one remembered Ben.
Sad it took a Brit to do it.

Dansariki wrote:And so I thought no one remembered Ben.

Who?

Benjamin Franklin.
The actual quote is "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." My bad.

There's little people like you can do in such scenarios. Citizens need to be educated as to what actually constitutes liberty & what constitutes safety. We can't blame the democratic government for it wholly. Emails usually are sent prior to attacks & the government will hold on to that if people demand freedom. I know, they'll throw in loads of statistics which supposedly show how computers can be misused if not regulated & stuff. But as max people don't realize this, it's always going to be their loss.

The fact is there's no security or monitoring system that can't be defeated with a little thought. The bad guys are always a step ahead. You can monitor emails all you like, it's a simple matter to use a little public key encryption to prevent anybody reading them. You can ban encryption if you want, but then internet business will come crashing down and the bad guys will simply find ways of disguising the encrypted messages in otherwise innocuous traffic. Much the same argument can be applied to almost any oppressive security system you choose to name. You violate the privacy of your citizens, inevitably get false positives, and meanwhile the truly dedicated bad guys will slip through your net.

It's called escalation.
Gordon puts it best at the end of Batman Begins:
"We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds. "
And so on and so forth.
Well, you make it sound as if surveillence does absolutely nothing.
It CAN catch people, it's just the false positives and violations of rights that are what people kill it on.
I agree, but you always much acknowledge it gets SOMETHING done.

Is it worth invading the privacy of millions of citizens and getting false positives on hundreds, thousands of them to make the bad guys think a bit harder to do what they want to? Let's pretend for a moment that the ridiculous levels of airport security are in fact 100% effective. What do the bad guys do? They blow up a damn bridge. Your privacy invasions have achieved precisely nothing. Once again I refer you to the esteemed Mr Franklin. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I agree 100% with Sent (there's a first time for everything =P )

Well, no. I was just making the point that, regardless, that it does catch some people.
I'm on your side in this, and I recognize this.
Racial stereotyping was found to be useless, read a couple weeks back.
The bad guys do always have the upper hand, but the doesn't mean we play pussy and let them slaughter.
We need SOME kind of deterrent.

Dansariki wrote:We need SOME kind of deterrent.

It's called prison.

*rolls eyes*
Yeah, terrorists are real deterred.
*Smack*

Oh, I thought you were referring to all criminals.
Terrorists can't be deterred because they believe they're totally in the right.

Which is why we can't just sit back and...
Oh forget it.
I prefer Sent, more intellectual :P

Dansariki wrote:Which is why we can't just sit back and...
Oh forget it.
I prefer Sent, more intellectual :P

More inclined to type out a long, intellectual post more like =P

Edit: New idea for this thread! Post your results here
Incidentally, this was unexpected

Ahh, i did that once but it was rushed.
I'll have to pass this time around, I'll try it tomorrow.