Presidential Candidates and Online Privacy 475
noiseordinance writes "I'd like to know everyone's opinion about which presidential candidate seems most likely to preserve Internet privacy." We haven't officially started election coverage on Slashdot yet, but I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to start tossing out questions like this as we get closer to the primaries. Try to stay on the subject of on-line privacy- we can run more stories on other topics in the future.
Ron Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
everyone's opinion? (Score:4, Insightful)
Before it even starts, can we just mod the entire discussion 'troll' and 'flamebait'? Instead of trawling for opinions, please browse either the Senate voting records or gubernatorial voting records of the candidates.
Ron Paul (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest either don't care so much about the Constitution or are so far in the pockets of special interests that the only thing I can be sure of is that it's going to continue being a bumpy ride for the next four years.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, as a politician, Ron Paul (if he even actually had a chance), would become just another bullshit politician, so it's all a moot point. You don't become a viable candidate unless you have the support of the establishment (aristocrats, other politicians, corporations, religious organizations and unions). So no matter who you are or what side you supposedly are on or what you purport to be your values, the only viable and successful candidates are the ones who will do the bidding of the aforementioned groups. One may perform the duties of one organization or another slightly more than another candidate, but the degree of variation is minor (which of course is why there is nearly no difference between the two parties -- or even most official independent candidates).
But of course, people have this misguided believe that all they have to do to change the world is place a vote. Why, if you place a vote, it will ALL change. Bullshit candidates will somehow become viable, despite shirking the establishment and they'll stay true to their word and everyone else will side with them, even though they don't push the agreed upon religious or union agendas. Of course, that's why things will never change. You and I are taught from birth that the bullshit which has been constant for generations is somehow only a vote away from changing. That we have the true power. That, why, one vote can suddenly stop the massive waves of people on the left and right who want to control every aspect of our lives and our thoughts.
And as long as we buy into that -- and as long as we care more about the next episode of a show where someone dances with famous people or a bunch of nattering hens on a daily morning show or the success of our commercial sports team that share our exact . . . um . . . zip code -- we'll continue to get what we've always gotten. And continue to believe that we're somehow making things change, when they're staying the same.
Not their job. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that the public really has a clue, though... Sadly, we've learned that our local public schools will gladly hand over authority to the federal government in exchange for a few measly dollars, so any presidential candidate could make a promise dealing with a matter that he/she officially has no role in, and you can be that laws will be passed and departments created that make it their role.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ron Paul (Score:2, Insightful)
Bluntly? None are interested in your privacy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Privacy isn't something any politician will give you. Privacy is something you have to take if you want it. Voting for privacy simply won't work.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ron Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong -- Ron Paul is an interesting candidate, and there are great advantages to a constitutional form of government. I just think that he's becoming the new Ralph Nader, with this underground movement which considers him the solution to all of our problems. He's certainly not the solution to Internet privacy concerns.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ron Paul (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I can see, he has yet to become a bullshit politician after years of serving in the senate.
Ron Paul (Score:2, Insightful)
* There are many individuals who would consider a total ban on abortions to be a major invasion of privacy, and
* Ron Paul is, from the statements on his website, 100% against any sort of legal abortion.
Other than that (and some deep skepticism about his idea to eliminate the Fed), he really does sound like a straight shooter. I respect the man, but can't vote for him.
Ron Paul is a phony (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ron Paul (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Ron Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignoring the strawman* you've erected for the moment, let's talk about the war on drugs and tell me how you expect to stop the flow of drugs. My brother-in-law got busted for smoking pot in September. Trouble was, at the time he was already in a maximum security prison, and has been for nearly seventeen years now. So please tell me: If we can't keep illicit drugs away from felons in a maximum security prison, how do you propose we keep them away from 300 million people in the third largest country in the world, geographically speaking? If your answer is to turn the entire country into a giant ultra-supermax gulag, you've pretty much admitted defeat in my eyes, as I find that wholly unacceptable.
* - I have a friend who had a terrible heroin addiction for years. He's been clean for about six years now, but I'm still opposed to the war on drugs. Also, compare and contrast: isolationist vs. non-interventionist. Pat Buchanan is an isolationist. Most libertarians are non-interventionists... though it is a fair cop to say some have isolationist tendencies.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:2, Insightful)
Right. Because Iraqis, Germans, Italians, Bosnians and Japanese have not had any elections since we introduced forces there. Can you name one sovereign nation that US has ever taken over in order to expand its borders and impose its laws over? Hint: Texas don't count.
In fact, after WWII the US forced many liberated countries to free their colonies, like Libya, Suriname, Indonesia to name a few.
You fail it.
Like it or not, the bad guys have guns. Hugs will not get it done, son.
Re:But Socialists refute private property rights (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ron Paul (Score:4, Insightful)
I know a number of people that are the same way (including myself - I could never condone someone having an abortion except in -very- specific circumstances, but that doesn't mean I'm going to force my personal beliefs on them and prevent them from having one if they feel it is something that they need to do. I could get more into it, but that would be veering further off topic).
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
There are pro-life atheists; the issue is not whether or not killing is bad, it's when you think a collection of cells deserves human rights, and how you think that affects society's (or your own) best interests. There are logically consistent positions on both sides.
To keep this post on topic: I think that some libertarian beliefs held by Ron Paul are pro-privacy, but some are not. I agree with those who say that a completely unregulated market will result in companies using dishonest tactics to deceive people and become monopolies. But, they do that already, and if Ron Paul were President he couldn't simply dissolve the FDA etc. as he'd like. There are checks and balances that would prevent his worst tendencies from being expressed, I think.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/life-and-liberty/ [ronpaul2008.com].
I find the statements here hard to square with 'politically pro-choice'. I would say he's personally pro-life, politically pro-state's-rights. He would end all federal funding for abortion (e.g. military hospitals, etc.), and would work to reverse Roe v. Wade by essentially making it a state-level issue. The closest he comes to being pro-choice, apparently, is that he is not advocating a nationwide abortion ban via federal law.
Again, his states-rights reading of the constitution leads him to a unique position. I'm borderline pro-choice, but I have to respect his position as consistent with his principles, and preferable to those which would ban abortion outright, nationwide.
He is a republican (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyways, as for hurting people when high... if I'm making bad choices in how/when/where I'm doing drugs so that I'm placing others at risk, then punish me for that. If I'm responsible and get high in an environment where I'm not going to harm others, why punish me?
We've already got this approach with alcohol... it's not illegal to drink... it is illegal to drink and drive.
As for breeding crime, I'd argue that having drugs illegal contributes more than if they were legally available, but that's a whole nother topic to get into.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
It shouldn't matter whether or not you live in a state with laws with which you disagree. The only important question is whether the woman carrying the fetus is pro-life or pro-choice. Do you really want to live in a country where a young woman in Arkansas has to cross the border to Missouri to get an abortion? Or worse, would you want to live in a state where a doctor would be charged with murder if he were to perform an abortion?
There are many more cases where a woman's life or health are threatened by a pregnancy. If it were my wife or daughter that was going to die or be seriously physically damaged by having to carry a pregnancy to term just because some religious yahoos decided that they have the right to force a woman to give birth, I would definitely break the law to protect my wife or daughter.
Worse, if states start passing laws where a fertilized egg has all the legal rights of a living child or adult, we're going to have a serious mess in this country. Fortunately, the hysteria surrounding abortion seems to be diminishing. Even in a small town of my acquaintance, where overfed men and women stand around womens' health clinics so they can scream spittle in the face of young girls who are trying to go see their doctor, it just seems like a lot of the air has gone out of that insane anti-reproductive rights movement. Oh, they are still standing around with their signs, screaming at pregnant young women trying to go to their doctor, but there seems to be a little less spittle than a few years ago. When you remember that the two front-runners for the GOP presidential nomination have both been pro-choice for all of their lives except the last year when they realized they had to get religious whackos to vote for them, and they'll go back to being pro-choice if either of them gets elected, it really becomes apparent that protecting the civil rights of a fertilized egg just isn't the issue it once was. Maybe some people are growing up. Or more important, maybe their daughters are growing up.
C'mon, what part of "born or unborn" do you not understand? To be a person, you have to be born. If you have not been born, you are not a person. Why does the Religious Right devalue the importance of motherhood to such an extent? If there was ever an example of what the word "belongs" means, it is that a fetus, which is totally contained by a woman's body, belongs to that woman. How can it be argued that an unborn fetus "belongs" to anyone BUT the woman?
I don't care if people want to live by a set of Iron Age superstitions, as long as they don't try to pass laws based upon those superstitions.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
Quote from you: Can you name one sovereign nation that US has ever taken over in order to expand its borders and impose its laws over? Hint: Texas don't count.
You are splitting hairs on "conquered territories" vs. "sovereign nations". Places that were once not part of the US become part of the US by force and then are dictated to. That is the argument (which I think is a reasonable reading of your comment) to which I was responding. Many of those places had legitimate sovereigns who were contravened by US authority and laws after they were conquered.
Also, you best check the actual tortured history of how Hawaii "voted" to become part of the US. I think it started somewhere along with a "fortuitous" assassination of their former head of state. Ditto Texas; the Republic of Texas had an American "immigrant" problem that makes our whining about illegal immigrants fairly ridiculous in comparison. Oddly enough, the hordes of uninvited Americans voted for Texas to become part of America; who'da thought?
LOL @ Gordon Gekko reference :), but in what way do you think that Iraq is "starting to show" that war can "get it done"? Depnding on very specific circumstances war *may* be able to get "it" done, I will readily grant, but your examples can be matched with equivalent ones that worked better without war. Slavery was ended in most countries (e.g. Britain) without a martial shot fired. The Eastern Bloc and then the USSR itself fell without US troops marching unto the the breach. War occurs only in those cases where the exigent circumstances dictate extreme measures, or massive misunderstandings of intelligence (or mere idiocy) cause a commander to believe that the circumstances dictate as such.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. Now I'm a huge proponent of state's rights and shrinking the role of the federal government as well as federal taxes. Abortion and many other topics, however, need to be addressed federally because they are constitutional issues. States cannot be allowed to pass laws that violate the constitution, including the separation of church and state.
The reason we have a bill of rights is to prevent the majority from abusing minorities. If states are allowed to pass laws that violate the constitution we'd have states banning all religions except christianity in short order, and that goes directly against individual freedom. Abortion is simply a more convoluted application of the very same thing. The only justification given for abortion bans is religious, and the government at both the state and federal level is and should be prohibited from enforcing religious laws when there is no conflict of rights between individual citizens.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an important part of what the founders had in mind when they wrote the constitution as they did. Allowing different states to take different approaches is a *good* thing, particularly since it's very easy for the population of the US to move to a different state if the system in their state doesn't work for them. This creates a sort of competitive market of political approaches, where the approaches that work best *for the people* attract the largest number of people.
Given 50 states with unique political systems, we could experiment with lots of ideas and evolve quickly towards the best of them. Unfortunately, the massive growth of federal power and influence has largely stymied this notion. I think the worst mistakes we've ever made were allowing the federal government to tax citizens directly and making US Senators popularly elected rather than appointed by the state legislatures.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
So, pick your poison, I doubt he'd protect online privacy outside of the government realm. Similarly, I'm fairly sure he's against government meddling in the internet, so he surely doesn't support Net Neutrality. I'm a pretty strong Paul supporter (I used to be a resident in his district, so he's received my vote before), but Net Neutrality has become a very important issue for me, and I don't know what I'll do in the election.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
Ron Paul voted for the FISA extension that allows warrantless wiretaps (unlike Kucinich). He has also voted for numerous "save the children" Internet bills to ban online pornography. He has also voted against consumer protection regulations that would limit private business' ability to collect personal information. He's also opposed regulation which tightly controls how private business can use and handle such information (like HIPAA).
Philosophically, Ron Paul is a free-market, small-government, libertarian. This philosophical position is contrary to the notion of privacy rights because any protected right is, by definition, an expansion of legal authority. IOW, Ron Paul ostensibly supports privacy but he does not support any law that would protect privacy rights because that's "an expansion of the Federal government". This philosophical position also means that Ron Paul supports "state's rights" at the expense of HUMAN rights. For example, Ron Paul believes that states should be allowed to decide the question of gay marriage on a state-by-state basis.
Basically, Ron Paul talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.
Re:Darfur Genocide and Acts In Congress (Score:2, Insightful)
To further illustrate the point, allow me to use a different example. For a long time I have not had a retirement fund (I'm young, give me a break) but I have been aware of that and thinking that I should. So I finally came to a non-hasty decision that I should do something about it. While that decision was not hasty and has been a long time coming, if I went out right now to the first bank I saw on the road and opened the first savings account in the brochure that would still be a hasty decision. Two very different decisions.
Again, you are talking about a decision to do something, the GP is suggesting that Ron Paul thought the actual "what exactly to do" decision was too hasty, not that the "should we do something" decision was too hasty.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
I heard he was crazy. But then I listened to him and now I'm crazy.
Re:I was absolutely pro-Ron Paul until... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ron Paul offers a very beautiful solution (nothing appalling). He says: if people in the US would like to get together and volunteer and pay help the Darfur cause - so be it. But don't get people's resources against their will to use for policy you think is morally right but not necessarily everybody else.
Dr. Paul voted against the gold medal for Rosa Parks as well. Do you know what he offered? He offered for all in Congress to chip in $100 and buy a medal. Needless to say, his wish did not come true. This example tells you a lot about "generosity" and "volunteerism" when it comes to spending someone else's money.