[LINK] Is police spyware in your computer??

[Darryl (Dassa) Lynch]

link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au wrote:
|| On Sat, Oct 03, 2009 at 09:31:37PM +1000, Karl Auer wrote:
||| On Sat, 2009-10-03 at 20:50 +1000, Tom Koltai wrote:
|||| But if the police actions mean getting those kind of people off our
|||| networks - well then, I for one don't really mind how they achieve
|||| their results - as long as they get results.
||| 
||| Really? So the ends justify the means, do they?
||| 
||| What an incredibly foolish thing to believe.
|| 
|| that was my first thought when i read that.
|| 
|| if the end really does justify the means then it should be
|| perfectly OK for police to buy and sell real children to
|| paedophiles in order to catch them.

They do it with other crimes such as drugs.

|| and it should be OK to arrest and torture random civilians
|| just on the off chance that they might be involved in child
|| porn. if they're innocent, they can be released.

They can take anyone in for questioning on drug matters and hold them
without charge for a number of hours, that would be torture  to some people.

|| if Tom disagrees with either of those things then he
|| actually does mind how they achieve their results.
|| 
|| 
||| What if they make a mistake?
||| 
||| What if they make a mistake about *you*?

They make mistakes all the time, that is why cases get thrown out of court.

|| even if they're not mistaken, there should - MUST - be limits on
|| what police can do. 
|| 
|| 
||| What if "those kind of people" is modified to be "your kind of
||| people"? 

The list changes all the time, smokers are next in line it seems.
 
||| Civil rights are not a luxury, they have a purpose. They are all
||| that stand between the Rule of Law and a police state.
|| 
|| it's disturbing how so many people fail to get that. i can't
|| figure out if they're terminally stupid or just terrified of
|| being tagged as supporting child-porn/terrorism/drug-dealers
|| or whatever the witch-hunt of the day is.

Why do people believe the law or government has to do everything.  Can't we
control our own behaviour.

Darryl (Dassa) Lynch