Re: Peter Swire: No, You Can't Search My Laptop

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Geoff Kuenning [geoff () cs hmc edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 3:08 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: Peter Swire: No, You Can't Search My Laptop

Jeff Nye writes:

> So I'm puzzled why they're putting people through the hassle.

A number of possibilities come to mind:

(1) They are trying to establish a precedent of expanded powers, so
    that in the future they can apply as-yet-unimagined abuses without
    getting slapped down.  (This, and #5, strike me as the most
    likely reasons.)

(2) They figure that a lot of bad guys are really stupid (which is
    true) and this will make it easier to catch them.

(3) They don't expect to catch terrorists, but know they'll catch a
    bunch of small fry and then be able to hold them up as examples of
    how they're "defending America."

(4) They just love power for its own sake.

(5) They're on a Puritan crusade against "obscenity".

(5) They're so thunderingly thickheaded that they think they'll
    actually be able to stop terrorist attacks by browsing through
    petabytes of MP3s.
--
    Geoff Kuenning   geoff () cs hmc edu   http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/

If you can't measure it, it's not science.
        -- Robert A. Heinlein, "The Door Into Summer"



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