SteveC writes:
> At the risk of going against the tide, I would rather be in a country
> where they did search some percentage of the incoming passport holders
> belongings than one where they didn't.
They can search for things which can harm other people on the
flight. This involves plastique, weapons, hot isotopes, nerve agents
et al. I can hardly blow a hole in the hull with a DAT tape, can I?
> A combination of intelligence and criminalality does not happen that
> often, so criminals encrypting all their secret stuff is not of import to
Great, then why screening the file systems at entry, then? Moreover,
what precludes me from putting the encrypted stuff online on
http://www.netdrive.com/ & Co., crossing the boundary empty-handed,
and then accessing the warez by ssh or SSL session, Echelon being none
the wiser? So why this hard drive searching farce, then?
> me. What I do worry about is paying my taxes so people can walk in the
> country and claim benefit.
I was unaware that U.S. (judging from the traceroute on your domain)
grants financial support to steenkin furriners illegally entering
their borders. I was under the impression that even (and perhaps
especially) illegal immigrants had to work hard to keep their and
their families' bellies full.
As late FM2030 has so succintly put it, there are no illegal
immigrants, only irrelevant boundaries.
> Not that I am in favour of the RiP bill, it is terrible but in order to
> have some kind of democracy you have to protect it from other forms of
> government, terrorism and criminals. The best thing for us to do is
I have yet to see terrorists and criminals in an industrialized
country threatening to overthrow its democratic structure. If
anything, the resident goverments are the ones chipping away at it
(see U.K., Echelon and Carnivore for a few recent examples).
> promote tools like pgp or hushmail, so those who really do need free
> speech can get it.
PGP and hushmail do not grant free speech if you can track and filter
all Internet traffic at IP level.
(Moreover, as a good German, you should have nothing to hide,
anyway. The thought police has been notified).
