Washington Post Poll: Most Americans don’t care about privacy.
Most Americans Support NSA’s Efforts as long as it protects them from terrorism. Unfortunately the headline should read 51% of Americans too ignorant to realize that they are trading privacy for a false sense of security. Or maybe that 51% of Americans cannot calculate how statistically insiginificant the number of people who died in 9-11 really is.
May 24th, 2006
Tell me how many loved ones you have lost that you didnt mourn over because “statistically they were insignificant.”
Also, where is the outrage over having to have a drivers license? Isnt that an invasion of privacy? It isnt the government’s business how I drive…
Greetings!
May 24th, 2006
I would of course morn. However I do not expect the government to pay for a nationwide lightning net just because I had a family member who was unfortunate enough to get hit by a bolt.
A drivers license is an id not a specific product of surveillance. With changes it might be possible to use it for surveillance… Not however, in it’s current form…
There are specific laws regarding how you are allowed to drive which you are not yet being surveilled to reveal if you are following, the capability for monitoring that is not far off.
Hi! ;-)
May 31st, 2006
It would not surprise me to hear that many, and perhaps most Americans would not care about privacy. Most don’t really have any understanding of the matter or how little of it they actually possess. On the basis of my credit card charges of the past few weeks, anyone with sufficient savvy to get at the record could trace my travels, where I made purchases, and they may further infer about me based on the vendors listed therein.
I suggest that Americans will only begin to care and perhaps protest loss of privacy when they or someone close to them is hurt or sufficiently inconvenienced.
The number of Americans who were harmed or killed by the attacks September 11, 2001, for the purposes of this discussion, is irrelevant. Related to my previous suggestion, I also suggest that Americans who think the attacks justify whatever the Bush Administration wishes to do see themselves in the shoes of the victims. This is natural expression of the irrational, but occasionally useful response known as fear. I’ve spent a lot of time studying our species and fear drives many members far too often. If a large object, be it an automobile or a buffalo, is noticed ambulating in your direction, fear is very useful as it will cause your body to react in ways that could increase your survival by moving you out of the path. However, fear can also paralyze, leaving you to be reshaped by impact with the object. I suspect that those who don’t care tend to be of the “paralyzed” variety when it comes to fear rather than the “get out of the way” variety.
Regarding Gordon’s questions:
First, most Americans did not lose anyone they’d have cared any more about had they been hit by a bus or killed by disease. They only cared because of the means of death and their fear that they could be the next target.
Second, there is no invasion of privacy regarding a drivers license because driving is a privilege, as any traffic court judge will gladly tell you when suspending or terminating your license. In exchange for the privilege, one must demonstrate competency satisfactory to pass written and road tests, give information allowing drivers to be identified, and be subject to laws/rules governing the privilege of driving on our public roads.
Third, it is most definitely the government’s business how you drive since you must share the road with fellow citizens, and one of governments primary functions is to help us all get along with minimal harm done to each other. If you drive in a reckless manner, endangering your fellow citizens, if it isn’t the government’s business, whose is it?