And yet I'm still trying to figure out just what liberty you would be giving up. A simple tracking of the sales...
Yep, that's it. Wasn't hard, was it?
...that is then destroyed after a short amount of time...
As one who has created (design and development aka "systems analysis and design") with respect to government databases and interrelated information systems, I can assure you it is NOT "destroyed after a short amount of time." I haven't a clue as to where you're getting this hairbrained idea, but hairbrained it is. There are "requirements" for the destruction of all sorts of data which is nevertheless out there and has been for a long, long time, well after both "requirements" (lower limits) as well as expiration dates (upper limits) have expired.
Those limits don't exist for the rights and privacies of We, the People. They exist so that various government agencies can ensure that lower levels are deleting information which may be useful in demonstrating innocense while the same information can be used against you in a court of law at ANY later date.
I may have just created a few enemies. I hope, as I served my country and hope that anyone else who did the same might not take so much objection to what I'm saying because at one time, they learned the same precepts as I.
When I was young, I skiied the back bowls of Vail. Double black diamonds. I fell, and got beat up. From that I learned that if one doesn't want to damage the body, don't engage in physical activity that's potentially dangerous.
Years later, in church, I courted a few of my sisters. Double white diamonds. I fell, and got beat up. From that I learned that if one doesn't want to damage the body of Christ, which is the church, don't engage in physical activity that's potentially dangerous (no, no pregnancies - just some broken hearts).
Years later, in the military, I'd finally learned my lessons, but still fell and got beat up. This time they were simply willing to damage the body of the military because they hadn't learned the first two lessons before they rose to a level where they were "above reproach." So they engaged in dangerous activity, and...
...they got beat up. I'm still here. Not physically, on either side. Just all politically, socially, environmentally, and most importantly, relationally (courtesy of my church days).
Lot's of quotes:
"doesn't prevent you from buying the guns"
"instant background checks don't impede your ability to purchase the gun that day"
"it's the government's job to enforce the laws"
"using new technology to combat crime and changing criminals"
As to the last, may I remind you you're speaking to an information systems analyst? I was into the Internet in 1985. The Internet wasn't commercialized until the 1990s, when most folks began referring to the "internetting of networks" we'd created in the 1980s, the idea of which began in the 1960s, and which was militarized in the 1970s, and educationalized in the 1980s. I was both part of the ICANN and the IETF in their earlier years, back when most of us were doing it voluntarily and for fun, not pay.
We INVENTED many of the crime combatting statistical analysis algorithms, combined with time and location-sensitive information designed to analyze, map, and predict crime patterns. These days, when LEA's actually
use some of what we came up with back in the 80s, with a few mapping revisions, it shows up on their maps like cockroaches running from a light. Or more appropriately, ants running away from a cricket that's been dabbled with a drop of insecticide.
But likewise it is the job of the citizens to stop the government from over-stepping it's bounds.
Thanks for that! I'd argue those bounds stop at both bounds of authority granted to them by the Constitution of the United States of America, and ONLY from those powers both detailed therein and/or reserved to the States.
Beyond that, a FREE PEOPLE remain a FREE PEOPLE.
Until, of course, they begin giving up their freedoms based on a few wily arguements of government flunkies who don't understand the principles and documental foundations upon which our country was founded.
...just as how requiring people to get permits when they assemble (see the whole Westboro "Church" protests) doesn't violate the 1A...
They do, as there are conflicting liberties at steak in the Webtboro "Church's" right to freedom of speech and the begrieved's right to peacably assembly.
Unfortunately, the latter group's right to peacbly assemble i.e. be free from action on the part of others to disrupt that peace, was NOT given equal weight with the WBC.
Um, but wasn't "WBC" the moniker for the Warner Brothers Cartoons?
Anyway.
I don't see a simple tracking system as us giving up any liberties.
I do, HUGELY. Supervisors galore kept telling me how "important" it was to track all of a student's, soldier's, or employee's information, and it was always a constant battled to keep up first and foremost with the laws of the United States of America, and secondly to keep supervisors appraised of the reasons as to why inclusion of this or that piece of information was a violation of local, state, or most often, federal law.
This doesn't do well for one's career, and is the principle reason as to why my career rose to T, as to opposed to Z. Meanwhile, those who were willing to ignore the rules, copy the information, put it into databases in violation of the law, and keep it in violation of the law, well, they did better than I did.
But my life wasn't lived in databases. It was lived in combat. Data was just an aside, a small job on the side.
And if that doesn't tell you volumes about what goes on behind the scenes, with full-time folks doing this all the time simply because they were more beholden to their supervisors than their the laws of their country, much less than their country, well, think again. Sadly, that's largely the way it is.
That's what we're fighting.
So when I and others here on the forums hear people telling us to ski down that slippery slope, I say, "No, I know it's exactly where that slow goes, and it's nowhere I, my family, my church, friends, family or brothers want to go."
There's a reason it was first termed a "slippery slope." Most people fell clean off.
Now the fear of the government mishandling that data could be another concern, but that's a different issue.[/QUOTE]
