Quote:
Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
If you are worried about your company's confidental data, then please tell me, what in that data would interest a custom's agent?? You think the custom's agents of the world are going to unite to overthrow your company??
|
True, but it misses the point.
I may
have nothing to hide. And I certainly don't mind things like bomb-sniffing dogs, and X-rays of my luggage to insure I'm not smuggling a gun or something. But when a customs officer or TSA employee wishes to examine the
contents of my laptop or other device, I have an issue. whether I have anything to hide or not, I see no plausible reason for them to look.
(And in fact, the only checks I've encountered while traveling thus far have been requests to turn on the laptop, to prove it's a functioning device, and not a disguised explosive.)
Talking about being happy if it blocks terrorist plans or kiddie porn is nonsense, for the reasons you mentioned earlier relating to protecting confidential company data. Anyone stupid enough to travel with that sort of thing on a laptop deserves to be taken out of circulation simply to keep them from breeding, let alone whatever the offending material is. It's far too easy to simply stash the stuff on a server and access it from wherever you are. There's no need to carry it with you, and too many reasons not to.
I live in NYC. I was here during 9/11. I have rather vivid memories of the experience, and firmly support measures intended to swat those doing such things and insure it doesn't happen again. But I support
effective measures, based on some understanding of the issues.
I'm willing to bet we could drop about half of the so-called "security" measures that have been imposed post 9/11 with no perceptible increase in risk. Too much of what is there now is a result of the way the game is played in politics. In a for profit business, you win by showing more revenue and profit on your bottom line this year than you did last year. In a bureaucracy, you win by being able to request a bigger budget and more staff next year. So the folks involved in
providing this security will be endlessly inventive about coming up with threats they need people and money to defend against and the politicians behind it are far more interested in making sure they get
re-elected than in actual security provided by their efforts, because they'll have all of these activities they can point to and say to the voters "Re-elect me! I'm
protecting you!"
Protecting me. Uh-huh. From
what? And who will protect me from
you?
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" are still words to live by.
______
Dennis