re: #256 Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All

When someone has a tool. They’re going to use it. and if the tools for data collection, and the data collected, remain available, then the scope of usage will expand and mutate into something much darker and much worse.

I don’t think you can develop safeguards to stop the abuse, not when everything is confidential and there is no one to watch the watchmen. If there were, then *maybe* you could justify it on a compelling national interest. but not in it’s current iteration.

I don’t like this argument, because it’s essentially the conservative “government can’t do anything right” argument when you get down to it. Government has watchmen; they’re called “Congress”. We’re so used to having a dysfunctional Congress that doesn’t do its job that people forget we’re supposed to have a representative government. Private industry doesn’t have watchmen except for the government, either. Fix Congress and fix the problem.