> On Sun, 19 Aug 2007, Gadi Cohen wrote: > >In short: There is a law presently being passed that will give the > >police free access to all phone numbers, IP addresses, etc, creating the > >largest such database for police use in the entire Western World (i.e. > >Israel will set a new precedent for what is "allowable" in a democracy, > >using totalitarian policies as inspiration).
It's been just over 225 years since the American War of Independence is over, And americans are just now starting to forget why the fourth amendment to their constitution ([1]) was needed. In Israel, we never understood it in the first place. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution When you see your government (in the American case, the British government before the revolution) abuse their search rights and use them for unreasonable purposes, you understand why such an amendment is necessary. In Israel, we apparently have no such traumatic memories (we have far more traumatic memories from just before our independence, unfortunately), so people are far less opposed to giving the police more search power. It doesn't make us a totalitarian state, unless the police actually (ab)uses this power, and so far, I don't think that it actually does. -- Nadav Har'El | Sunday, Aug 19 2007, 5 Elul 5767 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |If a million Shakespeares tried to write http://nadav.harel.org.il |together, they would write like a monkey. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
