On 2/13/09, frank theriault <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Scott Loveless <[email protected]> wrote: > > > One possible solution might be to "punish" the police for this. <snip> > > No, the solution is to ~not pass~ anti-democratic laws like "Counter > Terrorism Act 2008" (there's an Orwellian doublespeak title if I've > ever heard one)! > > You're proposing yet another layer of bullshit in the system, to fix > up something that never should have been put in in the first place.
I'm not disagreeing with you, Frank. It's crap legislation. But western democracies have been in the habit of passing shit like this at increasing frequency for the last decade or so. I have no reason to believe that a demonstration and/or strong objections from the folks who are about to be on the receiving end of this is going to make any difference. It's going to pass and the police are going to abuse it. They're going to use it against journalists, citizen photographers and anyone else who gets in their way. They'll use it in non-terrorism cases to arrest and prosecute people who have documented the police doing something wrong. They'll claim that they thought the guy speeding without insurance was a terrorist when they got caught beating the crap out of him and, chances are, the courts will let them get away with it. You can argue the law's merits, or lack thereof, but it's about to happen. And free people shouldn't sit down and take it, before or after the fact. -- Scott Loveless Cigarette-free since December 14th, 2008 http://www.twosixteen.com/fivetoedsloth/ -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
