[WFTR]

Most normal cell phone owners already provide all these particulars and get credit checks b4 they are provided cell phones. In fact the disposables were a relatively new concept. We wouldn't be "reducing any freedoms" by doing that, since such "freedoms" don't even exist for most cell phone owners

What happens with "most normal cell phone owners" is irrelevant. If someone is going to have to run a check where they didn't previously run a check, then we are reducing freedoms and inconveniencing ourselves. While I have a regular cell phone, the idea of the disposables is nice. In an age where identity theft is a bigger and bigger problem, the idea of having my cell phone set up in a way that doesn't leave a paper trail appeals to me. If I choose to take advantage of that freedom, that freedom should be available to me regardless of what "most" people do.

Nonsense. That's exactly the kind of crap the new York Slimes has been selling by revealing all the secrets about our intelligence services tracking financial records and phone calls of the Al Quaeda vermin to Al Quaeda. We absolutely need to do that.Without those, we'd be having another 9/11 this very week. What's the use of "freedom" when you are blown up on a plane in the mid-Atlantic?

Nonsense yourself. Now you're just twisting my words to justify your own anti-freedom beliefs. I have nothing against tracking the terrorists bank accounts or the phone calls that we know that they've made. If the technicalities of the law allow the government to prosecute the press for revealing what the government is doing, I believe in full prosecution of those in the press who publish secrets.

Let me try to explain my position again, and maybe this time you'll understand it clearly. Have you ever heard of the saying that those who trade freedom for security will have neither? I think Ben Franklin made that statement, but sometimes these sayings are falsely attributed. I believe the exact saying may even say that those who would make that trade deserve neither freedom nor security. That's part of what's happening here. You are arguing that we give up freedom in order to have security. I'm saying that we lose that trade whether we live or die.

You are trying to present a scenario where our options are to lose freedoms or die in a plane crash over the Atlantic Ocean. Your very dismissal of the importance of freedom proves that this is your attitude. My point is that there is another and better path. That path is to kill the terrorists and to kill as many as we have to kill in order to make ourselves safe. That's how our ancestors secured the freedoms that we have today. If we aren't willing to do the same thing, we won't be leaving any freedoms for those who follow.

Bill

[Jameison]

"What happens with "most normal cell phone owners" is irrelevant. "

Oh it's relevant alright.
I am going to bet that when any poll is taken, on this issue, it will come out with the public strongly in support of id'ing disposable cell hone owners.
Why? In part because most of the public won't even be affected by it at all. Plus unlike you and The Slimes, the public actually recognizes that we are in a deadly war with an implacable, genocidal, psychotic enemy, and that these are not normal times.
Politicians will usually respond to what the public is thinking, and what the public want.
After The Slimes leaked the details of the secret monitoring of terrorist phone calls and bank accounts, every single poll had the public STRONGLY in support of those programs.
The result? The Patriot Act was renewed, even after The Slimes had leaked their story just before the debate on renewing that Act started, in an attempt to sabotage it.

[Jameison]

" someone is going to have to run a check where they didn't previously run a check, then we are reducing freedoms and inconveniencing ourselves"

WE already run checks before renting a place to someone, and for practically every utility,including fixed line phones.
Running a check for cell phones is simply running a check on another utility.
We are not "reducing" any freedoms" that most cell phone owners don't already go without.

"Inconveniencing ourselves"?
Oh puleeze.
I travel all the time,and since 9/11, airport checks have been far more stringent than before.
I have had to take off my shoes, be called aside and had the metal detector thing run all over my body, told to stretch my arms, lift legs etc etc.
Is that "inconveniencing myself" too?
Yes.
Is that necessary? You bet.
Does every American that travels have to deal with it already?
YES.
You don't have a point.