I can just imagine years ago, as some former freeee debated some historical justshutupandtakeit over privacy.
I can imagine my predecessor not wanting to take that first step down the slippery slope of total destruction of privacy. Maybe it was the SSN first being created or maybe it started long before that.
I can also imagine the old justshutupandtakeit telling him to 'put on the tin foil hat' or something like that when he stated that privacy will become a delusion if we aren't very careful not to take that fateful first step.
And now here we are, long after the fact, when privacy is all but gone, when what's left of it has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, when we are about to make '1984' no longer a work of fiction.
And now even the thought of privacy is delusional. Now, 50 or more years of destruction of privacy isn't warning of what happens when we allow small, incremental, seemingly harmless surveillance 'for our own good', when privacy is dead last in priorities, below safely, below money, below even convenience. No, now it has to seem as if it has always been this way. To want privacy is absurd, a crazy pipe dream.
Well, I won't have it. I'm not going to repeat the mistake of wanting more and more surveillance. It was wrong then, and its wrong now. Giving up fingerprints will lead to all kinds of unintended and other obvious consequences, just like the SSN did.
Today the argument is, "Why don't you want a national ID? Why don't you give fingerprints to whoever wants them? You already have a SSN and a drivers license."
Tomorrow it will be, "Why don't you want biometric cameras in every public place? You already have a national ID that tracks your every move."
I don't buy these arguments that deny that we are something other than flying down the slippery slope and trying to grab hold is dumb. Privacy is an essential part of Liberty and always will be.
In days gone by where was the privacy when everyone knew your business who lived in the town or the neighborhood? Where was the privacy concern when laws were enacted regarding personal morality such as adultery, sodomy, being an atheist or a Baptist (in Virginia), or marrying a person of another color?
With regard to such (truly important matters) we have far more privacy than in the past. Thus it is a delusion that we have less privacy today than in times past. It is true that we have to IDENTIFY ourselves more because we live in a society wherein it is easy to maintain privacy and thus hide our identity. In earlier society there was not as much travel and people did not need more rigorous means of identification because everyone knew everyone. Cities themselves developed as a means of gaining privacy by escaping the social responsibilities placed upon individuals within a feudal order. Those often escaped to freedom. Now that would be somewhat more difficult.
National I.D. cards are just dumb since it would be as easy to forge them as all other means of identification.
In the past we didn't need biometric cameras since we had the old Lady down the block who monitored every move on the block voluntarily and reported all.