Actually, it proves that the SF Weekly has the right to amass this much information about John Poindexter -- and about you, if its editors saw fit. Naturally, John Poindexter has no right to acquire the same information about columnist Matt Smith. What you are missing is that the SF Weekly isn't the government,and they don't have the powers the government has. Nobody from the SF Weekly is going to arrest you,indict you for any crimes,call you in for questioning,or seize your bank accounts. They also won't be working hand in hand with Bubba-2's new Office of Reich Security.
"What you are missing is that the SF Weekly isn't the government,and they don't have the powers the government has. Nobody from the SF Weekly is going to arrest you,indict you for any crimes,call you in for questioning,or seize your bank accounts. They also won't be working hand in hand with Bubba-2's new Office of Reich Security."
Equal protection requires that John Poindexter have as much right to information as the SF Weekly, John Zogby or Alec Baldwin. If you believe that private agencies can lawfully obtain personal information, then you will have no objection to John Poindexter hiring a private investigators to dig it up.
The basis of any privacy protection must be to keep information out of the public domain without a person's consent. You cannot simultaneously agree to have a newspaper splash details all over the papers and then prohibit John Poindexter from acting on it.
As I said, there are many sound reasons for objecting to the Total Information Awareness agency, but this is not one of them.