Biometric Fingerprinting For Domestic Flights

[Slim]

I can't think of a specific reason to worry about the Government installing CCTV in peoples homes either.

 

You must be pretty thick then, I can think of a few.

[Skeddan]

Can anyone give me a specific example of what their worry is about having their fingerprint stored on file by the Government? I'm too lazy to think it through myself.

I can't think of a specific reason to worry about the Government installing CCTV in peoples homes either.

 

There's no need to be sarcastic - it's just that some of us need convincing without being spoken at in generalisations all the time.

I wasn't being sarcastic - I really couldn't think of any specific reason as such (on the other hand one could argue this would help prevent home invasions, that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to worry about, that the footage would only be looked at and used if there was a crime etc. etc.). I could imagine also finding it very hard to put an argument against this if it was to 'make homes safer' or part of the 'war on terror' and there are all these 'safeguards'. The reasons Slim can think of might defeat all such arguments, and perhaps I am a bit thick - I really couldn't think of any (apart from economic and practical reasons or issues of interior decor), but possibly this is only because I hadn't thought it through fully.

 

If anything I was thinking out loud - what counts as weighing for or against fingerprinting etc. might also be taken to form the basis by which more intrusive measures can be justified - in a boiled frog slippery-slope type way. It seems to me that very often the justification one hears for some new intrusion into civil liberties if accepted would also justify very much more heavy handed 'Big Nanny' protections. Sorry if it came out in a way that appeared sarcastic.

 

BTW I agree that too often these things do get presented in terms of generalisations - but on both sides. e.g. calls for massively increased CCTV coverage of Douglas are justified by 'making the streets safer' - a generalisation. It is different when one examines specific examples of the problem this might tackle - one rare case of a woman mugged, a theft of mobile phone from a parked car, and various other incidents such as vandalism of a flowerbed.

 

Others might do better, but the best argument against I can come up with against this general trend to a 'Big Nanny' state is the case of Uraguay in the 70's - it used to be one of the most liberal and democratic Latin American countries. Then it was the target of ultra-extremist terrorists, and so brought in anti-terror laws, which became more and more heavy handed. This alienated more and more people, some of whom then started to resist and oppose what was fast becoming a military dictatorship, and things got ugly. That's a big reason why I'm against dumb and heavy handed measures to 'combat terrorism'.

[*daniel*]

No matter how much we are invaded in our privacy, it wouldn't stop someone wanted to do something from happening. A terrorist could easily come over here, catch a manx2 flight to an english airport (manx2 - the one with no doors protecting the cabin, two members of crew on board), hijacking the plane and then they are free to do whatever they want. I always wondered, why bother with security checks when catching a manx2 flight. They took my toothpaste of me ffs, if I wanted to do anything then i'm sure having my toothpaste with me would not make the slightest bit of difference..

[Karellen]

They took my toothpaste of me ffs

 

They didnt spot the tube of toothpaste in my travel bag until it was half empty, by which time it had been through the Ronaldsway scanner at least a dozen times. Ignoring thestupid rules at arports (and seeing if you get caught) has become a pet sport. Like taking shoes off - at Gatwick all the sheeple in the security queue seem to do this automatically without even being told, but if you just walk through the arch then 8 times out of 10 nobody bothers. And getting off the easyjet at Liverpool where they announce you cant turn your phone on until you are inside the terminal building "because of local regulations" but those same local regulations dont seem to apply when you land with euromanx or ryanair. Half the time they seem to be making it up as they go along.