Yes, I fully accept my Government and trust it more then half of the people I know. They're there to keep checks on the voting populous, not to try and imprison us for looking up on dirty websites. It'll be for the greater good in my opinion. Also ngjt, I would prefer it if you did not call me a twat.
A tidbit for you, Google sends unwholesome searches such as bomb making and child pornography searches to the FBI.
I have no clue if you are a British subject or an American citizen living abroad.
As Americans we have the right to be secure in our own person and property, particularly so in the home. To have our communications monitored, our lives watched entirely by Big Brother without any reasonable cause is antithetical to the American concept of liberty. Our justice system presumes an accused is innocent until proven guilty and because of that, our government needs to suspect a crime is occuring or will occur for government surveillance of a private citizen to be legal.
This law subverts this by assuming that I, or anyone else who does so, is commiting a crime unless
we can prove otherwise. That's assumption of guilt, not innocence and, in my view, is unconstitutional.
The great flaw in this bill is that it depends entirely upon the goodwill of the government and nothing upon the people the government is supposed to represent. There is no balance to the check of government because it gives no redress to an individual who acts within the law yet declines to provide identification.
Our system of freedom of speech was founded by men who had to remain anonymous to publish anti-government literature. The very first amendment to our constitution is quite simple:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
We do believe that in certain exceptional circumstances, such as child pornography or inciting panic by shouting, "Fire!," in a crowded theater when there is no fire, or advocating the overthrow of the federal government by violent means, certain minimal, reasonable restrictions are warranted, but nothing else is. I know in the EU many countries prohibit hate speech or certain political parties but here we do not. No matter what one says, however odious it may be, your right to say it or print it is not for the government to censor. Further, there is no requirement that anything an American publishes must be done so with identification because that would be a restriction on first amendment rights creating the effect of stifling unpopular dissent.
"But what do nude photographs have to do with that," you ask? You can ask that, but the government cannot. So long as no reasonable suspicion of a crime has occured, the government has no right to demand anything of you because you are acting within your rights as a citizen. Yes this puts the government at a disadvantage, but that's how our system of government was designed to work. At all times, the people are to have advantage over government:
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Those are the words of one of the architects of our government, Thomas Jefferson. He, and other Americans throughout history, have understood that the price of liberty comes at the cost of never being entirely safe from anyone or anything. This sentiment was echoed by another architect of our government, Benjamin Franklin:
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Attitudes in the UK may be very different from ours and if you are British, I can understand that. Our sovereignity is embodied by and devolves exclusively from the will of the people, yours is embodied in a pleasant woman who keeps corgis and wears metal hats with rock crystals embedded in them. While we share many common ideas about government, our foundations are very different. What we must thank you for is the wisdom of your own political philosopher, Edmund Burke, who had no small influence on our founding fathers:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
When government acts to compromise a right as precious and essential to liberty as our freedom of speech, we must act to check government and keep it from infringing upon our rights at any and all times, nudie pictures or no, for as Edmund Burke also wisely stated:
Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.
