Do you dare to search for pressure cooker now?

I'm not ignorant of my rights. Nor am I intimidated by the people whose primary function is to protect my rights. I'm sure they do - and I'm sure they're accused of fucking people over ten times more often than they actually do it. Not the slightest bit. Are all Americans that timid?I'd be curious. My first thought would be that they were looking for somebody lurking in my yard. If I asked them what they were doing I'd expect them to politely ask me to stay inside. If, as in the OP, they asked to look inside I'd gladly let them. I would expect them to tell me eventually what they were looking for.I don't see where timidity would cross my mind.

He has the court system - or are you going to throw that out along with the police? The courts will often disregard any evidence which was obtained improperly. Even if you gave permission to search without a warrant you could deny it in court, claiming intimidation. Without the proper documentation the case for the prosecution would be considerably weakened.Search warrants protect the state as much as they protect you. Until recently we had collective dumpsters. There was no distinction between "my" garbage and anybody else's. Even now that we have individual bins, it would never occur to me that garbage is private.When you throw garbage in a public bin, do you have an expectation of privacy? It would be illegal. However, if I threw it in the garbage after reading it, it would be okay for my neighbour to read it. It would be rude but "okay" in every other way. Certainly. Feel free. I'll email you my itinerary. You can try to. I wouldn't do anything onine that required security if I didn't feel secure.You can try to walk into my house and sit down on my couch and watch my DVDs and eat my chips too - but I lock my doors. I knowingly and willingly forfeited any right to privacy (beyond the security measures that I take myself) the moment I flipped the WiFi switch on my laptop. Anybody else's nervousness doesn't enter into it. And my position is that there shouldn't be restrictions on either (with the possible exception of second-hand smoke considerations). But we're not talking about the right to possess something; we're talking about letting the police look to see if we possess something. Then in the case we're talking about there's no problem.

Dividing society into "us" and "them" is exactly what I'm preaching against. "We" are the ones demanding more police action to protect us from "them". If "we", the "law-abiding" majority, treat the police as oppressors we're the ones who are instigating the oppression of "them".

We're not talking about "working around" the system. As I've said, that would not stand up in court.On the contrary, if you force the police to "work to rule" you're putting an unnecessary strain on the rules - and probably an unwise confidence in the perfection of the rules.I'm suggesting that when the police work according to the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law they'll be less oppressive, not more. Precedent. Letters have always been private; billboards have not. Profound. No, the point is that I protect my own privacy. I don't expect the state to do it for me. The operative word in my sentence isn't "looking"; it's "letting". If we let them look at things that don't matter, they're less lkely to think we're hiding things that do matter.

No, that was me separating myself from your description of "them". I don't believe "they" are as timid or ignorant as you portray them. Or take MADD or SADD. They are not "walking all over us". You do not live in a police state.Yes, there are some bad cops. The solution to that is to improve our screening procedures and our training procedures. We do have systems in place to weed out the ones who fall through the cracks.If you marginalize the police, treat them like enemies, dehumanize them, you're only giving them an excuse to entrench the bad behaviour.

The whole concept of society is based on giving up individual rights in favour of collective security and collective convenience in general. The reason we have police in the first place is to protect society from individuals. The ultimate individual right is the right to be a criminal. What's dated is the ability to extend the protection. It used to be possible to protect yourself from danger by just running away but bows and arrows made that form of protection obsolete.Sometimes you lose something and you can't turn back the clock to get it back. We weren't taking about objections. I object to you wearing that orange sweater but even you probably wouldn't enshrine that objection in law. I do object to your rudeness but I don't wish to prevent you from being rude.If I want something to be private then I keep it damn well private. If I'm concerned with electronic eavesdropping, I keep it inside my own skull. If you can get it out of there, more power to you. How far do you want the state to go?Around here, we have people who go through garbage bins looking for cans and bottles to recycle. Should the state be throwing them in prison for violating our privacy?

I got a notice in the mail that there's another piece of mail waiting for me at the local substation. All I have to do to pick it up is present photo ID.I don't have photo ID.My mail is so private that even I can't see it.On the other hand, I can send somebody else to pick it up as long as he has photo ID.The Post Office, which represents "the state", is fiddling with my privacy in ways that would have been hard to predict. I'd be further ahead if they just thumbtacked the thing to my front door where the whole world can see it. (That's assuming that I even want to see it. I don't know if I want to see it because it's so private that I don't know what it is.)Edited by ringo, : Spelang. Thrice.

Tell that to the bees. You're oversimplifying the definition of "benefit". Like the bees, many members of our society willingly sacrifice themselves, including their lives, for the greater good. You don't get to decide whether letting the police search my house is a benefit to me. I told you I was representing the fascist position in this discussion. On the contrary, the basic unit of humanity is society. Individuals have only obligations to society. They have only the rights that society confers on them.See? I'm also representing the socialist position. Go ahead, call me an ideologue. It shouldn't be. Laws should be based on harm or imminent potential for harm, not on "affronts". Otherwise we'd have laws against ugly sweaters. You're mistaking whom the "enemy" is. Even if the NSA "shouldn't" listen in, you can't trust the people you're communicating with not to rat you out to the NSA. Communication by its very nature is never private. At best it's a conspiracy and conspiracies are notoriously fragile. The biggest threat to your privacy is you.

The state is us. We (society) decide what we will ask us to do. No man is an island - i.e. no human is a unit. Children can't even develop without social interaction. Yes, that's the feudal system but we've moved beyond that. In a democracy, we decide which rights we will grant each other - i.e. which ones are worth defending. But you are not the supreme arbiter of what is "reasonable". Society is. The information belongs to whomever either of the parties gives it to. Once again, that is not your call.

Don't run away. Explain how SOPA is different from SADD and MADD and then we can address SOPA. And then we can address SADD and MADD. You're the one who needs to get out more. That is definiely not an indication of a police state.

I did address your point. If you don't care to address my address I'll wave goodbye as you run away.

That's a safety device, like a fire extinguisher.In a police state, they make house calls to wake you up and shoot you. The service is better but the protection is lacking.

We are society. In a democracy, we are the government.We have met the enemy and he is us.We must defend ourselves against the encroachment of ourselves.

Washington D.C. has had a Juvenile Curfew Act since 1995. Apparently it applies to second childhoods too.