Do you dare to search for pressure cooker now?

It disturbs me and I live in another country almost.You can not be free if there is some authority that has the right to investigate the books that you have been reading or consider the pictures on your wall. Sure, they asked nicely if they could come in but I wonder what they would have done if he had declined the warrant-less search.Terrorism is a heinous thing and we are right to stamp it out as we can but this approach is a massive breach of civil rights.Freedom and privacy are bound together and we shouldn't let fear erode them.

Our civil rights are there to protect us from the random stupidity and the ever creeping zeal of the authoritarians and the 'safety firsters'. There are some things more important than the illusion of security and freedom is one of them.It starts with things like arbitrary traffic stops to see if you are wearing your seatbelt or to sample your breath and leads to things like the RCMP searching your house without warrant or cause and taking your guns after you have been subject to a mandatory evacuation.It is frightening because after it goes far enough the only way back requires violence.

Sure it does and that is why we shouldn't let it slide. But they are taking away the guns!No, I would be just as disturbed had they taken bicycles or lawn chairs or all the copies of 50 Shades of Grey. It is the broader principal of not having to sacrifice your civil rights in order to assuage someone else's fear regardless of whatever it is that they are afraid of. It is not an attitude Ringo its an observation. I offer my feeble protest here in the hope that my children or grand-children never have to violently resist oppression.How else do you wrestle freedom back from decades of erosion and the relentless pursuit of absolute security? The peaceful means are available now but they wont always be if we do not exercise them.

Isn't that what civil rights are meant to prevent? But that is my point. Even though they are not searching our houses yet doesn't mean that we shouldn't protest the violation. Hang on again. I am not advocating violent revolution (especially given all the security bots and nervous public servants that are listening). I am merely pointing out that violent revolution is the near inevitable result of ever decreasing freedom.The problem is that, after generations of freedom, we begin to take our freedoms for granted and we are increasingly led by our fears. We begin to prosecute people for things that they might do. It becomes a crime to possess the ability to commit a crime. We become liable for failing to prevent other people from doing stupid things.We end up with a grey world full of big warning stickers advising us about the dangers of string and plastic bags and where you get sued for serving coffee that is too hot. A world where we can not be trusted with lawn darts and perhaps, before long, pressure cookers and back packs.

I guess that the American and French revolutions come to mind as examples of when it worked but I didn't say that it worked. I just said that it happens. It happens all the time on a personal level. Do a utube search for videos of people violently defending their interests.Isn't violence part of the natural order of things? Ubiquitous and essential. From swatting mosquitoes to eating bacon to resisting someone who would do you harm. Force is what makes things happen. Violent force will always be the last word.The point here is that we should be disturbed by these far away abuses and protest them. Cut out the cancer when it is small. No we shouldn't but we shouldn't treat people like criminals because they might commit a crime. Just because some fucking asshole made a bomb with a pressure cooker it does not follow that pressure cookers are somehow a new threat. Or our shoes or shampoo. You can not fight it this way. We end up being no safer and a lot less free.

No I didn't mean to imply that it was necessary. Think of it like a pressure cooker. If you vent the steam then it will not explode. Except when it stops bad things from happening. I agree that violence is usually bad for somebody. There is no Canadian equivalent and Canada would be nothing like what it is if it were not for the American revolution.It is an interesting subject but you are moving the goal posts. My point, anyway, is that if we don't protest these isolated infractions they accumulate and grow in offensiveness until the only recourse is violence. We both agree that the violence is to be avoided. He has raised the probability that somebody will suffer because of his actions.His crime is the same as the executive who is distracted by his important call or the guy tuning his radio or reading the road sign or dealing with his kids in the back seat or driving with the flu. Then there are those who are just simply incapable of operating a motor vehicle with any competence under the best of conditions. These people cause the other 99.5% of traffic fatalities. We don't throw them in jail even after they kill somebody.The important point is that because of our fear of the carnage that the drunk might cause we justify the intrusion on everybody's civil rights. So because of the actions of some miniscule portion of society we are now all subject to arbitrary inspection. That is not how it is supposed to work in a free society. I object to being stopped for no reason other than to have my breath or my blood sampled or to see if I am wearing a seatbelt.

Well it was more like 'they are taking away our guns therefore we should go wave flowers in front of the legislature before we have to wave guns in front of the legislature'.It would be easier to reject violence altogether if there were not someone with big guns kicking in your door and threatening violence.As was made clear it is not that they were taking away the guns it was that they were breaching the citizen's civil rights. So again it could have been bicycles or barbeques that were being seized. We have due process for a reason. We ask judges to sign warrants for a reason. I submit to the authority of the state because and only because they are bound by the process. When they fail to comply with the process I withdraw my submission. I guess that I am in favour of letting people do what they will until the actually cause harm to another. So this doesn't mean that it is ok to shoot a gun into a crowd until you hit someone. It means that it is not ok to charge someone with drunk driving because he is drunk and sleeping in his car or to search someone's house because they are reading up on pressure cookers.I am in favour of not treating people like criminals just because they have the ability to commit a crime.

Well it is not reasonable but it can be expected. In the eyes of the law everyone is a criminal and only a hair's breadth away from needing to be tazered or shot.

I mean that if my civil rights are being infringed upon then I am not obligated to be complacent or to submit willingly to that intrusion. It means that I think that I and others should refuse to be unlawfully searched or abused in any other way by the state. It is a matter of degrees I suppose. Somewhere between owning a gun and shooting into the crowd there is an acceptable manner of behaving.

Apparently, not enough. I guess that in theory it comes down to who is doing the real harm.I think that we too easily relinquish rights in order to facilitate enforcement. I say that we demand enforcement solutions that do not infringe on the rights of the innocent.

Just turning down the volume would be a good start. Our general response to perceived danger has become way heavy. I think that it is a result of the idea that safety actually should be first. Instead of about third.Part of the solution is ensuring that our public servants think of themselves as public servants rather than one of the chosen few.

Yes and we likely never will agree so we have to go with the consensus. If we want to impact the consensus then we need to raise our voices.We have had dd laws since the 1930's. It used to be that if you caused an accident and were found to be drunk then you were charged. This evolved to being charged if you had been drinking and might have caused an accident. Now, if you have alcohol readily available you can be charged or if you are sleeping off an impairment in your car and have possession of the keys you can be charged. A class 'A' grade licence carries a zero BAC level requirement. So a truck driver can be charged with impaired driving when he is driving his car after having 1 light beer.It is the equivalent of saying that because you have a gun you are therefore guilty of murder. Or because you have a pressure cooker and a backpack that you are therefore guilty of terrorism. I would hope that we can all agree that that volume is too high. Well for example maybe we should take the bullets away from the police. Why should a policeman be able to kill someone? Why should the policeman's safety take precedence over the safety of those that he is employed to serve?A disturbed teenager with a knife like Sammy Yatim in Toronto needs to be helped by the police and not shot 9 times and then tazered. I was surprised and pleased that the officer who did that has been charged with manslaughter.What I am highlighting is the fact that most policemen do not consider themselves to be public servants but rather some type of elite member of society with the authority to break many of the laws that they are charged with enforcing.It has been my experience that the police disturb the peace about as often as they secure it.

That opinion is just frightening to me. It is in absolute opposition to the idea of a free society and entirely against the principal that you are innocent until proven guilty. It is based on the premise that everyone has a motive to commit a crime supported only by your fears and too much media exposure. If we carry on this way for another dozen terrorist attacks then where will we be?You are throwing your civil rights under the bus at the first sign of trouble and it is wrongheaded. Not only because you would so readily yield everyone's right to privacy just to help you feel safer but also in terms of the evolution of society and the law. Next thing you know it is constant monitoring of your every move. That is nearly here now. How long before we need to monitor what people are thinking? What do our civil rights look like a 100 yrs from now?There is also the fact that chasing after pressure cookers and backpacks on this date is not likely to yield many results. The next bomb will not be the same as the last bomb. What do we do when the loser uses a water bottle or a telephone?Would you agree to having your house searched because you participated in this discussion? I mean just look at how many times we have mentioned pressure cookers. What would you consider to be unreasonable?

Yes they certainly are but it is not the right to drive drunk that I am defending. I agree that there should be no drunks on the road. I don't agree with randomly stopping people just to see if they are drunk. It seems to me that it should at least be evident that they are breaking the law before they are required to relinquish their civil rights.There are 5 times as many people murdered in Canada as there are people killed by drunk drivers. Shouldn't we be stopping people at random to see if they are about to murder somebody? Sure we do but we don't let the doctors kill people because they might kill someone else with their germs. Nor do we relinquish complete responsibility for our health to the doctor. I have no problem with giving the police the responsibility and authority to keep the peace but I question if we need them to be able to kill anybody at a moments notice because they feel threatened. Do you think that crime would sky rocket if the police had rubber bullets and cattle prods?

The right to be safe from unreasonable search.