fajrdrako | The American elections... (Reply)

I don't usually talk about politics here, and don't worry, I'm not about to change that policy. I'll probably regret this post, and may return to delete it.

I'd tell my American friends to vote today, except it's none of my business, and I know you all will anyway. And you'll vote for the people I'd want to see voted for, the ones who aren't in favour of human rights abuses like torture, or election fraud, political uses of religion, and disregard for individual privacies. I'd tell my American friends to vote, except I have no faith in democracy, least of all in democracies administered by electronic ballots; where the only people running don't represent a real variation in policy or choice.

But there is some difference between candidates, maybe enough to actually make the effort of voting worthwhile.

Two interesting items in this regard on the CBC radio news this morning: One, that a computerized research system widely used in Canadian universities, traces and records all research queries that go through that system - and stores that information in the U.S. where it can be accessed by American law enforcement. Because this is alarming to many Canadians who are worried about their personal freedoms, some universities have opted to use a similar system based in Toronto instead.

I feel so much better thinking that it's CSIS or the RCMP that can track my research, rather than the CIA.

Yeah, that implies a lack of faith in Canadian law, which at least theoretically still guarantees our privacy and freedom. You can imagine the cynicism with which I say this. Previous news items have been about how the RCMP shares all its information with the FBI anyway.

The following news item this morning was about how Canadian customs unrepentantly go through all the cached and stored pictures on a person's laptop when they cross the border, in a search for kiddie porn. The advice of the news report was: don't take your laptop across the border. Presumably they don't do this with every traveller who has a laptop - not unless they have a larger army of customs officials than I know of. The news item cited tens of thousands of pictures on the average laptop, many of which the owner doesn't even know about. How effective can random searches be? And isn't that a colossal breach of privacy, all for the sake of a witch hunt?