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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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  • You accept the laws that protect you from criminals and in so doing have given up many liberties. In general it is the giving up of some liberties to a greater good that moves a group of people from Anarchy to a more civilized lifestyle.

    That said -- the "Patriot Act" is a horribly scary thing.
    • It was a bitcy day and I probably wasn't clear....

      I take issue with people who trot out pithy little sound bites but ignore the full implications of them; In this case Ben's quote regarding liberties, freedom, and safety. We all give up liberties ( and I know he refers to "essential" ) in order to become part of a civilized society.

      So, is retaining your privacy regarding what toothpaste you use an "essential" liberty -- probably not, what books you read may well be. The tough question is, as you said,
      • Perhaps the only answer is to stop all likely, even remotely, such individuals at the border: "Sorry America is Closed, please return to where you came from." -- is that the nation we should become?

        But Timothy McVeigh was born inside America, so that wouldn't have stopped him.

        Or do we preserve our need to keep private what toothpaste we are using to brush our teeth while we watch the 5th suicide bombing in an American mall in a month?

        Presumably turning people away at the border is somewhat akin to firewalling network packets - the only way to be sure is to disable the network. And I don't think that that is practical. What motivates people to kill themselves for a cause? Maybe it is more effective long term to attempt to defuse those motivations sufficiently that people no longer feel so strongly about them that they are prepared to die for them.

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