Originally posted by Drew
oh thats a cop-out, viewing everything as its worst case scenario ignores its usefull perposes; anyway lets try to keep this from an argument of slogans. this bill gives express directions to the states, basically giving the states the power to follow the directions any way they wish, its not even covered by the Central jurisdicion of the government in washington; its not even close to a centralized servalence(sp) program, that power isnt even in the bill. what bugs me the most is this bill constitutionality is questionable, as its giving an executive created DHS the power to order the states around, and origianlly, the only branch allowed to order the states around is the congress. (unless i misunderstand the DHS) getting down to it, the congress dosnt have the constitutional jurisdiction to tell the states to make IDs; the 10th ammendemnt gives the states its own power to make its own ids.
The bill creates the conditions to allow a central surveillance program; firstly, it will de-facto require Americans to possess machine readable ID cards (although these are deemed as voluntary, they will be required to travel on train or aeroplane, wll be needed to access/open bank accounts, gain access to social security, entry to national parks; i.e. anything which federal employees control access to). The Deparment of Homeland Security will have unrestricted rights to define what information constitutes this id - ranging from photo, to fingerprint, to further biometric data, and even RFID.
I'd point out that the US state department is already adding RFID chips into passports that would enable radio-tracking of said passport (i.e. rather than an ID chip requiring contact with the scanner), and which are capable of storing biometric id data.
Note the 'machine readable' part; at the very least, that means the legislature will support a system for tracking the movement of citizens using train & air transport.
Also note that the Real ID act does not apparently include a single mention of the world 'privacy'.
The states may be able to choose how they implement the cards / licenses, but it's the DofHS that specifies what they contain; the most
any state can do is choose to add extra on top of that spec.
And the state which specifies these requirements, and can extend them, is one exempt from legal action against it.
If you ask me, that';s got a tremendous potential for abuse, and IMO this an administration more than willing to do so in order to demonstrate it's being 'protective'.
Originally posted by redmenace
So defending ones self is murder?
As I see it a person has a right to defend ones property and life especially when the police can't do much or don't have time to bother.
Yes, it's murder if it's disproportionate to the threa or unecessary.
Especially if it's used as a first resort, i.e. killing before attempting another method to scare off / capture the aforementioned criminal; defending your own life does not always require killing the other person.
