Matt Holdrege writes:
How is this different than looking in your bags for
porn magazines or videotapes?
It's not. I take it that you don't mind having your bags searched? How
about your wallet? Where do you draw the line, or don't you draw one?
How is looking at your stored email different
than looking at your paper correspondence?
It's not--but nobody looks at your paper correspondence. Through many
centuries of familiarity, it has come to be accepted that paper
correspondence is relatively private, even by those who fail to grasp the
equivalence of correspondence stored in computers.
As I stated in my previous post "unless provoked".
As I implied in my previous post, selective enforcement is an open door to
erosion of critical freedoms. "Provocation" should not be a factor in
enforcement.
Customs in many countries can be provoked to look
at those things.
If they can be provoked into looking at those things, then it stands to
reason that they can also be persuaded to ignore them. Which technique do
you think the bad guys are more likely to use?
What makes a computer special?
Nothing. It's just like, say, the sum total of all the papers and personal
effects that you have in your home. You don't mind if someone goes through
all of those, do you? There _might_ be something illegal among them, after
all.
Why single out the U.K. government when many others
do essentially the same thing.
Multiple wrongs don't make a right. And it sounds like the U.K. has gone
further than many other countries held to be at a similar level of
"civilization" (or "civilisation").