[x]Blackmoor Vituperative

Monday, 2009-10-19

Gangsters like Blackberries

Filed under: Privacy,Technology — bblackmoor @ 17:25

ZDNet has an article title, “Blackberry the choice of organized crime“.

Gangs know what encryption is. They are using it in force at the street level, let alone at the very top. Rim’s BlackBerries are the ultimate in security for them. Everything is secured and impossible to monitor by police.

The gist of the article appears to be that encryption is bad, because there are bad people who use it.

“Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.”

Yes, criminals can and do benefit from the same civil rights as law-abiding people. This is not and shall never be a valid reason to deprive anyone of those rights, despite the absurd “security” at airports, the warrantless wiretaps by our Federal government, and the nigh-universal pre-employment “drug testing” humiliation of job applicants, all of which have become accepted by the somnambulistic American citizenry.

The pendulum has swung much too far in the direction of invasions of privacy by government and by employers (or even just potential employers). It is time for that pendulum to swing back.

Write to your government representatives, and demand that they respect the privacy of the people they ostensibly represent.

Refuse to consent to pre-employment drug testing (and post-employment drug testing, unless they have a damned good reason for asking — curiosity and “company policy” are not good reasons).

Be an American, not a sheep.