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eesmith 4 days ago

Where is the line where you say "stop"?

People started complaining about cameras, and airport id checks, and facial recognition, and REAL ID, and incentives like PreCheck to support mass fingerprinting for a decade or three.

At some point the rubber band breaks, or at least one of the ropes snap.

chao- 4 days ago | parent [-]

For those of us that don't follow your train of logic, can you explain what it means for "the rubber band to break" or for "one of the ropes to snap"? Is there something specific you have in mind? Or is this a vague foreboding sense that something, somewhere will eventually go wrong?

eesmith 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

These are metaphors for common events.

You're working for a client who wants some changes, and more changes, and more changes, and is difficult to work with. At some point you may have to fire the client. As a simile, this is like a rubber band being stretched to the breaking point.

Or, the new boss is a very bad manager. Some people quit to move to another job. Each one is a rope snapping. If enough ropes snap - if enough people quit and are not replaced fast enough - then that department can no longer function.

To clarify further, "rubber band to break" is because a rubber band can be stretched and stretched, but not without limit. Once it has reached its limit, it breaks with a snap, and cannot easily be fixed.

For the metaphor "one of the ropes to snap", think of a cargo net carrying a heavy load. Each rope has a different tensile strength, and the load is not perfectly balanced. It's possible for a heavy load to break one rope, but the net still hold because the load shifts onto the other ropes, which have reserve strength. However, this should be a warning, because as more ropes break the less reserve there is, until the net is no longer able to hold the cargo.

I don't know what you mean by "eventually will go wrong" in this context where several senators say that things have already gone wrong.

consteval 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem with all these happenings is you're relying on the benevolence of our government. I would really prefer to not be beholden to how benevolent the government is feeling.

For example, President Elect Trump has plans to reinstate Schedule F and require loyalty tests for all government employees. If you post liberal content on your facebook, or maybe you fail the test even once, boom - you can't get a government job ever, because your face and identity is linked to your political leanings and those political leanings are now the Enemy of the American Government.

Or you could use this technology to automatically sort people, putting the ethnically-vague looking people into camps while they await rulings to see if they're illegal or not.

Of course this is all extreme, like fascist extreme. Suppose this doesn't come true, which is what we're all hoping for. Are you confident there will never be an evil government from now until the end of time?

If your answer is anything other than a resounding yes, then you should be opposed to these advancements on principal.