Just because someone has sworn to protect you doesn't mean they'll actually do it. And that doesn't prevent anyone else from using it against you either. In a perfect world, all the police follow the law, all the governments follow the law, and there are no criminals to steal this information.
> at making the job of people sworn to protect them more difficult
What job is made easier by providing a list of all gun owners?
> is not only acceptable, but preferred.
It's pretty much the entire foundation of America. You don't trust the person. You trust the system, and hopefully design the system in a way that minimizes abuse. No, it's not perfect and never can be. But one concrete example is the fourth amendment. The ability for an officer to search a home for evidence without permission is just too ripe for abuse, even if it does allow criminals to get away with things.
In this context there is obviously a belief that the police are doing something they should. Whether it's illegal, or immoral, or legal but contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, or whatever the reasoning may be.
They could just as easily have said "anything that makes it more difficult for the NSA to track my interests and whereabouts is bonus points" and I think a majority of people on here would probably agree with that statement.
Just because it's a local cop sworn to protect Americans vs. an NSA analyst or FBI agent doesn't make them any more likely to actually do it.
Perhaps I have a different view of the NSA than you do, but I would have had the same response to that. Like the police, they exist to protect us, and if they're doing something irresponsible/immoral/illegal, they should be made accountable and corrected, rather than just made less efficient at it.
Information is a powerful tool, and can be utilized to protect us in powerful ways. IMO the problem is not collecting the information, but how it's used. I'd much rather see a super-efficient all-knowing and well-intended protector than an inefficient bumbling mess.
You can (barely) control how the current administration uses the information it has.
You have no way of controlling how the administration will use that information in 10 years.
That is a recipe for a Tyrannical Police state.
In no way could a society where I have no privacy be a utopia. Not to me. I value my Freedom and Privacy above all else
What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
You clearly are not a person who studies history. Most of our progress as a nation is a direct result of people breaking the law in various ways. Would there have been a Civil Rights movement at all if an all knowing protector would have stopped Rosa Parks from even getting on the that bus? Or the Woman's Rights movement if an all knowing government was able to eliminate the movement before it got an mass attention.
You want to see a complete conformist society with no ability for any person to exist with out the "approval" of that society. I shutter to think would have happen to LGBT persons if your vision of a "utopia" existed
Today we are locking up people based on what plants they choose to grow, and are raiding home because they happen to throw some loose leaf tea in the garbage after shopping at a gardening store.
How will giving these incompetent morons more power going to make things better, going create a utopia. That is unless North Korea is your view of a "utopia", where the politically connected, the politically correct, and the conformists are rewarded by government and anyone that speaks out, or has an opposing view is simply disappeared.
Any study of history will almost immediately dispel you of this view.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-whistleblowers-security-thi...
More data does not make for greater accuracy or efficiency. More intelligence (human effort) does.
Regardless of whatever you think the police are "sworn" to do, we have incontrovertible experimental evidence that they often do not have our best interests at heart.
You know what also makes the jobs of police officers harder? Checks and balances. The right to a lawyer. Miranda rights. The fact that they have to get warrants.
It is hopelessly naïve to assume that anything good can come of giving the police more authority.
I read a story some time back about police getting access to a dna database from a genealogical software company. (http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-...)
With that database they began querying hundreds of thousands of dna samples with cold case samples. Ignoring the false-positive probabilities they started going after those hits. Long story short, they solved none of their cold cases, but investigated and harassed many innocent people; treating them like murderers.
Joe Schmo down at the PD isn't a statistician, or even a 'data scientist'. Giving total data access to the unqualified and over impulsive will harm more our society more than it will protect it.
The police aren't sworn to protect the public. They are sworn (like all public employees) to protect the Constitution, which is a very different thing, and even there accountability to that oath is pretty weak (and most of the things that people complain about making their life harder just provide some small measure of accountability for them doing what they are, in fact, sworn to do.)
Sorry no.
Federal Law Enforcement, Military, and Elected officials maybe. Probably some other Federal Employees
But there is no requirement, nor do many local police dept, require any oath at all, and I can not think of any off the top of my head that have a oath to the Constitution in their ceremony.
That apples to Elected Officials, Judicial Officers.
Further my state has no such clause in its constitution
Yes, it does. (Well, arguably not to legislative branch officers who are not themselves legislators, though AFAIK both the federal government and all states actually do have such officers make a similar oath or affirmation to the one required by the Oaths Clause.)
> That apples to Elected Officials, Judicial Officers.
No, it applies to:
(1) All federal and state legislators, (2) All executive officers, and (3) All judicial officers.
"Executive officers" is not the same as "elected officials". The oaths clause use of "officers" has similar breadth of that in the Appointments Clause (Art. II, S. 2, cl. 2) except that the Oaths Clause expressly applies to both state and federal officers, and the Appointments Clause only to federal officers.
> Further my state has no such clause in its constitution
The main additional effect of state oaths clauses (whether Constitutional or statutory) is to require an oath to the state constitution in approximately the same class of state officers that are covered by the federal oaths clause. (They often also reiterate the federal requirement.)
Law Enforcement has nothing to do with protection, but rather order and control. Protection can be a side effect of order and control but it is not the primary goal, or reason for the existence of Police.