>I don't know, I wouldn't be able to tell. If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody's there to hear it, does it matter to anyone whether it makes a sound?
Spoken like someone who hasn't had the long arm of the law drop in on them before, or a person who "doesn't care about that liberty anyway, so why not vote it away?"
Just because you don't see the problem doesn't mean it isn't there. Just because you didn't see the tree fall, doesn't mean the world is uneffected. These are concepts 3-4 year olds manage to divest themselves of once they grap the permanence of objects. Just because you don't get much out of a liberty doesn't mean that it's cool to force the loss of it on somebody else. Liberty is to be treasured and protected. The selective relinquishment, revocation, or limiting of one for anyone should be a Big. Frigging. Deal.
The fact people are so cavalier with wisking away the freedoms that underpin American Civil Life on mere suspicion of something that the State is not even required to be transparent about should disturb everybody.
More importantly, this:
> Spoken like someone who hasn't had the long arm of the law drop in on them before, or a person who "doesn't care about that liberty anyway, so why not vote it away?"
Who are you quoting here? No one said this at all.
I'm actually disgusted by your comment and the logic you present in it.
I don't know, I wouldn't be able to tell. If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody's there to hear it, does it matter to anyone whether it makes a sound?
> What if we weren't allowed to confirm or deny you were on the list, except to a prospective landlord or employer who filled out a form?
You're swinging at strawmen. Nobody in this thread is defending intrusive lists.
For some reason, though, you are conflating unintrusive lists (Which don't require oversight anywhere in the world) with intrusive lists (Which do require oversight in... well-governed parts of the world).
Do you have arguments against the former? I'm not interested in being convinced that the latter are bad, I'm already convinced that they are bad.
> edit: and, of course, what if the list leaks, and is used as an automated first step for disqualification by employers and landlords for the rest of your life?
If there's an unholy decades-long alliance between the FBI, the background check bureaus, and millions of employers and landlords, that neither my federal, state, or municipal government is interested in doing anything about, I think my main problem is not 'the FBI has a list'. I think my main problem is 'My society, on every imaginable level, is broken.'