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A comment on Norway to track all supermarket purchases?. Parent comment

Re:Norway to track all supermarket purchases? by leeroyjenkins11 on Saturday June 04, 2022 @11:40AM (#31621637)
The idea behind the separation is that the government has the ability to make you do something with the threat of force. Not to say we shouldn't put protections from private corporations in place, but they can't legally imprison you.
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Re:Norway to track all supermarket purchases? by enraged_camel on Saturday June 04, 2022 @12:23PM (#31622236)
There isn't necessarily a strong separation, though. Here in the US, governments (at every level) can easily purchase this kind of data from private entities when they need to.
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Re:Norway to track all supermarket purchases? by bbddg on Saturday June 04, 2022 @12:20PM (#31622199)
You're just describing laws. Is the worry here that they could more effectively enforce laws because of this tracking? Is that a bad thing?
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Re:Norway to track all supermarket purchases? by concordDance on Saturday June 04, 2022 @12:32PM (#31622365)
It is when you don't trust the lawmaking process is acting in your best interests. And distrust of that process is extremely high atm (I believe trust in politicians is below 50% in the US).
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Re:Norway to track all supermarket purchases? by bbddg on Saturday June 04, 2022 @12:40PM (#31622456)
Well we don't really have a functional democracy in the US. That's really the core problem to fix before you can start trusting the government more.
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Re:Norway to track all supermarket purchases? by marklubi on Saturday June 04, 2022 @12:45PM (#31622524)
> Well we don't really have a functional democracy in the US.

The United States isn’t a democracy, it’s a democratic republic. Unfortunately, most of that was thrown out with the 17th amendment, and we’re paying for it now with increased federal control.

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Re:Norway to track all supermarket purchases? by car_analogy on Saturday June 04, 2022 @04:19PM (#31624649)
Yes! This is not a novel idea - it's how the US got its 4th amendment, prohibiting unreasonable search. Government power should not be unlimited, because it risks slipping into tyranny.

Don't turn your country into a prison on the hope that the warden will remain benevolent. There's no shortage of past and present examples of that suddenly changing.

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Re:Norway to track all supermarket purchases? by bbddg on Monday June 13, 2022 @02:48PM (#31729845)
I'll take a prison like Norway over the lawless hellhole that the US is becoming.
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