The only tangible thing that will come out of a bill of rights is a big fat bill for the taxpayer. But l suppose it will create a lot of jobs for paper shuffling ineffectual hacks.

USA has a bill of rights and doesnt 'guarantee' people anything other than another bunch of words, obligations, rights and promises for the politicians and govt beauru-rats to ignore and trample. For example, its 'illegal' for the US govt to spy on its own citizens, so instead it enters into intelligence sharing treaties with other countries, like Canada, where they spy on each others' citizens and then exchange the dossiers. They're sharing of course and its good to share.

As usual, its more important for those in power to be seen to be doing something (anything) rather than actually get substantive things done.

How does another piece of plastic do anything other than give the nefarious another avenue for manipulation and corruption? The only people who an ID card will keep in line are the honest generality. They are honest so they dont need to be monitored anyway. If you have got nothing to hide, then why does anyone need to look. On the other hand, the criminals, er, dont care about laws, rights and IDs, afterall they're crims. Gun 'reform' hasn't stopped violent criminals from having guns.

With 5-10k in computer hardware and software one can produce all the official ID desired. Wont work if a public servant checks against their computer, but likely quite useful in the other 99% of peoples' interactions. Government can build bigger mouse traps and nature will create better mice.

Maybe we could first introduce an ID card, then engineer a big scandal regarding their arcane security technology after, lets say, terrorists found with conterfeit cards who just blew something up. Then we could start going on about how the only acceptable security is biometrics and that could be incorporated into the cards. Eventually on the path to a society that is a cross between 1984, Brave New World, Gattaga and Atlas Shrugged. Now thats a world l would love to live in. Actually just fill my viens with Soma and plug me in... this big bad scarey world with a boggie man around every corner is just too hard to deal with, sans bi-weekly psychotherapy and a 5 repeat script for Prozac.

ps. greg barnes... we dont have a 10 point system of ID, its 100 points and its only used for opening bank accounts not monitoring, interfering with and controlling a whole nation of people.

The Terrorists Have Won

Several commentators have been warning over the last few weeks that we need to be careful that we don’t effectively destroy our own free society in the process of making it ‘safe’ from terrorism …. shades of the Vietnam War era when a village could be ‘saved’ by destroying it.
Well, what do you know. We now have a situation where the British Police can run down, capture, and then shoot dead an unarmed man because they are “ suspicious” that he had link to the bombers …. he was obviously a foreigner, and he was wearing the wrong clothes, what more do you need. Our leading weekend newspaper gloats over the death on its front page – I mean, they shot him dead, so he must have been guilty – right!
The fact that the poor bastard now turns out to be a Brazilian, with no links to the bombing, is almost irrelevant. What if he did have links, what if he played in the same cricket team, even lived in the same house…… is that enough to reason to gun him down in cold blood. This is a very slippery slope we are heading down …. I’m sure there will be all the usual expressions of regret, enquiries etc etc . When those three undercover police officers are arrested and tried for murder, I will believe that maybe we haven’t lost the game.

Very concerning times we live, and those who have been put in a situation outside the usual and normal lives we live and have had to deal with a government body and experienced 'government process' can tell, which I think effectively all of us at some stage will experience, to how it is 'Not working'. Tax office, family court, health and school system as examples (The gst turn out to be a huge money spinner for the government, and we have effectively not seen the price drops promised).

So, the question has been raised, is the 'government' acutualy a common people representative (and whom anyone of us may take a place in for a period) whose purpose is to effectively and quickly deal with any matter that affects community stability harmony and happiness, or is it now a corrupted beast beyond recognition to its original purpose and become the fundamental cause of deceitfully disrupting community for more power. Lot of points to support the later but we common people are prevented from accessing the information needed to clearly determine this. I say ID card is a bad idea and lots of things need fixing first.

So, where do we go from here...

Sam
Ps~Hard to know from the nicknames, but I have not seen a female reply, and curious to what their point of view on this is.

To Sam said - The opinions of women will be as many and varied as those of men. Women are not one single homogenous group. There is a female poster or two on this thread.

For me I agree with Timkins and Garra. I suspect that we have a federal government that is tightening control over the citizens of this small nation - and control can always be abused.

Trinity,
Beg to differ here, there are fundamental differences between the way women group together, to the way men group. Women naturally group together giving them better chance at survival, then sought out the pecking order and what the general group social behaviour is, before expressing individual identities from within it, Hence womens opinions have a general common form (they have to otherwise risk attack from their own and benefit is it allows them to form 'armies' like no other).
Men start with individual identities and by getting to know other individual men start grouping. Hence mens opinions are in a general sence more varied.
But this is digressing from the article, Just a bit of depth psychosocial information.

Sam