I thought about adding that, Mr. F., but given the sexual proclivities of the neocon right, wing it seems as likely (if not more likely) that one of THEM would be AIDS-infected. So I dropped it from the list.

Hallelujah! Bring me another pipefull of that fine crystal meth, and a little hillbilly heroin on the side!

Someone explain to me how reading a license plate prevents a bunch of nut-jobs from flying a plane into a building?

Maybe they could use it in Baghdad to prevent car-bombings. They’d just need to get all the car-bombers to pre-register their cars before hand.

In your first paragraph, you missed :

“AIDs infected liberal”

Otherwise, right on.

Holy fuck! Probable cause?!?!?! Only a communist/ marxist/ stalinist/ leninist/ chavezist/ Fidel-loving fucker of women with Cuban cigars would ever give any credence to the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights!!

Sheeit! Every red-blooded American real live nephew of his Uncle Sam knows that cops should be able to stop you on the street and give you a cavity search if they don’t like the t-shirt you’re wearing or your fancy Italian shoes!

Running license plates is already a legitimate policing process. Your arguments seem to imply that the police should be prevented from ever running a license plate unless they actually have a reasonable cause to run that particular plate.

Correct. The police should only intrude upon our privacy when there is a reasonable cause.

If this is reasonable, then why can’t the police stop pedestrians and request they identify themselves. Or have everyone submit to fingerprints. Whatever reason you may think of for why this would be an abuse, then apply the same reason to the license plate reader. If you don’t see any problem then you are past hope.

Or if you’re one of those left-leaning commie pinko fags that still put some faith in the Constitution.

Ah, but you fail to understand: Technology will soon give law enforcement nearly infinite resources. There will be no facet of your life that will be beyond their view.

Yes, nearly all of that information is already available if they want to expend the time and resources to collect and collate the data. That hurdle provides protection to all of us from frivolous harassment. But it won’t be much longer when any officer can retrieve that data within seconds on a whim. Where is our protection then??

Funny stuff. This isn’t even a valid argument. I have no objection to the police running my plate as this is a legitimate police process when I am out driving. Hell, they can run my plate all they want. It has nothing to do with whether I have something to hide or not. However, this doesn’t imply acceptance of other non-constitutional monitoring. How you can jump from one to the other really amazes me. Lots of kneejerks in here.

While seeing no harm in making the process faster, I never once mentioned putting cameras anywhere else but you two seem to think that saying OK to one thing automatically implies acceptance of the inevitable slide to the other. Not a valid argument at all.

Canada has the equivalent to the American Bill of Right contained in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In most ways it is a better document as it is written in more contemporary language with modern meanings. Also to satisfy the equivalent of the American Constitutional Constructionist, it also contains the caveat that these rights are as may be demonstrated in a “free and democratic society”. Generally, Canadian Judges have ruled more broadly and favorably under the Charter compared to American Judges who generally rule more narrowly.

The one area that differs greatly from the American Bill of Rights is the opt out feature. Here, a government may opt out of following a Rights ruling for up to five years. Although this could open the door to abuses, the government must still face the electorate to justify their action.

For a better read, Wikipedia has a decent article.
http://tinyurl.com/qrzvr