At the risk of being inflammatory: the state, the government, including police and the national security apparatus, always has too much power, and the sovereign individual - the most important component of the nation state - always has too little. Information is power.
The state is constantly trying to intrude upon our fundamental rights - and I regard privacy as a fundamental right (see US, Warren & Brandeis, 1890) - and we should, as a mater of principle, be making access to information more and more and more difficult, even at the (very real) risk of making it easier for sociopathic serial killers, pedophiles and armed drug dealers to go about their awful business unmolested with less effective police interference.
I, personally, as a long time, dues paying Conservative Party member, think the "law and order" planks of the party's platform are ill considered and actually pose a real, measurable threat to liberty. I understand we, the CPC, are appealing to a certain segment of society and I understand that we need to keep them "onside." But I opposed mandatory minimum sentences - I think we lock up far too many people for far too long, the (most? just some?) data, from other countries, seems to support me - and I oppose this, too.
I agree that when one is convicted of certain offences - Container explained that there are differences between them - one loses many rights, and I have no problem with (almost) anything Bruce et al do to them. I also oppose convicts being allowed to vote, by the way (it just proves that the Charter was sloppily drafted, ALL written constitutions are deeply flawed that way). But until one is convicted one is innocent and the police ought to be very limited in what they can do to us.
More government is always worse government.
