Support your First Amendment right to keep and bear phones!
Here's another ominous trend -- more prohibition of instrumentalities of crime (rather than enforcing laws against the crime itself) because of an uproar over the nature of the instrument:
Many local governments in the United States are moving to restrict the use of cell phone cameras even as the quality of the camera pictures steadily improve.
Trying to distinguish between a camera phone and any other cellphone has also complicated matters. The Elk Grove Park District in suburban Chicago enacted a ban in November that covered the possession of any cellphone - not just camera phones - in park-owned restrooms, locker rooms and showers.
"There is no reason to have a cellphone while you're changing and showering," said Ron Nunes, one of the park district's commissioners. "I'd rather protect the children and the public more than someone who wants to call home and see what's for dinner." Fresh in the town's memory was a 2001 incident in which a man used a fiber-optic camera to secretly take pictures of children in a park shower.
You'd think they'd have learned from things like gun control and penis control, but no!
Now, it's camera control. Or, rather, camera-cell-phone control.
Has it ever occurred to these people that the problem -- invasion of privacy -- does not justify the further invasion of privacy and dignity which inevitably occurs when we are reduced to a national kindergarten? This is like banning copying machines because they can be used to make illegal copies -- or MP3 technology because it can be used to assist piracy.
Neophobia is of course at the root of much of this. No one proposes banning microphones! Yet they are instrumentalities of crimes like electronic eavesdropping.
More accidents are caused by eating in cars than by talking on cell phones. Yet it is the cell phone society wants to ban and not the food.
If it is a crime to invade people's privacy with invasive, sexually personal photography, then enforce the law! But they won't do that; instead they'll go after tiny cameras.
Just like they want to take away my gun because others use theirs to commit crimes -- or my pit bull because certain other people use theirs in dogfights.
Of course, the people who devote their energies to invading other people's sexual privacy won't be deterred by bans on camera-cell-phones. They'll just attach ever-tinier cameras to their shoes, and sneak up from behind!
Hey, don't get me started; yesterday in Texas they arrested a woman for selling a vibrator. Phones vibrate too, you know! Haven't you ever heard of phone sex?
posted by Eric on 12.17.03 at 11:33 PM
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I agree, of course. That Texas law against vibrators is particularly loathsome to me, stemming from pure hatred of sexuality, sexuality as such, and female sexuality in particular. Note that they were punishing a woman for selling a vibrator to _a married couple_ (heterosexual). So much for the lie that that anti-homosexual "sodomy" law was to protect heterosexual marriage. So much also for the facile excuse we hear all the time that "oh, those laws are just silly, nobody would ever think of actually _enforcing_ them." Yes, they would. We must be as passionate in defending passion as the enemies of passion are in extinguishing it.
No, I mean your complaining about the fact that an entity that maintains rest rooms, etc., has banned use of cell phones there, must be a joke. So what if the entity is a governmental entity? More than a few private health clubs have banned use of cell phones in locker rooms, etc., for the same reason--because they can be used to take photos of their patrons, particularly when they are in various stages of undress. Why should a governmental entity be criticized for doing so?
If you are serious, methinks you're a bit of a nut.
raj · December 19, 2003 05:48 PM
Steven you are right. Laws restricting freedom are not "silly." They metastasize like cancer.
Raj -- you don't have to enter a private health club, nor do your taxes go to support it. Criminalizing possession of cell phones because some people misuse them, however, smacks of big-brother totalitarianism. The whole idea encourages intrusive physical searches, snitching on people by busybodies, etc. My phone, my Palm Pilot, my camera -- these possessions are not the business of the government unless I use them to commit a crime.
If we must inject psychoanalysis into this argument, it would strike me as fair that people supporting such restrictions on freedom would have to be considered at least as "nuts" as those opposing them.
Except I won't say that and here's why: I endeavor not to use the ad hominem tactic of questioning the mental health of people with whom I might disagree, because it really doesn't assist analysis. Furthermore, many people today consider the appellation of "nuts" to be a form of "hate speech" -- so I tend to avoid calling people that lest I be accused of demeaning the mentally ill -- or even considered rude.
Sorry I took so long to answer, Raj. These days my problem is not too much time -- but not enough!
(But even there, I see another logical fallacy: the amount of time which someone may or may not have on his hands is not logically related to the validity of anything he says.)
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
I agree, of course. That Texas law against vibrators is particularly loathsome to me, stemming from pure hatred of sexuality, sexuality as such, and female sexuality in particular. Note that they were punishing a woman for selling a vibrator to _a married couple_ (heterosexual). So much for the lie that that anti-homosexual "sodomy" law was to protect heterosexual marriage. So much also for the facile excuse we hear all the time that "oh, those laws are just silly, nobody would ever think of actually _enforcing_ them." Yes, they would. We must be as passionate in defending passion as the enemies of passion are in extinguishing it.