August 14, 2013
August 15, 2013
Two sequential masthead editorials from the Argus-Dispatch that will be saved from the bottom of the bird cage. Don’t get us wrong, these grades are based on a curve and only relative to the performance of this newspaper.
The August 15th editorial Surrendering our privacy we give an “A-“ to. It refers to traffic cameras primarily but we presume the rationale is not lost on them as regards general application to government and corporate meta data collection and surveillance. From the A-D :
This page has made no secret of its opposition to traffic cameras including Davenport’s red-light cameras. Government-operated citizen surveillance is a blatant violation of a host of rights including the right of the accused to confront their accuser, the right to effectively defend oneself, the judicial cornerstone of “innocent until proven guilty” and the blatant invasion of privacy government spying represents. . . .
As the American Civil Liberties Union said in a July report on license plate readers, the data collected allow police to take “a single, high-resolution image of our lives.” Meanwhile, such monitoring “can chill the exercise of our cherished rights to free speech and association.”
“If not properly secured, license plate reader databases open the door to abusive tracking, enabling anyone with access to pry into the lives of his boss, his ex-wife or his romantic, political or workplace rivals,” the ACLU report said. We should be worried, very worried.
Yes, Big Brother most definitely is watching us all — innocent or guilty. Why? Because we’re letting him.
The statement from the ACLU quoted in the A-D to support their opinion “unless properly secured” we find rather mushy, particularly from ACLU. But rather than get into all the implications we will let well enough alone for now.
The previous day the A-D produced Durbin’s First Amendment.* It is a scathing indictment of Durbin’s understanding of the Constitution and of his bullying activity towards those corporations who have supported conservative entities. It also addresses the bonafides of bloggers as journalists. The editorial is particularly good (and welcome) in that respect. Mainstream traditional media can be snobby towards the bloggosphere.
It falls to a B+ however because its recitation of “wholehearted” support of “the need for full disclosure when it comes to political donations of all stripes. ” The all stripes term is an overwrought inclusion because the definition of politics is so open to expansive interpretation as many now say it encompasses issue advocacy. The editorial would have benefited from more specificity or the term electoral politics. As regards “all stripes” it is arguable that the D-A is “political” because of its issue advocacy and endorsements and serving as a vehicle for others to do the same. It is a privately held corporation. We do not get to see its detailed ownership except as they voluntarily offer it.
And by the way, while it is in no way a fair fight in terms of space made available, we appreciate that the A-D in the person of John Donald O’Shea has a regular columnist that is superior intellectually to the combination of local liberals and liberal apologists they feature — Don Wooten, Mark Schwiebert and Dan Lee. R Mall
* the QCONLINE search engine did not produce the link, it was necessary to use a Google search. That is a constant problem with the QC Times and the A-D – their internal search engines are very inconsistent.
