[pp.int.general] Big Brother in NL?

[Ole Husgaard]

Reinier Bakels skrev:
> Some people believe that this is just a tax increase in disguise,
> intended to make car owners (user) even more than today (cars are
> already a cashcow for tax). But there is also an increasing prinvacy
> awareness.
Tax issues is something we have to be really careful about in the pirate
parties. We risk going into the old right/left political discourse, and
that could hurt us because we attract people coming from both the right
and left of the old political system. With members from both left and
right in the old system we risk internal conflicts if we go into the
taxation discussion, unless we have good arguments that can be defended
from both sides in the old political system.

But that does not mean we can never go into such an issue. For example
the argument against medical patents proposed by PP.se has good
arguments from both left and right. The left-wing argument is about
people dying in the developing countries because they cannot pay for
medicines, while the right-wing argument is about saving a lot of money
(both public and private) by increasing publicly founded research with a
substantially smaller amount (thus indirectly (perhaps, depending on
public funding) increasing taxes by a significantly smaller amount than
the extra price we pay due to patents on medicines).

> So perhaps we can kill two birds with one stone:
> 1. At last, get privacy awareness in this country (NL is seriously
> underdeveloped in that respect)
We have had a similar discussion in Denmark about road-pricing with GPS,
and it has raised privacy awareness, and even given us new members.

> 2. Getiing right wing people in, who usually foster a "law and order"
> idea, with the perception "if you don't have anything to hide, you
> don't have anything to fear" (which is of course COMPLETE nonsense,
> but people don't udnerstand the risk of identity theft).
The "anything to hide, something to fear" argument is bogus, as you say.
The simplest example is why we lock the door when we go to the toilet.
But there are many other examples that are better if you have the time
to explain.

I don't mind right-wing people if they support our politics. And "law
and order" is a good argument to them. They want an orderly society
where people follow the law, just like us. (Only potential disagreement
is what the law should be.) The "law and order" argument is what made us
convince the danish government that they should support amendment 138 in
the Council of Ministers in the telecom package.

Best Regards,

Ole Husgaard.