Stupid legislation, stupid legislator
March 14th, 2009. Published under My Recent Reads. No Comments.
pulled from Google Reader (click on title for original post)
I keep a little list of stupid things that our leaders and representatives do in the name of protecting us. This is a great one. It turns out that a California State Lawmaker, Joel Anderson, has learned that the terrorists that attacked Mumbai used maps to plot their attacks! So, being a rational person, he realizes that it might be difficult to outlaw maps per se, but he could propose a law making it illegal for Google Earth to portray government buildings. Evidently he wants them to be blurred out. So forget using online tools to help you get to the Secretary of State branch, or the unemployment office.
Normally I would waste valuable time in explaining to this assemblyman that 1. The cat is out of the bag. You cannot put it back. 2. California is not the center of the Universe and cannot legislate the Internet. 3. When you outlaw 3-D images of government buildings only terrorists will have 3-D images of government buildings.
But who has time for this?
Update: Mr. Anderson answers questions on his soon to be killed bill.
Post from: ThreatChaos