So what’s wrong with that?

We’ve all heard about all the excesses of the federal government collecting data on American citizens or of the attempts to regulate the internet more and more.  But have you taken a look at what’s happening locally?

A few weeks ago the Houston city council voted to pass a law allowing neighbors to inform the police if their neighbors are “hoarders”.  The law would allow the police to enter the home and assess if the person is a hoarder and then fine them if necessary.

Yesterday I caught a story about a parent whose son participated in sports and died during spring training due to a heart defect.  He has begun a campaign to make heart EKG screenings mandatory for all student athletes in Texas.

Little things.  You could argue they’re innocuous if not beneficial for individuals and society as a whole.  Why would anyone in their right mind complain about such things?  You’d be right in thinking that by themselves they are beneficial but these laws don’t exist in a vacuum.  You can easily argue that they’re the stepping stones to laws that will have greater latitude to intrude on your privacy.

Mayor Parker already alluded to that as she commented that at the current time the new anti-hoarding ordinance would only apply to townhouses and apartments but that it could easily be expanded to single family homes in the future.  The public good is what is important.  The individual counts for little or not at all.  What really gets to me is that this law relies upon neighbors to become government informants.

The EKG screenings?  Wonderful for student athletes but what happens when someone wants to make the program mandatory for all students and wants to include other conditions besides heart defects?  What happens to all that private medical information when it’s in the hands of a bureaucracy?   Maybe someone in the insurance field or some future employer gets his hands on it?

So what’s the answer to these 2 problems?  I don’t really know.  But thrashing our individual liberties sure isn’t the answer.  Giving away our right to privacy for convenience sake is the last thing that our government should be engaged in.