It amazes me once again how the supposedly super-free country USA is restricting personal freedom and privacy and the citizens take it for granted or don't care. Well, amazes is not the right word. I'd better use sadden. No, actually, it is scaring me.
The weirdest thing is, that not only the government does it, but companies, too and I suppose neighbourhoods are jumping on the bandwagon too...
The example about job applications is very interesting, because I wonder what would happen if a person answers "no" to said question and it later found to have lied. Will he/she be fired for lying? (Sidenote: in Germany such a question would be considered an invalid question during job applications. If the applicant is asked, he has a RIGHT to lie. Therefore, if the lie is found out later, it is of no consequence, i.e. the employee can't be fired. The only exceptions where the applicant does not have a right to lie is if it is of direct impact on the job - like applying for a job as an accountant and been convicted for fraud.)
I might have some oldfashioned views, on the other hand, about people in employment of the state. Could be a typical German thing, tho.
As the state has the important function of ensuring that the society it is founded on is kept stable (I mean stable, not oppressed !), I am willing to allow the state a more thorough screening of its personnel. It is simply a matter of ensuring and preserving integrity. The state can not afford to have people working for it who have a mindset that is against the state's and society's ideals. As I said, as a German, my views on the state are probably oldfashioned and we're often criticized about our bureaucracy. But the ideal behind it is actually rather simple: state employees make a trade-off between losing some privacy and civil rights on one hand and a (very) secure job on the other.
Now about the forgiveness of society (or lack of it):
For those who know my RL job, it does obviously make my job a lot easier the more ways of information gathering I can legally get. I'm not adverse to a government law enforcement agency keeping information - like the criminal history of someone - stored, because it might become important in a later investigation. However, it has to be kept from public knowledge.
I perfectly understand that victims of a crime or relatives will not or can not forgive. That's their right. And noone has a right to tell them how they should feel about someone.
Society is different, tho. Society is an abstract entity which in my opinion has no right - actually no capacity - to feel anything.
Society has a function. Well, maybe a couple of functions, but one foremost: preserving peace.
People commit a crime, they get punished according to the law. The law being whatever society agreed is appropriate punishment. The moment the appropriate punishment has been dealt to the convict (whether it be serving time, paying a fine or having their toes tickled with a feather for 24 hours), they should again be considered members of society with all the rights and duties that this membership implies. That's it. End of story. Startover.
Individuals may hold grudges, may decide to never forgive, may hate or feel whatever they like. Society has to be neutral to everyone. A society acting biased will lose its peace preserving function and - eventually - crumble.
