My City Council wants all of our email addresses

[dixiegrrrrl]

The Police chief and the City Council here yesterday, in a Council meeting, decided they want us all to send them our names, addresses and email addresses so they can e-mail us a report of any crimes that have taken place in our neighborhoods.
It's for our benefit, they say. So we will know about any crime areas.

Now, anyone who lives in a lil southern town knows damn well that all crimes are known within 24 hours of happening because of the "scanner patrol"
which consists mainly of retired ladies who listen to police reports.*
The grapevine works exceedingly well here.
Plus anything from DUIs on up is reported in the newspaper. In fact, anything more than a DUI gets front page treatment, with repeated mention of all the police/Federal depts. who were involved, the culprits' pictures, and the address of the arrest.



*I was outside in my front garden one hot day when a car pulled up, containing 3 ladies all of whom had to be 80 or older.
They wanted to know where an address was, because they had just heard on their scanner that a man had fallen off a ladder at that address.

No, I am not making this up.

[liberal N proud]

1. Then come election time they can email you with their propaganda

And I bet each of those ladies had police scanners at home, that is how they knew about the accident.

Midwest towns are no different.

[wandy]

2. You convinced me of one thing. It must be a 'lil' town..........

They either cannot afford or are too cheep to pay the companies that keep tract of e-mail address, your store coupons and other such things that get tracked on a day to day basis.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Or they can get money for selling that info to those companies

We are the biggest town in the county....6,000 people!

High unemployment, one of the state's highest.

[bobthedrummer]

4. In the "wrong hands" could be a modern Hollerith IBM punchcard-with GPS imo dixiegrrrrl

IBM's Role in the Holocaust--What the New Documents Reveal (Edwin Black 2-27-12 Huffington Post)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edwin-black/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691.html

[MineralMan]

5. Is this going to be a mandatory requirement or a request?

The City of St. Paul has my email address. They send me notices about snow emergencies so I can move my car off the street. It's a voluntary public service.

Unless this is going to be a legal requirement, I see no problem with it.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. So far voluntary.

What bothers me, and I should have said in the post, is that the idea sprang from the lips of our newest council member, a very ambitious republican, who is looking to make a big splash in our little pond.
Most of the people in town are on Facebook, of course, and will happily provide any and all info. asked for.

I am a very very private person, and luckily, the phone/internet info is in Mr. Dixie's name.
Damn fool wanted to be in the phone book.
but he has a cell phone, and is outside every day, ,the land line is for dsl plus phone, so guess who gets to answer all the sales calls asking for him?
Thus the answering machine.