When cheering on such laws, we should always ask ourselves whether we're cheering on the intent or the practical/potential effect. When viewed in the latter context, one might instead cheer on a much smaller, incremental approach towards such legislation (if at all).
The latter is often appropriate; people should be free to do what they want unless others are affected significantly. But when it comes to privacy and freedom of speech, I don't think so.
This cannot be generalized and is different depending upon the circumstance. In this case, I wholeheartedly disagree.
If we took into account the uncertainty properly, I think the balance would look very different, and many laws wouldn't pass simply because no-one would be able to vouch for the actual effects.
Even so, there are not the same "downsides and unintended consequence" to every option, nor they have the same impact for every option chosen.
So, this is not some "6 of one, half a dozen of the other" case.
>The question is, do we want that power to be controlled democratically or to be arbitrarily exercised by the most powerful?
Whatever we want, in practice, and for pragmatic reasons, we usually get just a mix of both. So it makes sense to have laws that don't give so much possibility for arbitrary execution, or don't give too much power when arbitrary executed.