Is Anyone Going To Stop This Insanity?
By kowalski Posted in Culture | Spotlight Blogs — Comments (68) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I fashion myself as much a "law and order" person as the next guy. However, I have in the past spoken with no small amount of trepidation and skepticism about what I view as the relentless encroachment of law enforcement into public (and even private) spaces through the use of electronic monitoring equipment. As many of you know, I used to live in the Windy City, where Mayor Richard Daley has not only made it clear that he intends to put a camera on the corner of every city block by 2016, but also inside many private establishments such as restaurants and taverns to boot.
Read on . . .
According to The London Times, (h/t Drudge) Britain is prepared to take "the next logical step" with its surveillance program, which already consists of more than 4 million CCTV cameras in a country where the average person is filmed approximately 300 times a day: they are going to monitor sounds, as is already practiced in several cities in Holland.
The equipment can pick up aggressive tones on the basis of 12 factors, including decibel level, pitch and the speed at which words are spoken. Background noise is filtered out, enabling the camera to focus on specific conversations in public places.
We already know about the installation of traffic cameras along roadsides and at intersections to enforce speeding laws. We have also heard about plans in Canada to install GPS-equipped devices in automobiles that will push back the accellerator of a car to actively prevent the driver from exceeding the posted limit. Now Britain is going to listen with high-powered directional microphones to every word people say in public.
At what point are people going to start objecting to the use of this technology in the name of "safety" and "public order" and most especially "combating terrorism?" Why isn't anyone at the ACLU or any other civil-liberties group as concerned about the future of these measures as I am? What kind of world do we really want to live in? One in which every action and literally every word is monitored by the government? And finally, how long will it be before the police start bouncing lasers off of people's windows and recording those conversations, that take place inside someone's home, just because the window is adjacent to a "public space" and therefore falls under their jurisdiction? Update 2: Note that police in several U.S. jurisdictions already monitor private homes from the street and from the air to pick up the infrared signatures that might provide probable cause that residents are growing drugs. Why not bounce lasers off their windows to find out if they are planning to rob a bank or evade their taxes or molest a child or beat their spouse?
Every justification that I have heard from law enforcement people are repetitions of the same, well-worn bromide: "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear." That simple, crushing-logic statement is being used almost universally to justify what amounts to a profound transformation of our public spaces and what it means to be a law-abiding citizen. As a citizen, I don't want my children to live in a "surveillance society." I don't want to live in one myself. How is it that we are allowing it to happen?
[Update: There is already some evidence that people are being driven by fear of losing their jobs to take drastic steps to disable some of these cameras (this poor bloke only made matters worse for himself and got four months in Gaol for his efforts.) At what point do we begin to realize that the bars of the invisible cage are closing in on us all and actively destroying our liberty and freedom, and more importantly, the perception that we live as free individuals in a free society?]
The author of this post is placing it and all attached comments by him into the public domain, to be used freely and without attribution, with no warranties or guarantees of any kind expressed or implied. Cross Posted at The Minority Report
Mayor Daley actually means well by this, but I think he oversteps the bounds of personal property rights when he sticks the cameras inside a private enterprise. The exception would be if a business owner were to invite the camera in or give the Mayor permission in the absence of coercion.
2006 is done, 2008 is another day and another fight
For A Restaurant ??
Oh man if they are asked the smart ones will say yes immediately. The stupid ones will reconsider their positions when the licensing inspectors show up.
"overstepping the bounds" of the same private property rights which, either through legislation or by judicial fiat, no longer permit a restaurant or tavern owner to set smoking policy within the confines of a privately owned enterprise?
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"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
these video cameras. I think it's definitly big brother-ish. But I will say that when the City of Chicago installed two cameras on my old corner (Howard and Damen) the crime and the amount of gang members on the corner decreased dramatically. And that was a bad corner.
But I think that will end when they figure out no one is actually watching them!
As long as they are on public property such as roads and parks and that sort of thing, it's another way of the mayor trying to stave off chaos.
2006 is done, 2008 is another day and another fight
Put the Beat Cops back on the street. Would probably even cost less in the long run. And it would certainly be more effective...
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
version of the police state far more than the Orwellian Big Brother version. Local outrage works pretty well in controlling these things. The traffic cameras in Anchorage only lasted a couple of months before politicians saw their career indicator lights flashing. But if a community isn't outraged, then I guess it is surveiled. I have a greenhouse in my backyard with very powerful horticultural lights, and yes, I do only grow legal vegetables and flowers in it, and just as soon as I turned those lights on, I had the rapt attention of a FLIR equipped NG Blackhawk. Those things are disconcerting when hovering above your house, and it did seem to me there was a bit of a posse comitatus issue, but it is done all the time. The NG gets a light or heat signature and turns it over to the narcs for further investigation. The liberties we willingly surrendered over the so-called war on drugs were bad enough.
I see these pictures all the time that I think are supposed to comfort us; local, even small town, police who look for all the world like frontline combat troops. That does not make me feel good! I'd much prefer to see a kindly cop armed with no more than a sidearm on the street but recognize that he needs to be backed up with some heavier firepower for the really bad guys out there. Homeland Security funding has just been a feeding frenzy for state and local police forces getting all the latest toys and heaviest firepower. Toys like that get used whether needed or not. And police forces all over the Country have redefined their use of force continuum so that they can escalate to deadly force to secure compliance with their directives. I am not troubled by a well trained cop being authorized to use force to protect life or property or to arrest a fleeing felon, but read literally, these policies allow an officer to order you to stand on your head and if you do not comply, work their way all the way up to shooting you to obtain that compliance.
I generally accept that we get the government we deserve, but I don't accept that we deserve a government based on what the very worst of us deserve.
In Vino Veritas
Homeland Security funding has just been a feeding frenzy for state and local police forces getting all the latest toys and heaviest firepower.
You can never tell people in modern law enforcement to stop buying equipment they don't need when the Federal government is willing to buy it for them: HoSec has been an unjustifiable bonanza in many places around the country. In my town, which has a population of about 3,000 people (about half of whom are retirees) and is basically a rural place, the police department got a few full-on HAZMAT suits, HomeSec state-of-the-art laptops, and god knows what else in terms of weaponry.
Just in case the terrorists attack us out here in the woods.
Over HoSec, I agree with you generally: I have a good relationship with the police officers and the Chief of Police in my town. Heck, I live in what used to be the police station here before my family and I bought it.
For the most part they're good people and loyal public servants, but give anyone a blank check and they're going to fill it out and cash it...even police officers who should know better. Their "malfeasance" falls into the realm of "irrational exuberance" when they were given the credit card, but there was nothing really malicious about it.
For some people my singling out of Richard Daley and Chicago seems a little unfair, but it is not because I harbor any personal animosity toward Da Mayor: I object to his policies in several areas, and I lived there for the better part of a decade, and I know just how effective his law-enforcement apparatus already is through firsthand experience.
Also, I'd like to note in passing that it is virtually impossible for a person who has even the cleanest and most pristine of criminal records to legally own a gun in Chicago. You can't do it, short and simple. You can't own a hangun, period unless you are a law enforcement officer or have a special permit. And while you are allowed to own a "long gun" or a rifle, you are not allowed to keep the ammunition inside the city limits. Therefore you are effectively prohibited from using your lawfully-owned property, even in self-defense. And you had better not drive through the city with a gun in your car, even in the trunk, if there is also ammunition in the case with it. If you get stopped and your trunk is searched, it will be confiscated.
I won't even get into the methods that Chicago uses to enforce its "city sticker" laws, but I can tell you that Da Mayor has a fleet of shiny tow trucks and police officers equipped with the very latest in technology to catch and confiscate the cars of offenders. And as any Chicago Alderman knows, when Da Mayor gets something into his head, it's wise not to disagree with him.
And he wants (along with Michael Bloomberg of New York) to make those laws even stricter.
I don't.
In a lot of cases this type of surveillance is going to be used as money generating means.
Here in Portland,OR we do have Photo enforced traffic cameras all around the city. There are signs posted just before you enter them...so it is fair warning.
This brings to mind a conversation I had with my eldest son about 10 yrs ago. He was a newly licensed driver then. He was speculating that 'someday' EVERY traffic light run, every speeding violation, etc., would be monitored by satellite and GPS and we'd be fined automatically through our bank accounts.
I told him..."No way". Now--I can see it happening-the technology is here.
Our local power company is known to contact the 'authorities' when a residents power consumption goes WAY UP. What the threshold for 'way up' is...I don't know. I do know that many a pot-grower has been caught through this manner.
Personally, I can't think of how any of this technology has hurt me. I certainly don't like the idea of my phone calls and emails being 'monitored', and I feel I should be able to feel *privacy* in my own home. Would I tolerate it to feel safe? I hesitantly answer...Yes.
One 'program' I heard of recently got my attention. Supposedly Google or other search engines will be able to 'listen to background noise' through your computers built in microphone. It would be 'listening for television shows or radios' and the search engine would be able to instantly send advertisements geared toward what you normally view or listen to. That seems too creepy to me.
From March 25, 2006, NYT:
A pilot program based on the experiment rolls out at the end of March and will last at least a year. Within the next six weeks or so, 280 paid volunteers will have their cars equipped with a global positioning system that will allow the vehicles to be tracked by computers installed at two Portland service stations, where the drivers will be required to fill up.The Oregon program is being watched closely across the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but it has also touched off some privacy concerns because the same system could be used to track a driver's location.
If you were to aggregate all this data, you could set up a centralized traffic congestion computer system to maximize efficiency during the Portland-area commute. What a great idea to counter global warming.
Something along the lines of "Those who trade liberty for safety deserve neither..."
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
Ben Franklin warned us about trading ESSENTIAL liberty for TEMPORARY safety. Big difference.
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It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge
I believe that it would apply to the idea of that kind of widespread surveillance of people without warrants. You follow?
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
One 'program' I heard of recently got my attention. Supposedly Google or other search engines will be able to 'listen to background noise' through your computers built in microphone.
But only if you install the software that lets them do it. There's no way they can do this kind of thing without you loading software that lets them do it. With the advent of spyware you have to be really careful about what you install because you can easily hand over complete control of your machine to others as well. This is the domain of individuals and fly-by-night companies, however. I can't see a legitimate company ever doing something this crazy (except Sony -- they are truly idiots). It would be a PR nightmare.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
"1984" with reality. No way could this actually be happening.
If a Democrat (God forbid) gets elected in 2008 and begins using the FISA courts to mine for conservatives who are actively campaigning against the liberal government? If they label that person an enemy combatant and lock them up (since habeas corpus is going away)?
Things are going in that direction and all it would take is one authoritarian leftist (Castro or Stalin-minded) to turn us into the USSR or Red China.
You're trying to trick us into agreeing with the lefty accusations against the President in a very cute way, I'll give you that.
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It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge
but President Bush really has no political reason to do anything like that. In fact, no right-winger who has the support of business would do that to any *real* level because it interferes with the economy too much.
any politico would use anti-terror mechanisms against political enemies?
They wouldn't do it twice.
Evil men hide from the truth, but good men stand upon it.
My opposition to the Patriot Act. Great stuff so long as you don't have a government that has any desire to use it for other purposes...
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
and what about this whitfox
That's the only poster in 2 years that I have initiated a request to ban anyone and he yet, he lives despite his agenda against Romney as a threat to Christian Church.
I never requested anyone be bannd before beacuse I was a novice but now
Well I guess I still am simply not getting the criteria? But I guess I resent that he gives Christians a bad name.
GC, Southern Baptist for Romney...
www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com
I believe in counter-terrorism uses of this technology but my fear is that the use of this technology will grow to include political or religous persecution.
wanting to track my car because they're afraid I'm going to kill their babies by going three mph over the limit. I might even smoke with a child in my car; maybe even in my home - can't have that! Save the fears of political or religious persecution for the paranoid Lefty blogs. The only sanctioned religious persecution in this Country is of practicing Christians.
In Vino Veritas
and political reprisals are just the beginning. I was speaking of the continued Christian persecution.
www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com
-- It's a small price to pay.
-- You can't be too careful.
-- It's for the children.
-- We're at war (if you object, you must be a CommieMuslimHomoDUerAntisemite etc.)
-- Jack Baur needs this know-all, see-all technology to save the world ever 24 hours.
-- People bashing our Blue Knights should be ashamed.
-- Only Libertarians will complain, and they just want everyone to do drugs and have sex with children.
-- The ACLU objects, so it must be a Good Thing.
And the all-time favorite - If you've got nothing to hide, what's the problem?
we appear to agree on something, let me return the favor. A few good answers to:
If you've got nothing to hide, what's the problem?
- Everybody's got something to hide.
- Yes, it's hidden, and you can have it when you pry my cold, dead finger off its trigger.
- The problem is you and your uppity attitude.
- No problem, as long as you strip down to your scivvies and give me your ATM PIN while you look.
- The problem is that you musta' woke up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
- It's cowardice to keep order in the sheep while ignoring the wolves.
Evil men hide from the truth, but good men stand upon it.
Is we know this stuff doesn't work. Governments in places like the UK and big US cities make it impossible for law abiding people to defend themselves, then when asked to deal with the inevitable worsening of the violent crime problem, simply install cameras in an attempt to deal with it. When they don't do anything, they continue to ratchet up the intrusiveness by adding more cameras, adding things like microphones, and installing cameras that can yell at you (they are actually doing this in London). So maybe people get stabbed on the streets and in their own house, but at least you don't have anybody owning handguns. I guess it's a small price to pay for adherence to the gospel of liberalism.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
i agree that there is the potential for changes in public space to increase crime in priavet space, rather than decrease crime. so, i might be paying to "push" criminals from the city center to my back door?
Having tasted a life wasted, I ain't ever going back again.
-E.V.
The thing that bothers me the most about it, on a philosophical level, is that the mindset that is happiest about encouraging this kind of total surveillance bears an uncanny resemblance to totalitarian thinkers of every stripe.
Most totalitarians are utopians, not dystopians -- they believe that once their comprehensive planning is enacted and agreed upon and people everywhere are subject to it relentlessly that all of the foibles of humanity can be gradually driven out of existence or at least suppressed to the point that they're infinitesimal concerns. I used to think this way. I really believed that with a "properly organized" society that was "properly maintained" according to rational principles humanity would be happier and more prosperous. When I was a child, I actually drew up plans for a city enclosed by a fullerene dome and managed according to strictly rational principles. I was a big fan of population control and in fact I advocated sterilizing normal individuals for the benefit of humanity in general. In short, I was only a few degrees of separation from James Lovelock, who construes "Gaia, the living Earth" as an organism that has been infected by a disease called Humanity. The people who are advocating radical responses to CO2 emissions are similarly convinced that what is happening to the biosphere is analogous to uncontrolled bacterial growth: the bacteria in a petri dish continue to multiply and divide until they consume all of their nutrients and contaminate their immediate environment with toxins, and then die off massively because of their inability to understand the folly of their ways.
This is essentially the message that AlGore is trying to get people to believe. It's panic-stricken science and political demagoguery (always the best kind!) at its most extreme and shameless.
I'm much more optimistic about humanity's future than they are. I'll detail that in a later post, because there are many more reasons for optimism than pessimism right now. Don't believe the hype.
That sounds new to me. Any idea where this term originated? Architecture or sci-fi?
I've come up with a design for an open dome of some sort to be used in a fiction of my own, but mostly as a defensive structure for citizens of a not-too distant future where Civilization is barely starting to rebuild itself following a near-Armageddon level conflict. That government, however, is a recovering United States that has restored most of its Constitution to an 19th Century standard, save for a few amendments passed to ensure the better laws of the 20th (Civil Rights, term limitations for politicians, etc) are kept.
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"Straight Talk Express"? My bum feet! -- Me, on Senator McCain and other "moderates"
Lots of incredibly good ideas, and I don't want to force him into this discussion needlessly, but as a Utopian youngster I actually constructed a fullerene tensegrity sphere out of plastic coffee stirring straws and yarn, and it was a very robust structure indeed for its weight. You could toss it around and bounce it off of walls and it was exceptionally strong. Anyone who has been to EPCOT Center knows the landmark, also.
Ironically one of the things that caused Bucky Fuller to have so many troubles and go bankrupt and have to shelve manufacturing his ideas were unions, specifically because of his ideas for shelter. You can't have a house that doesn't require electricians and plumbers and pipefitters unions to do the wiring and lay the pipe, after all, even if it's an incredibly good design. The unions were one of the forces that made sure that Bucky Fuller's ideas never made it to fruition.
As facial recognition programs become more sophisticated, this will be an effective way to crack down on public smokers, who threaten the health of passers-by. Scotland will lead the way!
There is no problem with this. its no different than the NSA wire tapping program. As longa s your not breaking any laws, you don't have anything to worry about. If, on the otherhand, you are talking daily with terrorists, you should be very afraid. Same goes for the cameras. Remember, there is no "Constitutional right to privacy". Go look it up. The word "privacy" does not appear anywhere in the Constitution.
Speak Conservatively
http://www.cafepress.com/cspeaking
You're gone. Use the contact form as appropriate.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
I don’t object to the placement of cameras in public places, but I strongly oppose any camera in a private establishment or cameras that are directed in such a way as to view into residential homes. I don’t view it as any different than having a police officer standing on the corner or a patrol vehicle passing by the neighborhood. I don’t object to monitoring email for potential national security threats as long as domestic information gathered is inadmissible in court unless it gathered under a warrant. I understand fully the Orwellian comparisons and the fear the some folks express on this topic. I think the fears are warranted and should not be discounted, and allowing such methods should be closely controlled by public oversight. I believe that most Cell Phone conversations are susceptible to electronic intercept by both government and NGS entities. There is little anyone can do to prevent surveillance of ones person. The GPS technology employed in many domestic cell phones will soon allow the pinpoint location of private parties by cell phone companies. On-Star is being offered in most General Motors Vehicles, you have to wonder if any person has been inadvertently eavesdropped on by a either an On-Star employee or “other interested parties” while traveling along the highway. It is my opinion that it is unreasonable to believe that any measure of privacy from the government is obtainable. I would rather know of and sanction certain methods, rather than be ignorant of them. It is the age of Technology; cameras on public streets are the least of our worries.
Mike
1) All video cameras must be accessible by the public at all times. No exceptions.
2) Such cameras also get put in the mayor's office, all the alderman offices, and pretty much every city office. There's more crimes committed in those offices than there are on the streetcorners.
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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community
All public cameras should be broadcast on the internet including ones in every city officials office.
I was shocked to learn that Google has kept every last word you have ever typed into google search ever since they began. They also keep email you delete sometimes forever.
Google successfully fought sharing info w/ the US government but struck a deal w/ Chinese government to submit to China's censorship.
That disgusts me.
If you often find yourself arguing the exceptions rather than the rule you just might be a Democrat.
-CommonCents
Before all of the hubbub about intercepting terrorist phone calls started, it was Al Gore who partnered with Google to start his television network. The Bush Administration wanted to intercept the telephone calls of terrorists to try to stop them from wreaking havoc...but AlGore wants to know the thoughts of everyone, at least as well as the Google Zeitgeist can portray them to him.
Expect more in the future from Al Gore, who tonight I will call the Biggest Totalitarian Who Invented The Internet.
The fact is that they shouldn't exist at all. They shouldn't be on top of lightpoles, and they most certainly shouldn't be recording sounds and voices. We have surrendered the most basic elements of freedom -- walking down the street as law abiding citizens and saying what we want -- to people who wish to control the society because we're paying them through our taxes to do so.
It doesn't get much worse or more totalitarian than that, my friend.
And it begins with Polonium-210. You cannot by definition have a free society where people are not allowed to speak freely, without fear that they are being monitored, but that is only the beginning of the concerns.
People are sorely mistaken if they believe that the Internet is a "safe haven" from these kinds of totalitarian monitoring practices. In fact, the exact opposite is true: the Internet will always be monitored more heavily than public spaces for very simple reasons relating to the way that it functions at a fundamental level. And what I see is that law enforcement officers are jealous: they want to know exactly what everyone is saying even while they're "offline."
go Google your name and your various log-in names some time. A few years ago I used a few university courses to do the research and writing on a history of a Confederate regiment that my ancestors served in. Some of the internet sites that have valuable information on things like this are, shall we say, a little ways from mainstream thinking. You wouldn't believe how many times I've had to answer for posting on those boards!
In Vino Veritas
Found on me was Redstate. Namely a comment made after a poser was banned and one of the editors asked if it was myself that they had just banned...
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
This seems to have changed to a MegaMek.Net post I made acouple years ago about the meaning of my name.
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
One has the right in this country to choose not to use Google if you don't like their policies on data retention. I've gone elsewhere for my searching needs, simply because the results are too easily manipulated through Google bombing. They seem to have halted all work on improving their search engine a while ago.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Google is now worth more in terms of its market value than most of the countries in the world you would care to talk about. Their spam-blocking and image-identification technology is absolutely amazing, and it's only going to get more powerful. In the end, AlGore will be able to ask Sergey Brin: "What are all the people in Duluth thinking about my plan to raise taxes on gasoline?" and Sergey will be able to give him a relatively precise answer. Much better than polling, because the PEOPLE THEMSELVES entered the search terms.
But the fundamental principle of Google is not correlation, it's causation based on set-theoretic mathematics. It's what Sergey and Larry called a "conviction-based" search engine. You can find some of the early papers at Stanford and read them, but the most valuable of their early papers is this:
"Dynamic Itemset Counting And Implication Rules For Market Basket Data"
The basic reason that Google works "harder" to come up with the best answers the more you give it information is because Sergey was convinced that the way to search was through *conviction* not *correlation*.
" I fashion myself as much a "law and order" person as the next guy."
how can you profess this and then call the men and woman that serve "jealous"?
honest question...do you really think the average cop, or mayor/pol/alderman//whatever.. gives a crud what the average, law abiding person is doing 24/7? I don't, but I do think that those that do break the law are everywhere...and in the interest of safety, protecting the peace, and keeping civil order how can video monitors be bad?
do you really think the average cop, or mayor/pol/alderman//whatever.. gives a crud what the average, law abiding person is doing 24/7?
In fact, I know that they do. When I worked for DePaul one of the professors used to bring in a commentator from the Chicago Police to describe their tactics for profiling people they believed were likely to commit crimes. She was fervently anti-profiling and his appearance was designed to show exactly the "state of play" between police officers and civil libertarians who were opposed to any form of profiling whatsoever.
The police want every piece of evidence they can accumulate because, very briefly speaking, there are a lot of lawyers who will try to discredit that evidence and take it out of court and use it to discredit the prosecution of crimes. I worked for a law school where this was a minor industry, especially in death penalty cases.
And if you are talking about the "average cop" it's very difficult to be more "average" than the ones who used to occupy the building in which I currently live, which used to be the police station, and was wired not only for secret photography but also for sound recording.
Where I live right now used to be the police station for this small town that I live in, and once my father and I took possession of the place we learned very quickly that it had been pretty comprehensively bugged. Go through the attic and you would find strange drill holes leading down into each of the residences in the building. All the wires had been removed but the evidence of comprehensive surveillance in this property were absolutely clear.
members of my family have given their lives to law enforcement. I ,like you and many others have many, many friends that are cops...in my town , in Chicago, all over. Is it your position that "they" care about your conversation while sitting at the El , waiting to go to the ball game?...I don't by it. Why?..Better yet, suppose your are correct in your suspicion...what are they doing with the info?..is it all taped, documented, classified?...See I really believe that my life is that exciting...sure I speed, overtime park, even drive after a couple beers. But i do it knowing the consequences if I get caught. And if I get caught, on tape, or any other surv., I might be pissed, but hey, it's my fault!! I broke the law. Do the benefits not outweigh any downsides?
I like your stuff man, but I really can't see the issue here. There are cases already in which video has helped L.E. big time..are there any that reflect your side of the discussion?
While increased monitoring may stop some crimes and inhibit others, you also have to look at the costs, not only in money, but also in time spent reviewing the surveillance data, the questionable conversations etc. that lead to investigation of false trails (time taken away from better police activity), and worse false accusations (which the accused may or may not be able to disprove) that lead to court time, injury to the accused, etc. You can't escape the iron law of statistical uncertainty, and the more you push surveillance, the more false positives you will get along with your true positives.
What's important then is to realize that increased surveillance is not a free ride. And if you're the one whose innocent banter is misinterpreted by strangers, the outcome will be not be a laughing matter.
No different then the seat belt laws.
Remember how they first came into use. They promised us, "we'll never arrest anyone for this. We just want you to wear your seat belts." Then they instituted small fines like $25.00. Then the next step was a primary offense for non-use of a seat belt - in other words they could pull you over for no other reason.
And lately we've heard stories of people actually spending a night in jail for not paying their seat belt tickets.
It will be the same with the cameras. Watch the Authoritarians say "ahh, we'll ensure to protect your civil liberties..."
Eric Dondero
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com
is just a part of the DUI scam to raise money. Heretofore, the cops had to find or fabricate some probable cause to pull you over and make you blow. Now, "It appeared he wasn't wearing a seat belt, your Honor" is all it takes. Then of course those highly trained experts will conclude that you might have been drinking and before long the city/county/state is $5-10K better off. At .08, you can't have a bottle of wine with your wife over dinner and drive home legally unless you're well over 200#.
In Vino Veritas
One of the few things that makes my father creep close to becoming politically active are 'sobriety checkpoints,' another annual fundraiser for local governments.
This stuff is disgusting.
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It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge
my sister in rural Georgia when we came upon a roadblock; just one of those general license and registration, safety equipment functioning things. My God what an offensive thing! Just minding your own business driving down the highway and you either have to subject yourself to that or turn around, and I'm sure they'd treat a turn around as probable cause. The cop was civil if imperious with us, but I suspect his demeanor would have been far different had we been kids or Black.
I can just see how that goes down; they force you to stop and be in their presence; they use your proximity to do a Terry search; the Terry search "discloses" something; they've got probable cause to roust you and do a thorough search.
On mornings like this when it is five below and will be dark until nine or so, I think of at least spending my winters someplace warm. Then I start thinking of having to put up with stuff like that. Don't get me wrong, the cops here use DUI for a cash cow too, but at least they have to have probable cause and can't use roadblocks.
In Vino Veritas
The .08 law proves there's nobody serious about Federalism in DC. For as often as the weasels use Federalism as an excuse to be on both sides of an issue (like SSM), 99 Senators voted to force .08 on the states when they knew they had no business doing so... the fact that they had to tie highway funds to it instead of just relying on the abused and overused ICC is evidence of this. The other Senator didn't vote.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Aren't the same types of people pushing for these sorts of intrusions by local lackey politicians the same types who scream bloody murder over any sort of much less innocuous intrusion by the feds?
Who do you trust to invade your privacy in one way or another - someone in NSA who is mining for terrorist activitiy or some member of the local Democratic political machine?
I can see arguing against both as a civil liberties issue, but arguing against anti-terror ones and in favor of potentionally much more nefarious local ones is the height of hypocrisy.
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Bipartisanship = give + take. Republicans give. Democrats take.
The main motive driving these measures are tax revenue grabs by big government city liberals. Second, the illusion that we can prevent terror attacks via this technology than by investing scarce resources in other methods. Third, lazy police desire to make arrests for whatever they see on the screens at random rather than the harder gumshow work required to get the crime kingpins.
Yes, one could detect criminal activity and plots being discussed on the street some of which is not too late to stop. But usually it will be too late. To stop more than one misses, the resources are better spent on bugging phones and training spies or under cover agents and...see below
Four, as to terrorism, why don't we just enlist the Dems to go along with a sure-fire strategy for victory (responding to the win or get out meme) and just go ahead and use the WWII method. Give ultimatums to Muslim nations and European nations that appease a hostile jihadist minorities to either westernize their laws, wipe out the wahhabist madrassas, wipe out jihadist enclaves, bomb the afghan-pakistan border area 24/7 until we say stop, make Christianity their state religion, all w/i in 48 hours or be vaporized one by one until they all meet us on the USS GHWB.
So now, we have won the war. The terror excuse is off the table. I doubt they can win the argument now for these measures.
www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com