Libertarians are nothing more than luddites, right?

redrumloa

redrumloa

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Miami Beach approves license-plate scanners for Venetian Causeway

The license plate readers would monitor cars entering Miami Beach. The cameras would read motor vehicle tags, and the tag information would be compared to a database of messages that would range from vehicles or drivers involved in felonies to traffic related offenses, according to a memo from Miami Beach City Manager Jimmy Morales to commissioners.
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Don't worry, this is just to make you safe and it will be coming to your neighborhood soon. We will all be much better when facial recognition technology is in all public areas and connected to a global database.

Aren't we so lucky?

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Heh... lucky is one word for it.

I sat in on a little presentation put on by a vendor I shall not name (they have a lot of customers they can't name...), and trust me... State of the art in video surveillance is a lot deeper and more Orwellian than I thought. Especially in some key areas such as video search and real-time video analytics. As a country, we're going to need to come to a real policy about how this data is to be treated, how long it is to be archived, what purposes analytics can be used for, and what things will be eligible candidates for searches against the archived dataset.

As a concerned public, this is a discussion we need to frame sooner, rather than later.
 
ilwrath said:
As a country, we're going to need to come to a real policy about how this data is to be treated, how long it is to be archived, what purposes analytics can be used for, and what things will be eligible candidates for searches against the archived dataset.
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And once you've got some good policies in place then whoever is occupying the White House can ignore it all whenever they feel like it. Or the CIA can ignore it, or the NSA. The whole idea of representative government and oversight by the people has gone out of the window. Cheney has been pushing for unitary executive since long before he was able to really test out his theory as Bush's V.P. and Obama didn't do anything to roll this back. Each president going forward who gets his hands on this power will find it too useful to give up.

If the data is out there and is being collected then someone will use it whether or not policy is in place. Unless you actually make it illegal to have a store of this information beyond a certain age without a warrant and you prosecute those who don't destroy information in a timely manner and you actually go looking for violators ... but that involves even more intrusive bureaucracy. Ain't no problem so bad you can't invent a worse problem to solve it.
 
And once you've got some good policies in place then whoever is occupying the White House can ignore it all whenever they feel like it. Or the CIA can ignore it, or the NSA. The whole idea of representative government and oversight by the people has gone out of the window. Cheney has been pushing for unitary executive since long before he was able to really test out his theory as Bush's V.P. and Obama didn't do anything to roll this back. Each president going forward who gets his hands on this power will find it too useful to give up.
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Certainly. It's an uphill battle, and it'll only get worse from here.

If the data is out there and is being collected then someone will use it whether or not policy is in place. Unless you actually make it illegal to have a store of this information beyond a certain age without a warrant and you prosecute those who don't destroy information in a timely manner and you actually go looking for violators ... but that involves even more intrusive bureaucracy. Ain't no problem so bad you can't invent a worse problem to solve it.
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Well, why have any laws at all? People are just going to break them, anyhow.... Seriously?

It is still useful to have a framework in place to define what is and is not an acceptable practice. Evidence collected by an illegal search is not admissible in most* court cases. I don't particularly see why you'd need to actively seek violators outside the government agencies, themselves. And, frankly, that is an oversight they could use.

* Of course the NSA/CIA don't play by these rules, but do they play by any?
 
Florida sure seems a hot-bed of Constitutional violations. First, we have innocent and unsuspected people having to cowtow to illegal search and punishment of drug testing. Now they're going to use technology to scan all legal drivers hoping to weed out the illegal one's? Again we see warrantless searches going on.

I'm glad in the Minnesota Constitution we have ruled out such things. When law enforcement tried speed ticket cams they were thrown out by our Supreme Court. Then law enforcement tried red-light cams. Strangely, the cops can't figure out that cam use in another way is just as illegal? Anyway they were thrown out too. Both times the Court ruled the cities had to payback the monies they collected. IMO they should have penalized them more harshly so the police budgets were hit by an unexpected expense.

For Florida it's likely these will have to go past the State level to the Federal Law to toss out. Idiots!
 
There's nothing about this issue that limits it to libertarian interests.
 
ilwrath said:
Well, why have any laws at all? People are just going to break them, anyhow.... Seriously?
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Why have laws only for the little people. This is what law is about and more or less always has been. In America and in some other countries too it is, in theory, the little people who run things but that only works if they are willing to run things. If they don't pay attention then they get NDAA and SOPA and patents and copyrights being extended whenever some powerful interest is about to have it expire on something they "own".

The question is, how do we make sure that the laws apply to all and that the laws are the ones we need. Constant vigilance. Find some governing feet and hold them to the fire. You will be spied upon and called a terrorist, etc, but it's got to be done and it's got to be done by a significant number of people. Freeloading is treason.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
If they don't pay attention then they get NDAA and SOPA and patents and copyrights being extended whenever some powerful interest is about to have it expire on something they "own".
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Oh, that reminds me:


Members of Congress finally introduce serious DMCA reform
New legislation sponsored by Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Jared Polis (D-CO) takes a broader approach to the issue. In addition to explicitly legalizing cell phone unlocking, the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013 also modifies the DMCA to make clear that unlocking copy-protected content is only illegal if it's done in order to "facilitate the infringement of a copyright." If a circumvention technology is "primarily designed or produced for the purpose of facilitating noninfringing uses," that would not be a violation of copyright.

For example, Lofgren's bill would likely make it legal for consumers to rip DVDs for personal use in much the same way they've long ripped CDs. It would remove legal impediments to making versions of copyrighted works that are accessible to blind users. And it would ensure that car owners have the freedom to service their vehicles without running afoul of copyright law.
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Now if only they can set strict limits to the EULA bullshit.
 
Eula have never been challenged in Court, AFAIK.
 
faethor said:
@Redrumloa,

More folly in Florida. A subtle, but significant tweak to Florida's rules regarding traffic signals has allowed local cities and counties to shorten yellow light intervals, resulting in millions of dollars in additional red light camera fines
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Of course! I predicted this when the first cameras went up. The exact same thing happened in California when they rolled out the cameras. They claim it is for safety, but even a screaming moron knows it is for nothing else except revenue collection and kickbacks.
 
Luddite or not, eventually every minute of your public, and much of your private existence will be recorded.
 
redrumloa said:
But you shouldn't just bend over and take it.
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Well, it's going to happen regardless. Licence plate cameras are the least of your worries.
I'm more concerned about the impact of surveillance on liberty, rather than the surveillance itself, which is inevitable.
 
Robert said:
I'm more concerned about the impact of surveillance on liberty, rather than the surveillance itself, which is inevitable.
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Believing something is inevitable just makes it more so. Believing something is defeatable and fighting it makes it less so. The best way to create a bully is never to stand up to him.

As to the effect on liberty - it will have exactly the intended effect. Surveillance and the threat of surveillance are forces of social control that prevent dissent. It is the theory behind the panopticon, Santa and God. It is the theory behind the Soviet Union and the old Eastern Block. The Stasi and the KGB never really had the capabilities for surveillance that everyone attributed to them. They certainly didn't have the capabilities that we have now - but they had enough of a reputation for surveillance that the people who felt dissatisfaction with the ruling classes felt to paranoid to say so.

What surveillance does is discourage dissent against authority. If you are in full agreement with authority then you will have no problems and you will think you are living in a free country. Only dissidents suffer. That's as true in Saddam's Iraq as it was in Bush's America. You go along to get along - but if you think you know better than the king you will be dealt with. Improved surveillance prevents the rise of such treasonous groups as the plotters of the American Revolution from being able to operate. It infiltrates peace groups and disrupts their operations. It infiltrates political groups that work for the people's interests and dissipates them. We already see the effects of surveillance - or you see them if you are involved in the kinds of groups that are impacted by them. Northrop Grumman sees more danger in a group like Granny's for Peace than the Mafia. Defense contractors have great influence in several governments of the world and they aren't worried about using public resources and powers to defend their turf. The same is true of many other industries.

However, assuming that it's all inevitable is just neutering yourself. If it was all inevitable then no bill of writes could have come into being where there wasn't one before. None of the restraints on power that have recently been lifted could have existed at all if there hadn't been people willing to fight hard to have them put in place at one time. It was perfectly possible for armed agents of the government to enter people's houses without any permission (and one might have thought it inevitable that they would) and yet the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the US was added to prevent that by law. Those rights have been chipped away over the years (and blasted away lately) but that was no more inevitable than the creation of those rights were. The people who care, act. The people who don't care get acted upon. Politics is NOT a spectator sport. But the more surveillance there is the harder it gets to organize a response (as is intended).
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Believing something is inevitable just makes it more so. Believing something is defeatable and fighting it makes it less so. The best way to create a bully is never to stand up to him.
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I'm talking about cameras and microphones in general, even just with the general public. Look no further than the fact that almost everybody carries a video and audio recorder around with them at all times. Huge amounts of our lives are now routinely recorded and we mostly don't notice or care when we do notice. Google glass looks like a reasonable pointer to where things are heading.

More cameras and microphones (and therefore more recording) is inevitable. This includes you, me, the rest of the public, your local shop, small businesses, multinational corporations, as well as governments. We are increasing being recorded everywhere we go and this will only continue.

It is indeed inevitable. If you think that pretending it isn't will in any way prevent it, fair play to you but I'm backing a different horse.
 
I'm with Robert, recording by private citizens, private companies, and likely public entities is inevitable. I'm all for fighting against it. But, I think where the true fight is in retention length, access to, and use of the recordings themselves. Should the data be created, how can that data be used? It's a serious question that must be addressed as well.
 
Robert said:
More cameras and microphones (and therefore more recording) is inevitable. This includes you, me, the rest of the public, your local shop, small businesses, multinational corporations, as well as governments. We are increasing being recorded everywhere we go and this will only continue.
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Which is not really the same thing as surveillance. Surveillance is using those cameras, microphones, GPS phones etc to put together a coherent picture of what any person is doing. It's kind of like keeping a detailed diary versus having the government be allowed to read your diary without a warrant and a very good reason to do so. Just because you are recorded shouldn't mean that everything that was recorded becomes available for the government or intelligence agencies or private companies to go on a fishing expedition looking for people who may damage their interests.
 
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