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Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

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Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why pretend that the privacy of your home is so special? The only thing keeping laser microphones from being aimed at all of our windows is a 5-4 decision in Kylio v. US, and Scalia is dead, and Clinton is going to be appointing the next Supreme Court justice. Clinton (DLC) Democrats love surveillance even more than Bushes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._Unit…

>Clinton (DLC) Democrats love surveillance even more than Bushes. I'd disagree. The complete and absolute infatuation with surveillance by both the Bush's and the Clinton's is the same.

Pessimizer, I think you are wrong, I agree with Stanislav. Republicans don't believe in the right to privacy, they use that as the reason why Texas should be able to restrict dildo sales (among many other things :-)), for instance, and conservatives use their disbelief in privacy to argue they should be able to legislate against consensual sex practices they don't like. Dems generally do support a right to privacy in your home.

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#25
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why pretend that the privacy of your home is so special? The only thing keeping laser microphones from being aimed at all of our windows is a 5-4 decision in Kylio v. US, and Scalia is dead, and Clinton is going to be appointing the next Supreme Court justice. Clinton (DLC) Democrats love surveillance even more than Bushes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._Unit…

First, Supreme Court Justices are pretty much inscrutable as far as their jurisprudence before they join the bench (see: just about any justice in modern history). Knowing anything about the president's political leanings tells us next to nothing about how their nominees will decide cases, beyond knowing the nominee themself. Second, as soon as Trump and Clinton are locked in (after the conventions), the Republicans…

This is a possibility, but if they don't cave, Clinton is not putting in Merrick Garland. And I don't know that Merrick Garland has any sympathy for Scalia's argument.

This is a case where the more liberal justices tended towards an anti-fourth argument as long as the surveillance was done in a public place, and neither Obama nor Clinton have shown themselves to have a problem with universal surveillance that I'm aware of, in any case, ever.

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#26

> If you're going to conduct criminal activity, do it in the privacy of your own home. > That was the original intention of the 4th amendment. Wat. The intention of the 4th amendment was to enable criminal activity, but confine it to private property? Not to protect citizens' privacy from government snooping without probable cause? The intent was to prevent the executive branch from indiscriminately "searching" (and…

And why pretend that the privacy of your home is so special? The only thing keeping laser microphones from being aimed at all of our windows is a 5-4 decision in Kylio v. US, and Scalia is dead, and Clinton is going to be appointing the next Supreme Court justice. Clinton (DLC) Democrats love surveillance even more than Bushes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._Unit…

> The only thing keeping laser microphones...

The legality has nothing to do with it, as it has been demonstrated over and over that law enforcement will employ methods that can charitably be described as "legally questionable" and then attempt to hide it (see stingray). What is stopping them is limitations imposed by the physical world - both in number of windows and the fact that laser mics don't work the way they're portrayed on television. This is the reason why digital key escrow is infinitely more dangerous than physical key escrow (like fire department lockboxes).

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#27

> If you're going to conduct criminal activity, do it in the privacy of your own home. > That was the original intention of the 4th amendment. Wat. The intention of the 4th amendment was to enable criminal activity, but confine it to private property? Not to protect citizens' privacy from government snooping without probable cause? The intent was to prevent the executive branch from indiscriminately "searching" (and…

A bit of a and a bit of b. The intention was to protect private property from government snooping without probable cause. It was a way to balance property rights against the governments' law-enforcement powers.

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#28
It's not the best reporting, but from what I can tell, the FBI is collecting evidence against auction bidders who allegedly conspire to pay less for foreclosed real-estate. The auctions take place on the courthouse steps, and the bidders have been accused of working together to keep prices low by intimidating some bidders and conspiring with others. I'd love to see the auctions moved to a website marketplace. Maybe a good startup idea?

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#29
post #12

> If you're going to conduct criminal activity, do it in the privacy of your own home. > That was the original intention of the 4th amendment. Wat. The intention of the 4th amendment was to enable criminal activity, but confine it to private property? Not to protect citizens' privacy from government snooping without probable cause? The intent was to prevent the executive branch from indiscriminately "searching" (and…

> If you're going to conduct criminal activity, do it in the privacy of your own home. Meanwhile: http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-fbi-can-neither-confirm-n... Soon they'll say "if you're going to do or say 'bad stuff', just do it in your own head". And then we'll have technologies that can read and "hear" what our brains think all around us.

Well, if you voluntarily put in your home device designed to listen to you around the clock, and send the data out, you can't complain it listens to you and sends the data out, can you?

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#30
post #2

If that's true we are moving into a scary world pretty much like 1984 where everything you do is monitored all the time. Add voice, face recognition, surveillance drones, cheap data storage and AI to the mix it seems pretty soon everything you do in a public place will be recorded and analyzed. And all this can be done fully automated. I hope people will recognize that some laws need to change. Surveillance makes sen…

If that's true we are moving into a scary world pretty much like 1984 where everything you do is monitored all the time. Well, not everything. Plant a GPS tracker on a police car or a bug in the restroom at FBI headquarters and you'll soon discover some troubling asymmetries in the modern post-privacy paradigm.

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