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You commit three felonies a day

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Re: You commit three felonies a day

#121

Post by coldtea »

justin66 wrote: post #60
coldtea wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I get a whiff of nostalgia from posts like this. As if everything was great back in the good old days, where the police weren't able to hassle you, when laws were fair and simple. People keep repeating this reasoning. I can't understand why. "Everything" doesn't have to have been "better in the old days", and nobody, except strawmen, argue that. But SOME aspects of the old days, e.g pertaining to LESS fuc…

> But SOME aspects of the old days, e.g pertaining to LESS fucking SURVEILLANCE, were. That's enough to be angry about and want to reverse course on that particular front. > Did somebody argue here that slavery was good? No, people just argue that modern surveillance (and legal-code-overload) is bad. Which is true but a little myopic. Until the Warren court decided that wiretapping required a warrant, law enforcement…

>Which is true but a little myopic. Until the Warren court decided that wiretapping required a warrant, law enforcement could surveil your communications at any time for any reason.

Only they couldn't do 1/100 of what they can now. Even wiretapping a single person required a few days work, people listening, unwieldy tape machines to record and replay it, etc. No AVR with stop words, not automatic routing, no DSP etc.

Not to mention that people didn't share 1/100 of what they do now over then snail mail and telephone.

Pragmatically, logistically, and by the norms of the era, only few people were eavesdropped on. Communists, politicians, industrialists, journalists, etc. Now it's everybody.

>For the individual the legal situation is much better now, in spite of the obvious erosions of protection and regressions, than they were "back in the day."

How is it better? The individual can be crashed now under the Patriot Act, various child porn laws, and whatever they can come up with. That a few laws also pay lip service to individual privacy I wouldn't count much on.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#122

Post by coldtea »

rmc wrote: post #66
coldtea wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was lots of government surveillance and invasion of privacy of (say) gay men back in the "good old days". Maybe it's just because the white anglo christians are affected by government surveillance and intrusion that's new? My point isn't "this old thing was bad", my point was "this thing has been happening to lots of people before, now it's happening to everyone".* For one, if it happened to "lots" (in realit…

Also "government surveillance" of "gay men"? When? For who? A few prominent figures people wanted to blackmail? Police, based on where they socialized. The modern gay rights movement started in the USA with the Stonewall riots, when LGBT people fought back & rioted after yet another police raid of where gay & trans people congreated.

That's not surveillance though.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#123

Post by gambiting »

brown9-2 wrote: post #100
gambiting wrote: post #47

As a person coming from a former soviet republic, I am very familiar with the saying "show me a man, and I will show you the crime he is guilty of" - which basically meant that if KGB wanted to charge you with something, they always could find a paragraph for you, because there were so many and so vaguely defined. As an outsider, to me it seems that the USA is not a "free" country and I honestly don't see any differe…

> As an outsider, to me it seems that the USA is not a "free" country and I honestly don't see any difference between what the US and Russian governments are doing to journalists and people who disagree with them. You seem to describe at least five stark differences: 1. If you wanted to travel out of your town - you had to register that fact with the nearest police department. 2. Wanted to travel abroad - had to appl…

These are not differences, these are similarities. Think about it for a second. Soviets had you register with the police where you were going, because there was no centralised database with that information. Today, the US government achieves exactly same result, but without making you go to the police station to register. Wherever you go, they can access your location on your phone, read your licence plates with street cameras,and do automatic face recognition in many cities. Do you see how this is a similarity, rather than a difference now?

The same with passports - they don't need to hold on to your passports, because they can just block you from going out of the country using a centralised system. Also, they can block you from coming back to US by placing you on a no-fly list, without any explanation - making you take a very long and expensive ship journey.

Telephones - soviets would openly monitor your phone calls. US government does it from hiding, not telling you that you might be wiretapped. Again, different method = same result.

Letters and Parcels - only letters are protected, parcels can be opened at anytime by any postal office worker, if they have a "reasonable" reason to.

Censorship - not done openly in the US, but again - there is no need for it. They keep everything you write saved for future use, so even though you can write whatever you want on your blog, it can still be used to prosecute you. It effectively is censorship in my opinion, even if it's not censorship per se.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#124

Post by chiph »

xradionut wrote: post #71
thebooktocome wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can purchase firearms for cash from many dealers (at gun shows) without either a background check or a paper trail.

This is one of the exceptions I mentioned. Also known as the "gun show loophole".

Not true. If they are a dealer, then paperwork is required.

If they are a private individual (not in the business of selling firearms) then yes. But that's no different than buying a used deer rifle from your neighbor.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#125

Post by chiph »

gohrt wrote: post #107
chiph wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're here talking about it, so... conspiracy is one.

Conspiracy requires at least one act in furtherance of the goal of the conspiracy, not just talk.

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure if any member of a conspiracy commits an act, then everyone in it can be held liable.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#126

Post by coldtea »

paisawalla wrote: post #85
npongratz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True only if chattel slavery were the only kind of slavery. The ruling masters treat those who work "at will for pay" like livestock when the masters demand taxes, threatening violence upon those who withhold the protection money. The livestock are being milked with every paycheck. We definitely do not live in a system of chattel slavery, but that's only because chattel slavery is so much less efficient (for the mast…

You know, when you guys speak in literal terms of "chattel slavery" and "masters" it becomes very hard to take any point you're making seriously. Get some perspective, or go full Godwin and compare everything to Hitler and the Holocaust.

>You know, when you guys speak in literal terms of "chattel slavery" and "masters" it becomes very hard to take any point you're making seriously.

Very hard for the sheep, you mean.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#127

Post by angusangus »

zero_intp wrote: post #105
dylangs1030 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chattel slavery"...I'm sorry, but what are you on about? This comparison doesn't reflect the current state of affairs in the United States. Yeah, the NSA did some shitty things that circumnavigated loopholes in the Constitution. But you still don't realize how good you have it. Being in a Western country like the United States is spectacularly better than living conditions on many other entire continents, and someti…

US Commercial Prisons

Indeed. See eg. http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/18/prison-small-business-ent-m... and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/prison-labor_n_2272...

Money quote: "Oddo also said that workers were provided enough water, but the prisoners didn't sip it slowly enough."

Also for a sense of scope http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/what-do-prisoner... including this irrelevant but salacious detail: 'In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace "Made in Honduras" labels on garments with "Made in the USA."'

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#128

Post by Zimahl »

mikeash wrote: post #84
danso wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've become more bearish about the idea of electronic medical records. The ability for a bureaucracy to keep those safe seems far, far off in the future, no matter what technology advances come through. And guns: well, if you're pro-gun-control, this mindset (justified or not) should help you understand why the NRA is so passionately against gun registration of any kind. In terms of the NSA: I don't think they care m…

Still can't understand why gun registration is supposed to be so awful but car registration is apparently perfectly fine.

Cars are typically much more expensive than guns and we equate car thievery today to cattle thievery of yesterday - we take it quite personally.

Registering a car is simply an excuse for the government to charge you money to use your vehicle. Really, it doesn't reduce vehicle crime, although it does make stealing cars tougher. But you wouldn't need to charge a registration fee for that.

Also, guns have serial numbers like cars. If yours is stolen, hopefully you wrote down the serial so that if the cops ever find it it will be returned to you (unless used in a violent crime, and then I think you are just SOL).

A gun registry wouldn't reduce crime because criminals don't use their guns, they are either stolen or straw purchases. Otherwise, with violent crimes of passion that utilize guns it's very clear cut where the weapon comes from.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#129

Post by aidenn0 »

paisawalla wrote: post #85
npongratz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True only if chattel slavery were the only kind of slavery. The ruling masters treat those who work "at will for pay" like livestock when the masters demand taxes, threatening violence upon those who withhold the protection money. The livestock are being milked with every paycheck. We definitely do not live in a system of chattel slavery, but that's only because chattel slavery is so much less efficient (for the mast…

You know, when you guys speak in literal terms of "chattel slavery" and "masters" it becomes very hard to take any point you're making seriously. Get some perspective, or go full Godwin and compare everything to Hitler and the Holocaust.

Did npongratz ninja-edit or did you and the other reply not actually read the comment? The post you are replying to specifically says that it's not talking about "chattel slavery" when it refers to the current system as slavery.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#130

Post by 542458 »

mikeash wrote: post #84
danso wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've become more bearish about the idea of electronic medical records. The ability for a bureaucracy to keep those safe seems far, far off in the future, no matter what technology advances come through. And guns: well, if you're pro-gun-control, this mindset (justified or not) should help you understand why the NRA is so passionately against gun registration of any kind. In terms of the NSA: I don't think they care m…

Still can't understand why gun registration is supposed to be so awful but car registration is apparently perfectly fine.

Because a car isn't as valuable tool when it comes to protecting yourself from tyranny (in the NRA's opinion). The NRA's point is that the government should be incapable of immediately identifying which citizens would be capable of forcibly resisting it, for the protection of those citizens who can resist (so that they aren't singled out) and those who can't (so that the government doesn't just pick easy targets).
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