> The law-enforcement scanners are different from those used to collect tolls. Much to the chagrin of our rent-seeking overlords, whom see speed traps and red-light cameras as a means of revenue generation rather than safety measure.
Speed traps I'll grant you, but how are red light cameras not a safety measure?
U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
111–120 of 262 posts
Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
#112Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore? We have to realize that the authoritarian demons have the battering ram at the door and I really don't want to find out what happens when the USA turns into an authoritarian militaristic regime. We're way more than half way there already and people support it. Our very own government is a threat to us all, or at least those who will find themselv…
I think it's also naive to think of the government as the "bad guy" as well. Classifying the government as bad or good is basically trying to assign a singular attribute to the aggregate actions of thousands of people in politics and government agencies. The truth is neither black or white, and extremely complicated.
Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
#113Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore? We have to realize that the authoritarian demons have the battering ram at the door and I really don't want to find out what happens when the USA turns into an authoritarian militaristic regime. We're way more than half way there already and people support it. Our very own government is a threat to us all, or at least those who will find themselv…
Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
#114I've been mulling ideas to defeat ANPR without breaking state laws. The simplest may be to use a tilted/warped surrounding frame that interferes with the skew correction of the captured plate. Another thought is to project bright infrared patterns to disrupt unfiltered B&W cameras.
(For example, imagine 10 LEDs arranged so that each LED illuminates 1/10th of the license plate, where 1 LED is on at a time. If the frequency is high enough, to human eyes it'll appear as though the entire plate is illuminated equally, but any photo will have one spot (or two spots) illuminated much more than the others.)
Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
#115Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore? We have to realize that the authoritarian demons have the battering ram at the door and I really don't want to find out what happens when the USA turns into an authoritarian militaristic regime. We're way more than half way there already and people support it. Our very own government is a threat to us all, or at least those who will find themselv…
I think it's also naive to think of the government as the "bad guy" as well. Classifying the government as bad or good is basically trying to assign a singular attribute to the aggregate actions of thousands of people in politics and government agencies. The truth is neither black or white, and extremely complicated.
In the case of government, it's definitely not complicated to classify the aggregate behaviour as unqualified bad (in term of result), regardless of the intention of the individuals working within the systems.
Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
#116Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore? We have to realize that the authoritarian demons have the battering ram at the door and I really don't want to find out what happens when the USA turns into an authoritarian militaristic regime. We're way more than half way there already and people support it. Our very own government is a threat to us all, or at least those who will find themselv…
You're such a moron it hurts.
Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no way to reverse this. Trying to cage this with paperwork will just lead to more of the same creative interpretations à la NSA. So the rulers don't feel the rules apply to them, big surprise. With that in mind, the futility of fighting the tide, what is the next step? As the ideal solution of reversal is unavailable, we need to go with harm reduction - but what is the harm that we would reduce? Most would s…
America has a gum problem, we can all agree. That said, I feel like the right to bare arms was included specifically for overthrowing oppressive governments (and in case the British came back?). At what point does a government become sufficiently oppressive as to be overthrown by the people? Without defining that, I feel like government can just keep employing the "but terrorists" excuse and the overton window to kee…
Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
#118The USA is automatically photographing millions of cars and putting the data in a giant database used by all law-enforcement. It reads like the premise of a dystopian science fiction novel. I can't help but guess that the reaction is going to be a big shoulder shrug, because, to but it bluntly, things aren't that bad for most people. If you are white, have a good job, follow the law, and make sure to richly kiss ass…
To put it even more bluntly, automatic license plate scanning doesn't really seem to have been bad for anybody , aside from people on the lam. Though I am open to examples to the contrary.
How would they know that you have good stuff inside the car? Other databases.
Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
#119Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore? We have to realize that the authoritarian demons have the battering ram at the door and I really don't want to find out what happens when the USA turns into an authoritarian militaristic regime. We're way more than half way there already and people support it. Our very own government is a threat to us all, or at least those who will find themselv…
You're such a moron it hurts.
Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
#120Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore? We have to realize that the authoritarian demons have the battering ram at the door and I really don't want to find out what happens when the USA turns into an authoritarian militaristic regime. We're way more than half way there already and people support it. Our very own government is a threat to us all, or at least those who will find themselv…
I think it's also naive to think of the government as the "bad guy" as well. Classifying the government as bad or good is basically trying to assign a singular attribute to the aggregate actions of thousands of people in politics and government agencies. The truth is neither black or white, and extremely complicated.