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Looking at the map, outside the big cities, it seems mostly concentrated on highways. Does anyone know if it's realistic for a plane flying a mile high to grab, say, license plates and driver photos? Would this be legal? How close to the highway on the map would they have to be, hypothetically?
Car chase video from news choppers can be a mile away.
Surprising how positive the initial comments here are. Do you really believe any incidental collection that isn't specifically prohibited by law (which is to say, most) doesn't end up in a database mined for unrelated reasons?
Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person? More than governments have always had over the common person? Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't that they're trying to track down terrorists. The problem is that this method involves recording everything that happens within a large radius of their actual target.
How different is this from putting a police officer on the street corner?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person? More than governments have always had over the common person? Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.
If it didn't give the government more power it would not be a pursued strategy. Reverse your comment: if it didn't give the government more power, then just why are they doing it?
We need to worry about keeping the government focused on protecting us from the right things, not destroying its ability to protect us.
Looking at the map, outside the big cities, it seems mostly concentrated on highways. Does anyone know if it's realistic for a plane flying a mile high to grab, say, license plates and driver photos? Would this be legal? How close to the highway on the map would they have to be, hypothetically?
Surprising how positive the initial comments here are. Do you really believe any incidental collection that isn't specifically prohibited by law (which is to say, most) doesn't end up in a database mined for unrelated reasons?
Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person? More than governments have always had over the common person? Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.
That's a truism. If we play Battleship and you can see my battleships but I can't see yours, who is going to win?
But your questioning of a truism makes me think you don't agree with a hidden premise of civic life: that there will be times where the citizenry will be rightfully at odds with law enforcement tasked with protecting it. Many stripes of civil disobedience depend on that hidden premise.
> Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.
Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Trusting a future elected "good government" to keep the FBI honest with their black box capabilities-- capabilities which they reflexively claim are necessary as currently implemented to combat terrorism-- isn't a viable solution in a democracy.
A "good" government itself includes a fearless press and a strong judicial branch which citizens can use to force the FBI to be more transparent about what it does. That strong judicial branch can also be used to revise the capabilities of LE if they are found to be ripe for abuse and corruption.
Our ability to do this at all is itself a measure of how "good" our government is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it didn't give the government more power it would not be a pursued strategy. Reverse your comment: if it didn't give the government more power, then just why are they doing it?
They're doing it because knowledge is power. And power in a dangerous world is necessary to keep us all safe. We need to worry about keeping the government focused on protecting us from the right things, not destroying its ability to protect us.
But the world is safer than ever before. It isn't a dangerous world. It is the safest world we know of...
I think we are at least partially at fault here. We demand action everytime the is a tragedy but perhaps sometimes the best course of action is to stay the course with no change in plan. I don't know. I'm just making assumptions tbh.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How different is this from putting a police officer on the street corner?
Data storage and interpretation. A single officer on every street corner can't aggregate data to learn of geographical trends, social connections, and aberrations from the norm in location, behavior, political thoughts, etc.
My thought is this: likely whatever your trying to keep secret, out adversaries have seen it.
Surprising how positive the initial comments here are. Do you really believe any incidental collection that isn't specifically prohibited by law (which is to say, most) doesn't end up in a database mined for unrelated reasons?
Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person? More than governments have always had over the common person? Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.
Thus far, no population on Earth has truly succeeded with this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person? More than governments have always had over the common person? Let's concern ourselves with electing good governments, not the capabilities they develop to defend us from criminals.
> Do you really think that surveillance like this gives the government any more power than it already has over the common person? That's a truism. If we play Battleship and you can see my battleships but I can't see yours, who is going to win? But your questioning of a truism makes me think you don't agree with a hidden premise of civic life: that there will be times where the citizenry will be rightfully at odds wit…
Viewed in this light, the government improving its intelligence gathering capabilities is simply a response to the citizenry's increasing ability to avoid detection. And it goes without saying - or perhaps you need to be reminded - that bad actors' ability to work in the shadows increases in parallel with everyone else's.