271–280 of 470 posts
So I definitely agree it's a positive development that these cameras are being taken down because they're absolutely orwellian, but I really don't understand why "the line" is being drawn at immigration enforcement? Were people really okay with this until the point where they found out that illegal immigrants can be tracked by the surveillance state too?
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I agree with this. As a resident of a neighboring suburb to Redmond, I would have welcomed more automated cameras to cut down on street racing, package thefts, and car prowls. In fact I want all of the suburbs around me to implement this so that criminals can't just flee to another jurisdiction and escape justice.
I think it's a fair deal so long as you can't escape to Utah/Idaho/Colorado when you realize the dystopia you've created isn't the kind of place you want to raise a family.
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Someone should use AI to request such a large amount of data that it DDoSes the whole system. Unfortunately I feel like that would result in traffic camera data just being removed from FOIA rather than removed from use.
If I recall, the FOIA allows government agencies to charge you for the work of processing your request if you're requesting more than N pages or it takes more than a couple hours of work to fulfill the request. I'd be careful about a maliciously compliant response to such a thing. That said, we live in a boring world where they'd probably just respond by threatening you with a felony hacking prosecution for attemptin…
You can make your own copy of records for free; if you want them to make copies, they can charge actual costs.
I'm in the PNW and they put Flock cameras up in my area recently. Nobody likes them (libs or cons), and we've seen some rather creative approaches to uh...disabling them. One person took a pipe cutter to the mount and spirited the whole unit away, another apparently fired a shotgun slug through it, somebody else looks like they used it to relieve their anger problems with a metal pipe. Flock cameras, America's bipart…
And yet they drive away in their GM/Ford/Nissan/Tesla/Any car/truck with its connected media unit and telemetry gathering infotainment systems and think “This is fine”.
[1] https://www.bts.gov/content/average-age-automobiles-and-truc...
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Its an interesting question indeed. You're saying there might be some expectation of privacy even in public? The line here is a little different. I could point a camera out my window and record every license plate that drives by my house, and that would be allowed because its recording public activities, and the data I collect would be private—its mine from my camera. The question here is if a public/government agenc…
> You're saying there might be some expectation of privacy even in public? Not parent poster, but yes! What people expect are outcomes . The mechanics they know of for how data is/isn't available is merely how they reach their reasonable expectation. I expect that almost nobody I meet in public is a Stasi informant.
We expect that our faces might be captured on someone's vacation photos in public, surviving as an anonymous and unconsidered background detail, and that we can take our own photos like that without getting permission from everyone in the background.
In contrast, we don't (didn't?) expect all the photos to feed into a mega-panopticon that that does facial-recognition on all subjects and cross-references us over time and space while running algorithms looking for embarrassing, criminal, or blackmail-able events.
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And yet they drive away in their GM/Ford/Nissan/Tesla/Any car/truck with its connected media unit and telemetry gathering infotainment systems and think “This is fine”.
People are probably unaware of the telemetry on their vehicle. But this is a good point, people get upset when government is perceived to screw them over and not upset enough when the private sector does it. In practice, the private sector screws over the public quite a bit.
Companies at least risk significant consequences if they start tear gassing children. For the most part the worst they can do is screw you out of some money, which is not great, but obviously better than imprisonment and the like.
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You don't understand the logic of "there are some crime problems we're willing to accept more intrusions to solve than other crime problems?" Seems like something virtually everyone believes, and all that changes is where they draw the line of balance between intrusion and safety.
The problem here is that the law and order politicians world wide pretty consistently follow a pattern that starts by demanding surveillance tools to fight very serious crimes and those crimes only. Once they get that, they eventually start another campaign to allow use of the tools that they now have access to for less serious crimes. After a few cycles of this, you get a massive erosion of citizen rights. This is c…
Don't forget the part where the useful idiots cheer because "I hate street racers and package thieves" or "I hate cults and drugs" depending on the decade
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I think this is a case of, tools used to fight one type of crime are being used to fight another type of crime that disrupting the community. Kind of an unforeseen consequences situation.
"Kind of an unforeseen consequences situation." This type of use and expansion of scope was totally foreseeable by anyone paying attention to history. It always starts as some targeted thing, then it becomes the path of least resistance for similar subsequent things as the barrier to entry is extremely low.
This new technology will improve existing procedures. How can you oppose it?
This new procedure will use existing technologies. How can you oppose it?
So I definitely agree it's a positive development that these cameras are being taken down because they're absolutely orwellian, but I really don't understand why "the line" is being drawn at immigration enforcement? Were people really okay with this until the point where they found out that illegal immigrants can be tracked by the surveillance state too?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is a case of, tools used to fight one type of crime are being used to fight another type of crime that disrupting the community. Kind of an unforeseen consequences situation.
In my country you'd have to get a warrant. You'll get pretty much carte blanche for an Amber Alert but the judge isn't going to let you hunt down brown people. But I guess if you elect judges pretty much all bets are off, no? Just find yourself a card carrying MAGA judge willing to sign off.