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Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

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Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#61

Post by Bender »

vel0city wrote: post #60
Bender wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not make what I said not relevant. People are spread out across the country and kids in rural areas are just as valuable as kids in cities. I would never trust anyone that says otherwise. Also most of the land is not walkable in any realistic sense. Busses and cars are not likely going away for the duration of this short civilization. We will hit the great filter long before better options may have arrived.

It makes the phrase "most places are not a city" extremely misleading in terms of talking about school busses. The extreme majority of school busses and kids going to school do so in urban areas, i.e. in cities. Like, sure, over 40% of the US has zero inhabitants, so yeah "most of the US isn't cities". But its not like there are a lot of school busses and elementary schools in places where zero people live. > kids in…

I stand by my words. Most of the US is not a city and in those places are children. Cities have more children by area density is not relevant in my opinion. It's not misleading, it's a fact that people live in all areas not just in cities. But enough of this dance for today.

Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#62

Post by jeffbee »

nayuki wrote: post #23
jeffbee wrote: post #22

People who pass through red signals need a night or two in jail, not enhanced privacy protections.

True, but the article is complaining about other innocent people that might get caught in the surveillance dragnet.

That's too generous. It is a propaganda piece by the driver lobby using a hypothetical, fabricated privacy argument to further the central driver lobby goal of total impunity.

Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#63

Post by vel0city »

Bender wrote: post #61
vel0city wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes the phrase "most places are not a city" extremely misleading in terms of talking about school busses. The extreme majority of school busses and kids going to school do so in urban areas, i.e. in cities. Like, sure, over 40% of the US has zero inhabitants, so yeah "most of the US isn't cities". But its not like there are a lot of school busses and elementary schools in places where zero people live. > kids in…

I stand by my words. Most of the US is not a city and in those places are children. Cities have more children by area density is not relevant in my opinion. It's not misleading, it's a fact that people live in all areas not just in cities. But enough of this dance for today.

> Most of the US is not a city

Nearly half is entirely unpopulated. Once again I don't get why that matters about the discussion of school busses in general.

Rural areas cover 80% of Europe by area. Its not like rural areas are a uniquely American thing.

Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#64

Post by hombre_fatal »

SoftTalker wrote: post #59
hombre_fatal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not relevant. If the word Costco is too distracting to interact with my point, then replace it with any place you might want to go in a day. The lack of infrastructure is what makes the routine unpleasant, not failing to carry a small bag of bagels home. Not even the weather since riding a bike casually creates a breeze.

My point was that if you want to bike to get things you need, you have to go to places that are on more local scale. A place like Costco can only exist with the support of a large amount of car infrastructure. So if you want to go there that's what you have to deal with.

Costco happens to have a couple products I want that I used to bring back by bike until I decided it wasn't worth it unless I was already walking back from the cafe near it.

Swap Costco out with any place I might want to go, and my point doesn't change because whether I can carry a bag of six bagels or eat a pizza in their food court isn't up for debate.

You got one-shot by a triviality. The argument is not whether Costco should be the one building built in more density acoss our cities but whether our cities are hospitable to walking/biking.

Costco just happens to be an example of a business I used to like to bike to near me, but it's adjacent to many other businesses I could have mentioned instead like restaurants, a cafe, and my friend's apartment, not the sole reason the streets exist around it.

Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#65

Post by jeffbee »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #54
Sayrus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop at tracking license plates? Once you've started you should report on pedestrians, bikes, whether people are at-home, which building people are entering, the way they walk and many more. Those are all "alternative revenue streams" that are as valid from the operator/investor point of view and completely unrelated to whether the way of transportation or activity is meant to be untrackable or unrelated to a way…

Just implant the AirTag on my body and share it with everyone ffs

99.99% of Americans have freely chosen to do this exact thing, so any concerns about this must be imaginary.

Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#66

Post by tristor »

senkora wrote: post #12
tristor wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a few different articles such as https://www.thenewspaper.com/news/67/6717.asp and https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/corrupt-public-official-sen... It seems like it's not BusPatrol, but a company they acquired (Force Multiplier Solutions) that had corrupt leadership. I'm not sure how exactly that went down, or if the same people are still involved, but it does sound pretty bad. Apparently the corruption here ca…

This is the first that I'm hearing about this, but I don't think that your telling is quite right. The Dallas school district is "Dallas ISD", not Dallas County Schools. Dallas County Schools was apparently a school bus service provider that served many different school districts in the area. I don't know why they named it that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_County_Schools That situation looks pretty bad, bu…

Ah, I had misunderstood this based on the first article saying that "Dallas County Schools" went bankrupt and was dissolved via a voter referendum. Based on its name and the apparent requirement of a vote, I had understood this intuitively to be a school district. Thanks for the clarification.

Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#67

Post by cucumber3732842 »

vel0city wrote: post #60
Bender wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not make what I said not relevant. People are spread out across the country and kids in rural areas are just as valuable as kids in cities. I would never trust anyone that says otherwise. Also most of the land is not walkable in any realistic sense. Busses and cars are not likely going away for the duration of this short civilization. We will hit the great filter long before better options may have arrived.

It makes the phrase "most places are not a city" extremely misleading in terms of talking about school busses. The extreme majority of school busses and kids going to school do so in urban areas, i.e. in cities. Like, sure, over 40% of the US has zero inhabitants, so yeah "most of the US isn't cities". But its not like there are a lot of school busses and elementary schools in places where zero people live. > kids in…

"City" and "urban" are not the same thing and you are all up and down these comments playing the overlap in colonial usage of those terms to essentially mislead people.

The census designation of rural is very stringent and you basically need more cows than people to meet it. That's where this "80% of the population is urban" stat you love to vomit up comes through.

Buuut, of that 80%, most do not live in any sort of "city" in the colonial sense though it may be called one on paper (because city vs town vs other is a state level administrative distinction)

The average and median american lives in some kind of suburb. It might be outer and not very dense. It might be inner and very dense. But at the end of the day it is somewhere that's not walkable/bike-able without being at a severe time disadvantage to car/bus transport in the typical (i.e. we're not talking about 1am leaving the bar) case.

Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#68

Post by jeffbee »

jtbayly wrote: post #55
arjie wrote: post #31

The existence of a license plate indicates that motor vehicle travel is not intended to be untrackable. That makes sense since these are powerful devices. It seems like a fair trade off since a motor vehicle provides many benefits but also high risk.

The existence of IDs indicates that people are not intended to be untrackable, whether on or offline. This is a fair trade off, because… By your logic, there can be no argument against universal web tracking, let alone universal purchase tracking, etc.

No, that's ridiculous. The number plate on a car is explicitly designed to be read from a great distance, to achieve public policy goals that offset the large and many social costs of cars. The function of the license plate is to identify the vehicle under real traffic conditions at a distance of at least 100 feet, day or night. Whatever identifying documents you may choose to carry do not have that same function.

Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#69

Post by jimt1234 »

nayuki wrote: post #5

Maybe design cities to be walkable and bikeable so that you have the option get things done without driving a car which is inherently trackable?

I've lived next to the bicycle lock-up area of an elementary school for over 20 years. In all those years I've never seen a single bicycle, not once. Of course, every morning and afternoon my neighborhood is grid-locked with minivans, but yeah, no bicycles.

Re: Your Kids' School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

#70

Post by vel0city »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #67
vel0city wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes the phrase "most places are not a city" extremely misleading in terms of talking about school busses. The extreme majority of school busses and kids going to school do so in urban areas, i.e. in cities. Like, sure, over 40% of the US has zero inhabitants, so yeah "most of the US isn't cities". But its not like there are a lot of school busses and elementary schools in places where zero people live. > kids in…

"City" and "urban" are not the same thing and you are all up and down these comments playing the overlap in colonial usage of those terms to essentially mislead people. The census designation of rural is very stringent and you basically need more cows than people to meet it. That's where this "80% of the population is urban" stat you love to vomit up comes through. Buuut, of that 80%, most do not live in any sort of…

> The census designation of rural is very stringent and you basically need more cows than people to meet it.

Not true. The census actually doesn't really bother to define rural other than "not urban". So then it comes down to what the urban definition is. The urban definition is:

> To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or have a population of at least 5,000.

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g...

> most do not live in any sort of "city" in the colonial sense

What do you mean about "the colonial sense"?

> it may be called one on paper

Its called a city on paper because it is a city.

> The average and median american lives in some kind of suburb

Suburbs, which usually exist in cities, yes. That's how we've built our cities here in the US, as sprawling suburbs.

> But at the end of the day it is somewhere that's not walkable/bike-able without being at a severe time disadvantage to car/bus transport in the typical

I mean I agree with that, hence my first comment being "I do agree most students in the US arrive by bus or car". Is being walkable a requirement for a city to be a city?

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