Quite the little country we’re becoming.

[FlyerInHi]

Spd, it’s not a company tracking employees. They are tracking customers and they could use that information for profit.

Btw, license plate cameras have been in widespread use for years. In Uk, they can track in real time.

Democracy my ass. Self preservation usually trumps everything.

I think democracy is correlated to level of development and wealth. Rule of law, wealth, growth, stability and sense of freedom and choice are what people really want.

But there’s no real freedom. We are all cogs in the machine. And freedom is relative from person to person.

Snowden did not expose anything that legislators didn’t already know. The debate is only by intellectual elites and there won’t be any legislation to rein in the data mining. Snowden will be crushed.

We have all become corporate yes men and brand addicts I’m pessimistic on real freedom for the population at large. Individually, you could make money, think outside the box and find freedom that way. But it’s a somewhat lonely experience.

Spd, I philosophically agree with you. But I doubt there will be any mass popular protests anymore that can change our politics. Change will happen with demographics.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Spd, it’s not a company tracking employees. They are tracking customers and they could use that information for profit. [/quote]

People will eventually figure out all those little hook-up apps, deal apps, twitter, flitter, schmuckbook all have a really big privacy downside.

Now please report for your humancentipad fitting.

[spdrun]

FlyerInHI — I’m not hoping for immediate legislative change. However, now that Snowden made the program public, and its existence has been admitted by the government, every single phone company customer has standing to seek an injunction in Federal court.

If this gets solved, this will get solved through the judiciary. Remember that Federal judges are lifers, and many of them were appointed during less paranoid and more rational times. I suspect that at least some of the strict constructionists appointed during the Reagan and Bush I years will take a very dim view of a wholesale violation of 4th Amendment rights.

Since this will go through civilian and not FISA courts, the chances of getting a judge that’s an NSA lapdog diminish considerably.

[FlyerInHi]

Spd, in Clapper v. Amnesty International the Supreme Court ruled that Amnesty lacked the standing to challenge FISA.

I expect the court to eventually rule that data mining is the same as a traffic cop looking at the flow of traffic. Say bye bye to privacy. It ain’t coming back.

Anyway big data is very powerful especially when technology advances more to allow real time.

Let’s say your driver license is suspended but you decide to drive anyway. When you get to the street corner, some sensor or camera will alert the highway patrol who will detain you and take you to jail. More safety, right?

Or let’s say your car has been parked at a bar all night. You start driving. Traffic cop can be alerted of potential drunk driving. The alert would be more urgent if you had a previous history of drunk driving. We are protecting our children, right?

If its all done by software, is there really a loss of privacy? Or just more safety?

[spdrun]

Clapper vs Amnesty International was also decided before specific details and scope of programs were released. Secondly, it won’t be “all done by software.” The data are there. The software is controlled by people. What the HELL makes you think that specific phone records of journalists or elected officials can’t be examined in order to garner blackmail material, and thus control them? What about monitoring non-violent political action groups like Occupy and destroying them from within?

At the very least, we need some sort of sunset on data retention. If it’s not an active part of a criminal investigation, it should be deleted after a few years. The Europeans have enacted this sort of legislation: why can’t we?

And yes, I’d rather have 20,000 drunk drivers on the road than have the kind of onerous surveillance that you propose. I believe in Ben Franklin’s quote about liberty and safety.

Lastly, why are 16,000 gun deaths per year acceptable, and we hold the 2nd Amendment sacrosanct, yet the possibility of a few deaths from terrorism causes us to trample the 4th?

[SK in CV]

[quote=spdrun]
Lastly, why are 16,000 gun deaths per year acceptable, and we hold the 2nd Amendment sacrosanct, yet the possibility of a few deaths from terrorism causes us to trample the 4th?[/quote]

Very nicely done.

[Happs]

is photography becoming a crime in the United States?

[no_such_reality]

That’s basically the same issue in the Hawthorne dog killing.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0703-dog-killed-20130703,0,4135515.story

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=Happs]is photography becoming a crime in the United States?

[/quote]

that’s what happens when they hire cops who are uneducated people. Seems to me like they should hire college graduates, not those who barely make it out of high school.

One thing good about tech is that cars will soon come standard with front and rear cameras. Google glasses and cellphones allow citizens to document abuses.

Btw, when the time comes, cops and the military are the ones who will knock on your door to take your guns away. 😉

[FlyerInHi]

On the snowden story something is amiss. Oftentimes the press ignores facts and doesn’t explain things, or they simply don’t know.

As far as we know, Snowden still has his passport in his possession. Countries can allow him to travel onward. Foreign authorities don’t verify with American authorities that his passport is still valid (if they routinely verify, they certainly don’t need to, if that’s what they choose). This is a huge gap in the news coverage.

[CardiffBaseball]

Speaking of which we apparently vastly underestimated the will of the Egyptian people.

Pretty damn impressive site over there today if you ask me. I am sure it’s going to get nasty outside of Cairo over the next several weeks but I found this very inspiring.

[urbanrealtor]

[quote=CardiffBaseball]Speaking of which we apparently vastly underestimated the will of the Egyptian people.

Pretty damn impressive site over there today if you ask me. I am sure it’s going to get nasty outside of Cairo over the next several weeks but I found this very inspiring.[/quote]
Maybe I am missing something.
There were big protests and then the military performed a coup that removed a democratically elected leader.

What more is going on that other see and I don’t?

[Allan from Fallbrook]

[quote=urbanrealtor]

What more is going on that other see and I don’t?[/quote]

Dan: Well, if you weren’t actually there, you probably didn’t see the fireworks display.

[CardiffBaseball]

UR, are you telling me you didn’t flip on an internet news feed to see what the hell this was all about?

Of course the shit is about to hit the fan as the Islamists aren’t going to go quietly but that was a wonderful scene the other night.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

[quote=CardiffBaseball]

Of course the shit is about to hit the fan as the Islamists aren’t going to go quietly but that was a wonderful scene the other night.[/quote]

Cardiff: If things in Egypt continue to spiral out of control, it will turn into a full-blown civil war.

In turn, that will probably cut into SecState Kerry’s windsurfing schedule.

[Author]

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