Quite the little country we’re becoming.

[spdrun]

Exactly, they can deny, but they probably won’t. The power of greed 🙂

I also wouldn’t be surprised if paying with cash for things is a lot more “accepted” in NY than in other parts of the US. Lots of foreign-born people here that either may not have working CC’s, or are just used to paying cash.

When I was in Poland a few years ago, I needed to make a 7 am flight out of Warsaw. I could either take a train and stay overnight in Warsaw or catch the 5 am air shuttle to Warsaw. I went to the LOT airline office in the city I was staying and paid about $50 cash for the ticket for the next day. There was a whole line of people buying tix with cash ahead of me, no big deal.

The process was as quick and painless as buying a commuter train ticket in the US. (I think they’re generally less concerned about safety and security — we ended up boarding the plane when the engine on the opposite side was already spinning!)

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=spdrun]

Secondly, the latest posterboy for stupidity, Tsarnaev, is in fact being tried in civilian court.[/quote]

Yeah but there is a large vocal group that believes we are being weak on terrorism. To show that we are though we need to send him to military tribunal.

We can’t close Guantanamo because of the dangerous people held there.

Problem is that the security institutions we created are telling us how dangerous it is out there. They will never tell us that it’s safe enough that they can close up shop.

[spdrun]

Which is funny, because a true sign of strength would be to say: “We don’t need a kangaroo court to make sure a shitheel like you is locked up in a very small room for a very long time. We’ll treat you as any other accused murderer and not dignify your actions by treating you any differently.”

[mike92104]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=mike92104]

Why not laws preventing the storage of any of our personal communications or metadata not needed for billing purposes?[/quote]

good idea… but good luck with that.

The business community will not support it because that will eliminate all marketing efforts. That would be the end of location marketing, and individually targeted marketing, big areas of growth.

And what? you want to regulate how businesses keep data on their consumers? That sounds like socialism!!![/quote]

I think business will work within the will of their customers. If they don’t want data collected, and are willing to go elsewhere, businesses will concede. The only reason I see this idea failing is when sheeple decide that nothing can be done about it, and accept it.

[FlyerInHi]

We will see who is right.
From Apple to Facebook to google and other businesses, customers are being tracked and followed for marketing purposes. If the data is stored somewhere, the government can access it. And businesses are more than willing to share.

Try to stop your junk mail. Nearly impossible because businesses see any restriction as anti marketing. I have fist hand experience. Write to any marketer asking your mailing address be removed. If they do it, it only last a max of 7 years and then you get junk mail all over again.

Going to have to start keeping track of my mail and sue those guys.
But how many consumers will do that?

[FlyerInHi]

Oh and talking about sharing data without consumer permission, it’s already happening. How do you think you can log on to different services using your google or Facebook account?

You may think that only by signing on, you’re giving your permission. But the databases are already connected. Some DBA guy with the right permission can get to the data.

For all we know, the NSA could be connected the same way Facebook is connected to amazon.

I do wish you luck in passing legislation to force businesses to delete all data but for thr minimum necessary for billing purposes.

I think the opposite is true. When you die, your kids will still be able to see what you bought at Lowes last year.

[spdrun]

I don’t use common login — there’s generally an option to create a user name tied to an e-mail addy that’s not Scroogle, Bong, or Fecesbook.

Not only a question of privacy, but FB is sufficiently buggy as to make profiles vanish for days for “maintenance” — I don’t want to lose access to other websites due to FB’s whim or incompetence.

(And to be clear, my e-mail is also self-hosted, with an old free Google Apps account only used for failover.) Thank G-d for an ISP that still allows ports 25 and 993 incoming, no firewalls.

[mike92104]

[quote=FlyerInHi]We will see who is right.
From Apple to Facebook to google and other businesses, customers are being tracked and followed for marketing purposes. If the data is stored somewhere, the government can access it. And businesses are more than willing to share.
[/quote]

Businesses are compelled to share it. I think they would rather keep it to themselves and not share any of it. They spent quite a bit of money to collect it, so why would they want to share it?

[mike92104]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Oh and talking about sharing data without consumer permission, it’s already happening. How do you think you can log on to different services using your google or Facebook account?

You may think that only by signing on, you’re giving your permission. But the databases are already connected. Some DBA guy with the right permission can get to the data.

For all we know, the NSA could be connected the same way Facebook is connected to amazon.

I do wish you luck in passing legislation to force businesses to delete all data but for thr minimum necessary for billing purposes.

I think the opposite is true. When you die, your kids will still be able to see what you bought at Lowes last year.[/quote]

Just lay down and take it.

[CA renter]

Thoughts on Bradley Manning’s request for pardon?

IMHO, not only should he be pardoned, but he should also be given a full, public apology and compensation for what he’s been put through. He’s a hero, not a criminal.

“Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually the American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy – the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment camps – to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/bradley-manning-barack-obama_n_3792743.html

[CA renter]

I’m sure a lot of the techie posters here probably know this already, but for the rest of us who might not have known, this is totally unreal. 🙁

———

“At a rapid pace, and mostly hidden from the public, police agencies throughout California have been collecting millions of records on drivers and feeding them to intelligence fusion centers operated by local, state and federal law enforcement.

With heightened concern over secret intelligence operations at the National Security Agency, the localized effort to track drivers highlights the extent to which the government has committed to collecting large amounts of data on people who have done nothing wrong.

A year ago, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center – one of dozens of law enforcement intelligence-sharing centers set up after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – signed a $340,000 agreement with the Silicon Valley firm Palantir to construct a database of license-plate records flowing in from police using the devices across 14 counties, documents and interviews show.

The extent of the center’s data collection has never been revealed. Neither has the involvement of Palantir, a Silicon Valley firm with extensive ties to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. The CIA’s venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, has invested $2 million in the firm. [The CIA’s venture capital fund? WTF!? This sounds like a potential source of major fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars. -CAR]

The jurisdictions supplying license-plate data to the intelligence center stretch from Monterey County to the Oregon border. According to contract documents, the database will be capable of handling at least 100 million records and be accessible to local and state law enforcement across the region.

Law enforcement agencies throughout Northern California will be able to access the data, as will state and federal authorities.

…Katz-Lacabe, who was featured in a Wall Street Journal story last year, said he believes the records of his movements are too revealing for someone who has done nothing wrong. With the technology, he said, “you can tell who your friends are, who you hang out with, where you go to church, whether you’ve been to a political meeting.”

…The intelligence center database will store license-plate records for up to two years, regardless of data retention limits set by local police departments.

…In San Diego, 13 federal and local law enforcement agencies have compiled more than 36 million license-plate scans in a regional database since 2010 with the help of federal homeland security grants. The San Diego Association of Governments maintains the database. Like the Northern California database, the San Diego system retains the data for between one and two years.

“License-plate data is clearly identifiable to specific individuals,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is like having your barcode tracked.”

…Then-California state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, introduced a bill last year that would have required California police to purge license-plate data after 60 days and applied that rule to companies that collect such data. Law enforcement and private businesses involved in the technology resisted, and the bill died.

http://cironline.org/reports/license-plate-readers-let-police-collect-millions-records-drivers-4883

[Author]

Posts