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1984 Comes To Boston
walmass writes "In preparation for the DNC in Boston, 75 cameras monitored by the Federal government will be operating around the downtown Boston location. There are also an unspecified number of state police cameras, and 100 cameras owned by the Metro Boston Transit Authority. Quote: 'And it's here to stay: Boston police say the 30 or so cameras installed for the convention will be used throughout the city once the event is over. "We own them now," said police Superintendent Robert Dunford. "We're certainly not going to put them in a closet."'"
Don't you mean "London, England comes to Boston"?
Is it even possible to live free and untracked anymore? Is this just the price we pay for living in a civilized society?
I'm considering going to cash for most everything. Has anyone experimented with that lately, and what difficulties did you face?
Support the ACLU and the EFF. Those are the people fighting these battles for you. The guy in the article who says "''I definitely think it's good for safety reasons," said Chris Bellomo, a 55-year-old teacher from Cheshire, Conn. ''I feel more comfortable [knowing] that, if something bad happens, more people are going to be watching and aware of it, and that help will be there if it is needed." forgets that freedom has a cost, and I'm willing to live with a little danger in exchange for being beholden to no man other than myself. As Penn & Teller say, these cameras are "Bullshit!".
Please bid on this Karmann Ghia! Please pleas
anyone else wonder if the chief is a hacker who was just misquoted?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
damn, I guess there will be no more public Urination for me...
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
"will be able to zoom in from their work stations to gather details of facial descriptions or read license plates""
Somehow this tells me the terrorists won
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
They're only cameras.. they're in public places.. What do you expect? Why do you care? Are you planning on doing something you shouldn't? If so, that's why the cameras are there. And FYI, by law, you're entitled to access any CCTV footage that contains your image, so exercise your right.
So will you still be allowed to wear hats or other facial coverings, so that you can't be identified by those cameras? Or would that be ruled as "unpatriotic" and grounds to be arrested?
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
Let's say-- we of course hope this will not happen, but stuff is hard to predict-- there are, as is sometimes unavoidable in a situation where there are protesters (and I'm sure there will be protesters) instances of police brutality during the upcoming DNC.
And let's say that the police cameras record this.
Do you suppose anything will come of said recordings?
Another question: when Britain installed similar cameras, there was some thing where some tripped-out version of the FOIA would allow you to request any film they had of you on those cameras. Does Massachusetts have any kind of state-local version of the FOIA that would allow private organizations to request copies of these Boston street cameras?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
"Are you planning on doing something you shouldn't?"
Indeed. Only those who've done something wrong, or are misidentified, have anything to fear... and no-one should be worried about a mere few years spent in Cuba because they were misidentified as a criminal. Of course what's legal today might be 'wrong' tomorrow, like, say, trying to cross the border to Canada in order to avoid being drafted to die in Iran or Syria, but as long as you're docile little sheep who do whatever the government tells you to do (and don't get misidentified), you'll probably be OK.
What rights are in question?
People do NOT have a right of privacy in public. This is nothing new. This is NOT 1984! 1984 is government cameras in your home. This shrill scream of "1984" all time just weakens it's real meaning.
Yeah. Still, you cannot reserve a hotel room or rent a car with cash.
And don't even THINK about trying to buy an airline ticket with cash, unless you ENJOY body cavity searches and long vacations in Guantanimo.
Please bid on this Karmann Ghia! Please pleas
Who really poses a bigger threat to your well being on a day to day basis?
A) Osama 'been bombin'
B) The local police force
Uhmm...hmmm...let's see.... 'B'!
...belong to us" ?
Maybe they can put one inside Fenway to watch the RedSox terrorize their fans with another losing season.
Uh, when you're out in public everything you do is subject to observation by the public. That's why it's called public.
This is NOT 1984! They are installing extreme security measures in preparation for the DNC because of what the DHS tells them is a considerable threat from terrorists. Then, once the DNC is over, they don't want to just throw everything away. If this were 1984, they'd be installing the cameras in your house and Micheal Moore would vaporize.
If nothing else, we've seen that (on the whole) it's morbidly inefficient for a single authority to try and use cameras to monitor a large area for an extended period of time.
So far, every attempt at installing cameras to monitor the public by the government has been a huge FUBAR because people destroy the cameras, and the software that tries to automate the surveylance process sucks. So take off your tinfoil hat and stop hassling the local food store to order more spam for the compound.
This is NOT a evil gubmint attempt to take over your life, it's an attempt to stop a potential attack on the DNC.
Oddly enough, the police department in various parts of Scotland have discovered that the CCTV cameras installed on public buses have helped to catch criminals. Fixed point cameras are helpful in deterring crime in certain areas, but eventually criminals figure out the blind spots in the system.
I've seen the television sized screens on the double deckers. A 16" LCD display is mounted on the ceiling at the front of the top deck of the bus. There are around six cameras on the top of the bus which cover the staircase, both sides of the back row of the bus; the favourite location for drunk teenagers -neds (Non Educated Delinquents) and the front of the bus. The display cycles through the entire set of cameras. Quite entertaining if you can get a front row seat. Then you can watch the ned-cam as the bus goes through the city.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Who will watch the watchmen? The watched!
People.... this can be a good thing. The rich, powerful or corrupt have always had the power to invade your privacy because its just an illusion and will alway be so. Privacy laws just protect the powerful from being watched by the masses.
Instead of fighting a lossing battle to stop this technology we need to ensure that it will be available to everyone and that the feeds will be open to the public. Put cameras on the streets, in the police stations and in government buildings. I don't mind being watched as long as I can watch everyone else. Imagine a world were everyone is equipped with their own personal cameras and recorders... with so many eyes spreading their light everywhere the world might become a more peaceful and happy place.
Actually, it's Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. Almost noone gets it right, even native Bostonians...
And yet, they make us pay for New Orleans' Mardi Gras videos... why can't the public get free feeds of that? Please?
I propose that we put a video camera in every hallway and every office of all major government buildings and play the videos back in all major cities across America.
Oh, for fuck's sake, people, this is not about our right to privacy; it's about the government's right to monitor its (presumably innocent) citizens.
Do we want a government powerful enough to track us wherever we go? I don't. They *don't* need this power to do their jobs of attempting to protect us. (Nobody can "protect" us, they can only *try* to protect us.)
Liberty is not only about our rights as citizens, but more about our rights to be free of a government that feels free to track and control us. That's why "free speech zones" are an abomination, and this surveillance is a slap in the face.
If we allow our government to control us instead of us controlling it, we are no longer a democracy. (Are we a democracy?)
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
If you make a Nazi or 1984 reference, you lose.
Wrong.
Godwin's law, as originally stated, was (approximately) that any discussion thread on usenet (and similar systems), if it did not die first, would eventually warp into something that would provoke a mention of NAZIs - and that the NAZI reference indicated that it had wandered from interesting topics to topics that had been rehashed so many times that they were no longer interesting - at least to old hands (such as Godwin) who had other things to spend their time and internet access on.
Of course, this was quicky misstated into the "Folk Godwins Law" - warped forms like "Mention NAZIs and the thread is dead. You can all drop the discussion and go home now." or "First one to mention NAZIs loses." These forms have been used to systematically shut down debate, whenever someone makes a posting propagating any totalitarian meme that happens to have been used by the NAZIs and someone else points out how the meme had been used to aid oppression.
Such misuse is not merely misinformed, but dangerous. It leads to the increased spread of totalitarian memes and the suppression of counter-memes in the form of historical evidence of the memes' horrendous effects. "Those who do not understand history are condemed to repeat it." And this misstatement of Godwin's law is a prime example of an enabling meme - which selects against learning history and promotes "improved" cover-versions of its worst disasters.
Godwin himself has pointed out the misstatement. But he also asserts that his original law holds - because discussions of the downside of the Folk version (such as this one), though they point out the misuse, do NOT put the thread back on the subject - instead diverting it down the rathole of discussing the misstatement of Godwin's law. So the damaage due to the misuse still occurs.
But venues like Slashdot allow branching. This can take asides aside - so the main thread can continue.
Since you have been so nice as to make the Folk Godwin's Law posting as the FIRST (still above threshold) post, perhaps we can pull that discussion aside RIGHT HERE, and head off repeated Folk Godwin cites in the rest of the comments.
Perhaps that way we can ACTUALLY DEAL WITH the important business at hand: Defending freedom from yet another totalitarian encroachment.
So I STRONGLY suggest that anyone who has read this far STOP following this thread and GET BACK TO that more life-critical task.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Citizen d474 is so rightwise you can bellyfeel it.
Citizen 242493 should report themselves for such crimethink and malquote at the thought of facing B.B. and possibly comitting facecrime. When the Boston Hate Week commences, all crimethinkers will be shown to B.B. and know the joycamps.
Because such crimespeak is fullwise here it will indulge crimethinkers in their fantasies against the Inner Party, what is being shown here is an act of love, blackwhite love shown to the citizens facing possible action from thoughtcrime,sexcrime crimethinkers from the Disupted territories. Our dayorder is love of B.B., the Inner Party, and crimestop.
Slashdot is so fullwise duckspeak and oldthought. This space is doubleplusungood even for the Pornosec, it's such prolefeed. This article isn't even goodsource for two-minute-hate, but should be enough for the ThinkPol to identify crimethinkers.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Where I live in city-centre Liverpool (England) there are CCTV cameras on all the main streets. If I walk out of my house, I'm on camera, and if I walk into the town centre nearly every step of the way I'm on camera. The aim is to have around 240 cameras around the city centre monitoring millions of square metres as part for the Liverpool CitySafe Initiative.
And you know what? When I'm walking back from town at night I'm extremely glad of it. When you've been assaulted and most of your friends who live nearby have been mugged then perhaps you'll understand why. I'm normally extremely libertarian in my views but when you and your partners safety are in question then it sadly pays to be pragmatic. The Guardian newspaper featured an interesting article on CCTV in Liverpool and it's privacy implications, but the fact remains that surveys show that 93% of people are in favour. It works, too, because crime has been cut quite dramatically as part of the initiative.
Of course, were are more accustomed to CCTV cameras in Britain. We have the highest ratio of CCTV cameras per population of any country - something like 4m (or one for every 13 people). There are traffic cameras on many roads capable of snapping speeding drivers or those that jump red lights. It is estimated that each person in Britain is caught on camera 300 times a day. The implications are worrying, and the situation needs to be carefully monitored, but when I'm walking back from the pub at night I can't help but feel a little more reassured.
That's not that many cameras in Boston. There's something like TWO ORDERS of magnitude more public monitoring cameras in London!
London Underground subway ALONE is reported to have over 6000 monitoring cameras now, being increased to 9000 source link. When including CCTV cameras elsewhere, there's well OVER 10,000 CAMERAS monitoring you.
Although, apparently, most Londoners doesn't seem to mind. As long as they're only pointed to public areas.
Secondly, the linguistics of the first clause are not restrictive. They are explanitory. If I said, "since it is necessary for you to drink orange juice to get your intake of vitamin C, no one shall deny anyone the right to have an orange juice", would you argue that I only intend to protect YOUR right to drink OJ, and not those of other individuals? It does provide some rationale as to WHY they wanted "the rights of the people to keep and bear arms" to not be infringed upon.
Furthermore, your interpretation makes absolutely no sense. Why would the government need to grant any army the right to have arms? Plus, using your interpretation, the 2nd ammendment is a grant of power to the government, instead of a guarantor of individual rights, which would make it completely out of character for the Bill of Rights, which is all about limiting what the governemnt is allowed to do. Logically that interpretation makes no sense and is out of line with what the founders intended.
If the anti-gun lobby were honest they would say that the second ammendment is a "dangerous anachronism" that needs to be repealed, instead of trying to pretend that it doesn't say what it clearly says. At least that would be intellectually honest. Then we could have an honest debate about the need (or lack thereof) of such a right. Unfortunately I don't see this happening.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
That creepy voice imploring you "if you see something, say something" is on the subway PA about every 15 minutes.
The stations and trains are covered in posters depicting "vigilant" citizens doing their part to protect Freedom, close-ups of an eye reminding you that our enemies only wait for you to drop your guard - really straight out of some cheesy science fiction movie about a semi-futuristic totalitarian regime.
Now apparently they are going to be doing random bag-checks for the DNC (I think they've decided on bag screens now, not sure if that's better or worse), and I am sure that's going to stop right after the DNC is over.
So yeah, the MBTA is definitely doing their part in the whole fear mongering campaign.
sic transit gloria mundi