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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."'"
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
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."
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
So all you are saying is that the terrorists didn't need to do anything to win.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
Uh, when you're out in public everything you do is subject to observation by the public. That's why it's called public.
Has it ever occurred to all the "The terrorists have won" people that the terrorists more than likely don't fucking care about our freedom? They want us out of the Persian Gulf. They want us to stop helping Israel. They hate our imperialistic actions. But, if we were to leave them alone and not interfere with them, would they really go out of their way to bomb us?
And this is only Al-Qaeda. The vast majority of terrorists out there are in it for one of two things: radical change on one issue that no one seems to care about, and drawing attention to themselves and killing as many people as possible. While the lower-level operatives of terrorist organizations often believe in what they're doing, the leaders are frequently just trolling because of their own psychological issues. Even without our freedom, they'd sill hate us.
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, but you do.
Just not as much as when you're sitting at home on a beanbag naked eating Cheet-ohs.
Like most other things, my expectation of privacy is not binary, 1 or 0, black and white. When I am at home on my beanbag, I have a full expectation of privacy. It is my very reasonable expectation that no one is watching and recording what I do, listening to my phone conversations, or going through my porno collection to see what kind of pornos I have. (Warrants notwithstanding.) When I'm walking down the street, it would not be a reasonable for me to expect that no one is watching me. However, I do expect that no one is following me around with a camcorder, and I think that is perfectly reasonable. However, I can resonably expect to show up on a camera if I go to a baseball game.
Likewise, if I'm on a crowded street, chances are somebody will hear my phone conversation. If I don't like that, I should find somewhere a little out of the way so no one can hear what I'm talking about. But I do expect that the streetlamp isn't recording what I'm saying.
I also expect that no one will look through my brown bag full of pornos-- It's my bag, even though I'm in a public space.
The examples can go on and on. It's simple: There are varying degrees of privacy.
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
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.