Slashdot Mirror
Manhattan 1984
Etherwalk writes "The New York Times is reporting on developments in the quest to charge driving fees for all vehicles headed below 86th Street in Manhattan. Notably absent from any part of the discussion is that a record is made of every car or truck that enters, together with the vehicle ownership information and the date and time of travel — either as part of EZ-Pass or in license-plate photos taken for subsequent billing."
Thing is, I discussed this with my US cousin a few months back, and told him how in the Netherlands, we had all sorts of systems in place already to monitor traffic for billing and speeding registration purposes, using cameras that read license plates. He was sure that, for privacy reasons alone, such systems would never fly in the States.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Jesus. Ok, it's all right to have a little bit of suspicion with regards to motives here, but "Manhattan 1984"? That's a bit much, isn't it?
Also, how does this qualify as having to do with Our Rights Online?
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
We've had a similar system running in London for a while now here in the UK.
Now you too can look forward to people using fake license plates to avoid charges, or people who have been nowhere near the area being charged and/or fined because the number plate recognition software read a letter or number wrong.
If it keeps the paranoid from driving their cars around Manhattan, that's a bonus reduction in traffic. I'm all for it. In fact, publish the data if you can't satisfactorily explain why you need to take your car in. Make it hurt to not take public transport.
land of the free indeed....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Manhattan is full of niggers
Clearly you meant "the working class", and you're correct. Manhattan is full of working class individuals who clearly have an interest past that of which is providing the employment. If you meant otherwise, then your conflation of racial division with division in class and/or earning potential is the point of discussion, at which point any rational individual would have to disagree with your assessment.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
This consolidates power in the hands of government. Right now, the UK government can be offensive, inappropriate, incompetent, all the traditional sins of government, but they do stop short of being outright openly evil. Alas, government is not a static reliable thing. Many of the functions of government are being gleefully handed over to corporations, either by market-worshipping dingbats who genuinely believe that the market can regulate itself, or by corrupt arseholes who just want the stock options.
Now, imagine the same systems in the hands of a major corporation. Now imagine that the corporation has very few legal restrictions on what it does. Now imagine you have pissed them off.
If that didn't scare you, you have a serious lack of imagination.
Traffic has been reduced by 26% at the last count, so it has in fact stopped some people driving in the congestion zones, as intended. 'Reductions in congestion inside the charging zone over the whole period since the introduction of the scheme now average 26 percent. ' - from the 2007 report of Tfl.
I believe this is the intended effect, I doubt very much people would use fines as status symbols (proof of this?), and if they do, their stupidity would fund further public transport. No one who is poor in London can afford a car anyway (if you can afford a car in London, you have to pay parking, road tax, and fuel, not to mention upkeep), so they'll be happier with improved public transport.
As for the surveillance aspect - I'd be more concerned about their efforts to extend the length of time the police can hold people without trial (currently being misused to hold protesters against airport expansion), and routine use of torture (though thank goodness its use in court has been banned, much to the UK government's chagrin). Potential tracking of road use is the least of our worries.
Because it's just like driving through any other toll plaza anywhere else. I've not heard of any that don't use cameras to track cars or give away the fact that you crossed the control point with your ETC transponder. How this information is any different from going through other toll plazas or border crossings is beyond me. Moreover, why it matters is also a puzzling thought. So a computer knows you drove into Manhattan. It's not like it would have been a secret without these toll plazas.
If "they" want to watch you, they can do it. That ability is not new, nor is it going anywhere. Attempting to attribute some lingering fear to the fact that you're visible to others in public is paranoid.
Actually there is a lot of sense to that. It has been proposed before that a government DNA database would virtually solve crime - obviously this is not true but it would be a very useful tool for detection and prevention.
n g-science/dna-database/
p orts/NationalDNADatabase.pdf
/. readers (yes thats a sweeping generalization) but it really is what I think.
But before you go off on one and start ranting lets look at the facts...
From the Home Office: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/science-research/usi
"Any intrusion on personal privacy is proportionate to the benefits that are gained.
By the end of 2005, about 200,000 samples had been retained that would have been destroyed before the 2001 change in legislation. 8,000 of these samples matched with DNA taken from crime scenes, involving nearly 14,000 offences, including murders and rapes.
In 2005-06 45,000 crimes were matched against records on the DNA Database; including 422 homicides (murders and manslaughters) and 645 rapes."
Thats 45 thousand crimes in one year. Think about that for a while.
And an anti database view: http://www.genewatch.org/HumanGen/Publications/Re
"Errors and false DNA matches have led to miscarriages of justice, and these can create major difficulties for those wrongfully convicted because, like fingerprint evidence, DNA is widely regarded as absolutely conclusive, meaning that those without strong alibi evidence will tend to be presumed guilty. At the moment the DNA database itself can be viewed largely (but not entirely) as a growing suspect list that is mainly used to check samples from new and unsolved crime, but the existing data can be (and has been) used for broader purposes, and the UK practice of retaining the sample as well as the data allows it to be used for further testing for other purposes as the science develops.
We're seeing glimpses of what is possible with familial testing, which establishes links to family members where the suspect's DNA might not be on the database, and although the first instance of this was viewed as a coup, if used widely the procedure would find relatives you didn't know about, and reveal that people weren't related to the people they thought they were. So what have you got to hide? You don't know, and maybe you don't want to know."
--- I am *not* parroting a government line. Nor am I proposing GATACCA. I am simply stating that to dismiss this without thought on quaint and paranoid lines seems irrational and foolish. I realized that this viewpoint would run counter to many of the
There's a difference to being in view in public, and having your whereabouts noted, and retrievable for all of eternity. I find it kinda disconcerting that I could one day be confronted by police with an exhaustive list of my movements for the last 10 years.
My uncle was visited by ASIO for suspected terrorism related stuff. We're Muslim, and it's a tradition donate food to poor people. He runs a butcher, and so sent meat to a Middle Eastern based charity organization. They then sent it to a regional distribution center which then distributed it to various community groups, one of which was apparently on an Interpol watch list of some description. Despite the layer upon layer of distance, my uncle's house was raised, all computer data was copied and he was questioned (bear in mind he sent a bunch of dead sheep, not a briefcase of hard currency or blueprints for nuclear related widget thingies).
He was presented with a list of every phone call he'd made in the last 10 years or so, and every call overseas he was required to explain. We're from South Africa, and are of Indian descent. Being Indian with a bloody huge families we have, we have relatives all over the place, and so we make heaps of overseas phone calls. Eventually, they decided my uncle was harmless, and left him alone. Nonetheless, ever since then I've been gearing up to move to a country that is not in the Western Axis, as I am increasingly getting the feeling that we as Muslims just aren't welcome. Plus, I don't like the idea that someone, somewhere has access to all of my movements.
Oh, and if you're going to give me the "if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear" line, please don't, I've heard it many times before and it sounds dumber each time I hear it.
I hate printers.
Is how there is not any outrage, but there is acceptability, for the corupt nature of the whole situation. Gas taxes are supposed to pay for roads (maint & repair). That would go to figure, you use public roads, you should pay for them. But now here's a situation where the Federal Govt is giving NY 300+ million to charge people more money to use _PUBLIC_ roads. I guess "Public" no longer means paid for by the people's taxes, but means, paid for by the people's taxes, and rented out to the folks who can afford it.
Rerouting congestion does not solve the problem. NIMBY all over again. Those cars have to go somewhere. And as for the folks who think that public transportation is good enough, that could be viewed as another freedom taken away. Folks drive for many reasons, one being a sense of going where they want, when they want.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Classic, first of all you denounce the entire UK as a bunch of right wing Sun reading racists and then in the very next sentance you moan about people making sweeping statements about sections of society. A case of double standards here perhaps ?
The majority of people in the UK are not right wing Sun reading racists, although some of us are and some of the more religiously inspired members of the Muslim community are really not interested much in integration.
If you actually want to do something to help both the right wing racists and the isolationist muslims it's best to see people as they actually are rather than relying on broad caricatures.
I would love it if someone said that to me.
If someone did say that to me - a man, in this example - then I could ask him what his wife's favourite sexual position is, or which co-worker he would turn gay for, or which one person he would kill if he could get away with it.
I don't really care what his answers would be, but that's not why I'd want to ask. I would want that person to decide for himself whether he would tell me or not. If he doesn't feel comfortable telling me, or feels offended that I'd ask, he won't answer, even if he can. That's exactly the point.
If you've got nothing to hide, you really do have nothing to fear. This is true, for as far as it goes, and I'm sure the people who say it believe it. The catch is simple: everyone has something to hide, and not everyone realises it.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
personally i think they should turn a random town in new jersey into a parking lot, and force people to take trains into the city. cars ruin midtown. i hate cars. all streets should become pedestrian thoroughfairs. make times square a permanent street fair. turn the taxi fleet into a bunch of pedicabs, scooters, and small european style microcars. make all truck deliveries during a certain hour of the night
and then i turn to slashdot, and i find a bunch of spin that frankly doesn't get the situation at all. a lot of the discussion here is about accepting a loss of freedom
loss of freedom?! you mean GAIN of freedom. the oppressive fascist presence here being CARS, not the government!
hello, i live here, i think i understand better than the average slashbot about what is going on with this plan. i don't see it as mourning a loss of freedom. i see it as celebrating a loss of CARS
let's put it this way: in the fight against what you perceive as an intrusive government and loss of privacy, try to understand what people on the ground are actually thinking about the situation, and pick the right fight. don't misinterpret the situation and come charging in horns ablaring about this issue or that issue that frankly, no one is actually concerned with and doesn't even apply
or rather, for the sake of argument, let's take the absurd position that the slashbots here are correct about this being an intrusive government issue and not a clogged traffic issue. ok, well then, now you understand that those who live in midtown manhattan welcome the devilish scheme of emperor palpatine to take away their freedoms under the guise of a bait and switch maneuver that the issue is something else entirely. fine: now try to understand what emperor palpatine is baiting us with, and use that issue as a starting point for your own words. the point being, it doesn't pay to march into a situation with the discussion already all figured out in your head without any input or attempt to persuade the people who are actually the targets of the plan in question
know your audience, speak to their concerns. or don't bother speraking at all. because they're not going to listen to you if you don't try to understand where they are coming from
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it