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Is Your Neighbor a Democrat? There's an App For That
theodp writes "ProPublica's Lois Beckett reports that the Obama for America campaign's new mobile app is raising privacy concerns with its Google map that recognizes one's current location, marks nearby Democratic households with small blue flags, and displays the first name, age and gender of the voter or voters who live there (e.g.,'Lori C., 58 F, Democrat'). Asked about the privacy aspects of the new app, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign wrote that 'anyone familiar with the political process in America knows this information about registered voters is available and easily accessible to the public.' Harvard law prof Jonathan Zittrain said the Obama app does represent a significant shift. While voter data has been 'technically public,' it is usually accessed only by political campaigns and companies that sell consumer data. 'Much of our feelings around privacy are driven by what you might call status-quo-ism,' Zittrain added, 'so many people may feel that the app is creepy simply because it represents something new.'"
It is creepy, and a good reason not to register as a member of either party...no matter how much you may want to vote in the primaries.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I know all about who's what, since we see dozens of petitions a year.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
ignored by the Government.
Seriously, this is what they think is a good idea?
Time for change is right. I'm thinking we need a new system, the current one no longer represents the people.
Be seeing you...
right back atcha.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly
> Harvard law prof Jonathan Zittrain said the Obama
> app does represent a significant shift. While voter
> data has been 'technically public,' it is usually
> accessed only by political campaigns and companies
> that sell consumer data.
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
a political party isn't a government...
go back to school.
dude, the "political parties" are fronts for the corporations.
Pay fucking attention.
Be seeing you...
Right. Yes voter records are accessible to the public but so are criminal records and those
of sex offenders. Even the wages and salaries of federal employees are available online
for anyone curious enough btw.
I wonder what a given neighborhood would look like if we overlaid sex offenders and
criminal records with Obama voters. This is entirely feasible and entirely legal as well.
But yes for everybody else who didn't have the misfortune of living 30 years in a communist
country, commies love to use peer pressure. Right now they're planning to show who is
using how much electricity in a given neighborhood and giving discounts if _everybody_
reduces their energy use in a street. Yes, if only one neighbor exceeds the set quota
everybody 'loses' and everybody will know who is 'responsible'. Expect your neighbors
to come to your door and bitch at you.
It appears your hunch isn't that far off from reality:
SCOTUS Rules Petiton Signatures Are Public Record.
Citizen, there's an app for that. Now go spread the message around your block.
Life is not for the lazy.
The previous method, back in the days before all this social networking stuff: Republicans tend to keep their shades drawn, even though they really don't have anything that would be worth hiding. Democrats ought to draw their shades, but don't.
I am officially gone from
1. adds a list of people to harrass for republican activists.
2. even more sign the democratic party is less based on ideals, but more on the sense of community that has been taken from us by the paranoia and fear taken from us by the government and RIAA/MPAA affliated communities. Make otherwise unsure people feel like part of something, and hopefully they won't pay attention to issues.
You can't simultaneously thing wikileaks and government transparency are good things and this is a bad thing. The data was already available, this app just puts a more accessible spin on it. Whether the data should be available or not, that we can talk about...
anyone familiar with the political process in America knows this information about registered voters is available and easily accessible to the public.
Just answer me this Tweek, what do you see as postive about toddler murder?
Ahh ahh... It is easy
Yes it easy.
But wait, there's no need for the Right to feel left out -- they could use technology like this to round up the jews, queers, gypsies et al., with just a fraction of the effort invested by their Nazi role models back in the '30s!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
This data is not 'creepy' when company's are using this data privately for profit, however when it's expressed publicly in a not-for-profit way it's a privacy concern. God bless America.
a political party isn't a government...
go back to school.
Is the govt any better?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Such are the flaws of collectivism.
What I find is interesting is that this is Obama's official campaign app and not some third-party "lets see what we can do with data" app.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
...shows the private addresses of all politicians with a range of little icons over their houses showing what kind of scandals they have been involved with and what organisations they have been members of.
It's interesting, I was just thinking- so now I know how to find out who all is voting for the other guy without drawing attention to myself.
Not that I would ever do anything to harm them or anything. But if I decide I don't want Bill's lawn service taking care of my lawn because he is a democrat, I don't need to sign for a big list at some government office and suffer people wondering why I want it. Come to think about it, there are a lot of performance reviews coming up, perhaps I can show some people how evil big corporation really can be.
Note: I am not over anyone who doesn't already think like me. There is absolutely no chance I could economically harm anyone with this information, But others could. Kind of really creepy isn't it.. lol
ah, yes... "the" corporations, much like "the" [insert racial stereotype here]
You might think corporations are people, but the sane people do NOT believe that.
So sorry, corporations can not find safe harbor under hate laws. Nice try though.
Be seeing you...
What this may do is surprise a lot of people, who are actually secret liberals but pretend to be right-wing to avoid confrontations. (My husband does this with his parents. They're as tea party as it comes.) If people see they're not so alone, maybe they won't be so ashamed... Then again, if they see a wall of solid red around them, maybe they'll move.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
They all wake up in the morning with "Vote for Romney" signs in their front yards.
They act as though IOS is the only platform. I searched on Google Play (Stupid name btw, Market was much better!) and no such app exists for Android.
This database been used by Choicepoint for years for Gerrymandering. When you read that a GOP mob will be challenging black voters in district X, it's because Choicepoint has worked out that district X is the best chance of swinging the vote by barring black voters. Ethnicity they mine from one database, the voting preference from this database.
Remember the voter cleansing list? Crossed referenced with Choicepoint (DBT as it was then). The list of mostly Democrats purged from the Florida electoral roll for having similar names to convicted felons in other states. Where do you think they got the list of Democrats from to filter by??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File
This data should be private, perhaps showing people the public data about them will finally help it be kept private.
Who you vote for is your business, and nobody elses.
Basically, cellphones in any area signal to nearby wireless-router access-points (like your home wireless router) and send their own geo-location along with their signal-strength and MAC-address of the router to a database. Over time and multiple cellphones/smartphones, etc. doing the same thing, the router's MAC becomes traingulated and is mapped to a database. I think the database is managed between Skyhook and Google, which can be querried with the MAC address for the info. I'm pretty sure I've done a poor job describing this, but it's an interesting idea and a possible privacy issue. The only link I could find quickly is this: http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/get-the-physical-location-of-wireless-router-from-its-mac-address-bssid/
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Yet another way Democrats and Republicans have devised to drive voters to register (and vote) as independents. Let's hope this trend keeps up!
However that was a ruling based on the laws of the state of Washington.
In California the laws are radically different. In fact California and Washington have two of the most divergent sets of laws in the country as far as voting.
Some differences of the top of my head
Overall, I doubt the app is legal in California, although I suspect they could get a presidential pardon.
Work bio at MMWD
And that's EXACTLY what someone should do. This shit isn't going to end until the general public feels the burn. We'd be all better off if that burn were a prank and not what we're really afraid will happen...
Why would you say tea party nut? You do realize the last several shooting incidents were most likely people who would vote democrat right? They also were somewhat crazy and probably never connected their political ideology with their desire to kill people.
The Obama campaign is just using a technique that's tried and true in the corporate world.
As long as they don't start installing this app as part of AT&T's Android bloatware package, I don't have a problem with it.
But it's interesting that knowing about what corporate money is coming into a political campaign is completely off limits. For some reason, that's considered just beyond the pale. Well, we know the reason, but that doesn't make it easier to swallow.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh, it represents the people alright.
The people with lots of money.
It represents the people, but not any of the people we know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"That's weird. How come Disneyland and every graveyard are covered with little, blue flags on this map?"
sig: sauer
Exactly what makes you think that a new system will be better?
Look around the world today. Mostly it's worse. Some more are essentially the same +/- certainly not worth going through the hassle to switch to.
A few are better but they are usually the size on one US state or less. Not clear that they would be scalable to something the size of the US.
What plan? You plan to vote for someone who ran on "hope & change" and then just smirked and said "nah, not really", because the alternative is completely nuts, you know, just like Bush got re-elected because Kerry sucked?
That is what you call a plan? You just consume what others plan. They get into office on some promise, and you have exactly zero ways to hold them accountable.
This isn't realistic, it's theatre. Just like your portraits of alternatives are.
Actually many Jews and Gays are pretty conservative these days, and will certainly vote for Romney. Dunno about the Gypsies.
You could argue that a member of the political party who is currently serving in the government who is seeking reelection is the government. Isn't that what is happening?
They're hardly alone. Here's a similar one: This here app "Stakeout" crawls through meetup.com and finds people around you and when they're (presumably) not at home. https://theotigerblog.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/we-know-where-you-live/
Before we get too excited about this, we would do well to remember that it wasn't until the 1800's that we started having anonymous voting.
When you voted for any of the first several presidents, you went into a big room and held up your hand. There was zero voter fraud then (as now).
Secret ballots and anonymity in the electoral process was not part of the original system in the US. The founders didn't see the need, apparently. But counting the votes was always taken very seriously, with representatives from both parties involved. (This was before the innovation of black box computer voting outsourced to Republicans. Before Ken Blackwell. Before 2000).
You are welcome on my lawn.
Collectivism? Why is everything that the right doesn't like is assumed to come from the mind of Karl Marx? If your neighborhood watch goes around noting the license plates of guys who cruise for hookers, is that collectivism?
Social morality has always had an element of peer pressure and groupthink. That's as true for right wing value systems and left wing ones.
Seriously? I can't imagine any way to better piss off independents than this crap.
Care to back that up with some argumentation?
If your opinions are that private, WTF are you doing on Slashdot?
That's the last push I need to start the Mindyourownfuckingbusiness Party.
He wasn't talking about hate laws, you said that. His comment was about irrational fear, stereotyping, stupid generalizations and other small minded ways ol looking at things.
even more sign the democratic party is less based on ideals, but more on the sense of community
Wow, so it's "community" now to out your neighbors and friends as to political leanings?
Come to think of it, Democrats are fond of outing gay Republicans. I guess this is just another example of how the Democrats know best what aspects of your life should be public.
As others have stated - a better incentive to register independent I have not seen.
Thank you Democrats for birthing yet another wave of libertarians, keep tugging on that wool.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't think someone thought this app through. This app is going to tell people what the age the person is of the household, their sex, and if they are likely to be Liberal or not? I can see this app being very popular with the criminals, they can see which houses are most likely liberal since there are Democrat(s) living at that address. Now if you were a bad guy, wouldn't you love to know what the ages are in the house, if its most likely female or male, and their political leanings are since the Liberals/Progressives are most likely NOT GOING TO HAVE A GUN IN THE HOUSE! What an interesting burglary tool, or should I say, application.
If all you see is red and blue, I'd say it's time to get new glasses, metaphorically speaking...
If you start hating someone just because of one thing they believe, then the only person that has a real problem is you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Blue and Navy!
Other colors you say? Unpossible!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is just another example of tech burning away the illusion of privacy. It isn't taking away privacy from people; it's just another graphic example of letting people see what kind of information that is and always has been freely available to anyone who wants it. Which is worse? Not knowing what people know about you or knowing very well what people can know about you? It might be scary for some, but I'll *always* choose the latter.
This is slashdot; the attribution was redundant. Most of us got it on the second line...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Sadly, I have to tell you that Privacy has been ignored not only by the government, but also by a lot of people around us
Look at what they have disclosed about themselves on fb and other social-network sites
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It actually seems MORE true for right wing value systems, actually.
But, I thought the current line was that the tea party types were too stupid to use a smart phone. Regardless that they're all deviously cunning at the same time.
(I have trouble keeping track of which "great truth" about out-groups is in effect.It's a bit like those press releases from the Syrian government. "There is no unrest in Aleppo. And it is all fomented by outsiders.")
"shooters are liberal"? I wonder where that meme came from. Sounds like typical misdirection to me.
From all the facts I've seen, the shooters were not-particularly-sane people with guns, and had ideologies that weren't consistent with any major school of thought.
I will accept corporations as people when the state of Texas throws them into prison for 30 years hard time, or they actually execute one -- not before. They damn sure cannot vote.
Voters votes used to count, or recount, but that was in the olden times before actual voters were replaced with easily hacked electronic voting machines. Actual voters $10 or $20 campaign contributions used to count for something as well, before SCOTUS approved the Citizens United decision, now mountains of campaign cash from offshore banksters. Corporations, which cannot vote, can only buy advertising that promotes their candidate (or more recently both candidates). If we ignore the corporate media and investigate, support, and vote for candidates that will actually represent us when in office, we would be a lot better off.
The two parties own our political process. They make it difficult for anyone but them to get on the ballot. They even have "straight ticket" checkboxes on ballots so you don't have to go through the trouble of voting for individuals based on their qualifications, but simply vote for every Democrat or Republican on the ballot.
But in the end, you can vote for whoever you want to vote for in the general election.
The biggest reason for the party registration is that most states don't allow you to vote in a party's primary unless you're registered to a party, and a person registered for one party can't vote in another party's primary (vote for the weakest candidate). Yes, that's another way the two parties have owned our system: The government actually runs and pays for their primary elections when it should be their own business who they put up for election, and entirely with their own money.
AreYour Neighbors Republicans? There's a gene test for that too!
Yes, seriously.
But, it could, of course, also check if you're prone to be Democrat too.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-genetics-of-politics
"The researchers’ data on 442 identical and 364 fraternal Add Health twins indicate that genetics underlies 72 percent of differences in voting turnout and roughly 60 percent of differences in other political activity. Fowler, who presented the research at the American Political Science Association meeting in August, claims that preliminary results from the Twins Days festival in Twinsburg, Ohio, also support the findings. Fowler adds that his team’s work does not suggest that genetics can determine whom people will vote for, only whether or not they are likely to vote. He also emphasizes that environment most likely plays a significant role in voting: “There is still a lot we can do to shape political behavior in spite of our genetic tendencies.”"
Registering independent is a bad idea; it means you aren't allowed to vote in the primaries (at least in AZ). The primaries are where you really get to pick who goes up for election.
Revealing locations of conservatives now, that would lead to some real issues...
Every conservative or libertarian voter I know is a strong supporter of the 2nd amendment and has one or more guns. It would seem the group of people who's core defense is to "wait for the police" should be most concerned.
Actually not stupid people's core defense is "run the fuck away".
+1 - Ben Franklin (Defending the right of others to disagree with your opinion).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
And,,, cow tipping. I hope I didn't give any terrorists ideas.
The big question I have is what value does this have to the Obama campaign?
Collectivism? Why is everything that the right doesn't like is assumed to come from the mind of Karl Marx? If your neighborhood watch goes around noting the license plates of guys who cruise for hookers, is that collectivism?
Social morality has always had an element of peer pressure and groupthink. That's as true for right wing value systems and left wing ones.
Just like how you think some guy looking for a hooker is evil.
Morality is relative and those who claim to be moral rarely are.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Nice Try
NAZI was slang (shortened form of the German pronunciation for the first word of the actual name of Hitler's party)
Hitler's political party had the acronym NSDAP (which you will see on signs and atop standards in parades on old newsreel footage) and in was (translated to English) "National Socialist German Workers Party" (Germans use "Deutch" for "German" and "Arbeit" for "Work", Their words for "National" "Socialist" and "Party" start with "N" "S" and "P" the same as the English counterparts) .... There is simply no way to assign a "national socialist worker's party" to the "right wing" within any political spectrum other than that of Europe, where everybody is so far left that a socialist can be to their right.
sheesh.... the weakness of the modern edumacation system is sure on display....
Yeah, and? What is better, not pointing out a bug, or pointing out a bug, even though you don't know how to fix it? Especially since it's something that needs to be fixed in consensus?
Thanks for deflecting it with such a cheap fucking "argument". I offered nothing, because it wasn't what you arbitrarily claim it should have been?
I contributed pointing out what bullshit your post was. What you think of that I couldn't care less about. Since your viewpoint included denouncing any and all independents as "crime-loving crackpots", I didn't expect you to agree. But I'm gonna have the last word, you insolent fuck.
Oh, and did it ever occur to you that certain wars and actions are crimes, too? That seeking alternatives to the two big parties who seem to be more in cahoots than distinct, is actually being SICK of crime? No really, fuck you. I'm not talking to you, I'm talking about you. Call it "a taste of your own medicine".
What? Who the fuck are you even talking to? Where did I mention any great ideas? You STATED something, I said "nah".
You're such a bad liar :'( Maybe take that to the clowns who enjoy such little jabs. I said my piece, not that your crap even warrented a response in the first place. But hey, at least you acknowledged that my post was shitting all over your viewpoint, that's a start :P
AKA good cop, bad cop. With the added beauty that for the republicans the democrats are the bad cop, and vice versa.
This is slashdot; the attribution was redundant. Most of us got it on the second line...
Not everyone read that book in English -- or at all, for that matter.
you only need to worry about getting your family out of the country if they start spraypainting yellow stars on houses
if a candidate running for my electorate really sucks, and nobody voted for him, but other people in his party elsewhere got voted in, why the hell should some moron get to govern a district in which nobody voted for him?
"proportional representation" isn't democracy, it's just a fancy name for mob rule
His comment was about irrational fear, stereotyping, stupid generalizations and other small minded ways ol looking at things
if you're talking about radiumsoup's comment "ah, yes... "the" corporations, much like "the" [insert racial stereotype here]", his comment is actually pretty stupid and pointless. maybe it could even be implied that he thought Nyder was taking a poke at Jews, but from his comment I doubt radiumsoup gave it that much thought.
small mindedness is honestly believing that corporations don't have US politics by the balls. corporations aren't people and they can't vote, but they don't need to vote because they just buy what they wanted from elected representatives... its called lobbying (with bribery thrown in for good measure)
there is plenty of irrational fear, stereotyping, etc in the world, but there is also abundance of ignorance and gullibility
ever heard the phrase "money talks and bullshit walks"? that pretty much sums up american politics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Myers_(politician)
What if my neighbor is not a democrat, not a republican either, nor a libertarian, an independent ...
What if my neighbor turn out to be an illegal alien?
What should I do?
If I was an American, I would put up a sign offering my vote for sale. Why should only politicians be the only ones that take money from "special interested"?
This can be done 100% legal by creating political action committees that accepts donations, and pays you off $$$ as a consultant.
Corporations are simply orginizations. They are owned and operated by individuals, who themselves bear responsability for their actions. So when people make blanket claims about "The Corporations" they are speaking from ignorance and hate and fear.
Now, the parent brought up hate laws in a compleyly transparent attempt to change the subject. I was simply pointing that out.
Don't show me Dems, show me single Dem girls of roughly my age!
Seriously, in the age of Girls Around Me plotting an obfuscated version of a public data set (the last name is edited out) should not look creepy any longer. The app could have opted to edit nothing out, and then link the data to plethoras of other data sets and social network accounts.
As a society, the US has been persistently trading privacy for shopping coupons, transparency and security for the past century or so. As individuals, it's your responsibility to share what little information you've still control of on a per need basis. Most evidently don't care that much. (How many cash-only people do you know? What about non-Googlers?)
If it ever is illegal to aggregate data on anyone unless they opt-in in no uncertain terms, and illegal to bundle such an opt-in clause in terms and services, I'll shed a real tear. But we're not heading there.
Tracking johns and publically embarrassing them is just one tiny aspect of the multiheaded hydra meme battling for dominance. Groups of ideas battle to reproduce, evolving and using all tricks at their disposal, including force of law.
That you feel this or that law is good or bad is about as important to the meme datastream as the fact you have a leg or brain is to your DNA datastream. It's just a functionary detail in the service of its reproduction.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"proportional representation" isn't democracy, it's just a fancy name for mob rule
"Democracy" is just a fancy name for mob rule.
So when people make blanket claims about "The Corporations"
its not irrational fear or blanket statements. its just basic business. corporations exist to enable people to make money and flout the law without being personally sued. just look at what happens when a company files for bankruptsy... usually the CEO gets a nice big fat golden handshake. ok he may not be the most popular guy in town, but he can merely move to a new town where money talks. credibiliy, ethics and morals aren't prerequisites for making money in this day and age. in fact as the old saying goes (and is still so true), "nice guys finish last".
the parent brought up hate laws in a compleyly transparent attempt to change the subject
i sort of got the impression that what was said in the op (perhaps not clearly worded) was that it was invalid to compare corporations with [insert race here] because of corporations being impersonal as they are, or in other words corporations don't deserve any protection from racial descrimination type arguments (or laws) because they don't represent anything that could be discriminated against
the difference is that in the case of proportional representation, the mob is the political party, whereas in a democracy the mob is the people
i'll take democracy over proportional representation anyday
if you want your local representative to be decided by government, maybe you should try living in china
My father, who is American (not me though, technically yes, but I don't live there, and it seems like a crazy place I wouldn't want to stay for all that long), thinks the Primary system makes the USA more democratic. I'm not so sure. Seems to me like a weird way for the 2 "parties" to be completely inescapable.
In Canada, when we have a terrible political party because it gets too corrupt from being in power, eventually that party gets dumped and those with that ideology have to form a new party that must embody the ideals but not the old vices. It's not perfect but it seems light-years ahead of the US 2 party system. In the US the bad old stuff just never dies all the way back to slavery.
I support the makers of this app. All they are doing is putting to use what is already out there. If we don't want those records so public we should make the change so the records aren't public that way. In a way they are highlighting a problem that needs to be solved.
Stupidity is its own reward.
for being stupid enough to actually think those political parties are looking out for their best interests.
Its a Wallstreet Government: http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6376331/Inside.Job.2010.DOCU.MULTISUBS.DVDRip.XviD-JanOve
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Voter reg data includes not just brief biological data [first, middle, last, address, DOB, sometimes telephone, date registered, political affiliation, the elections in which the person voted, which were absentee], but then state census data contains lots of other good stuff [first, middle, last, maiden, address, sometimes telephone, occupation as person reports it, head of household status, etc] and then if the person is a homeowner, you use the assessment database [date home purchased, assessed value each year, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, condition of each, any co-owners]. Then you can throw in the facebook, the google, the linkedin.
My concern: even private citizens like myself who know of and access this data don't flaunt it. I don't make it obvious to a neighbor that I know she votes in all Democratic primaries or only votes in November 0 mod 4 elections. I don't talk about her property tax bill either. Some people with this app will play it poorly because they will not understand that even the data is out there in the public, it is still impolite to treat it as common knowledge.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
When Adams wrote that, a lot of public records were still maintained on paper. That alone provided a huge natural barrier to intrusive searches, despite the fact that the information was technically public. Placing all this information online in a publicly searchable database creates the biggest invasion of privacy in history, yet the legal basis has not changed.
This kind of "app", although technically legal, really does nothing but expose voters to the potential for abuse or even violence. If I wanted my party affiliation known I would post signs supporting my favorite candidates.
Bands of roving thugs using these apps to break windows of all registered republicans, democrats, whatever, is unacceptable. And really, what else could it possibly be good for?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
They are owned and operated by individuals, who themselves bear responsability for their actions.
What the fuck are you smoking? Seems to me that the whole point of incorporating is so that the individual does not have to take responsibility for bad business decisions, even if they were the ones making the damned decisions. Look at the fucking banking industry right now. Yeah, there's a whole lot of individual responsibility being meted out there, huh?
Corporations have all the rights of living people but don't have any of the responsibility. They've become super-people, able to act with near impunity because, at the end of the day, when the jig is up and there is nothing more than can be squeezed...then they just go Enron and the fuckers at the top hop on their private plane to the other boards they sit on to continue the process. They're the financial equivalent of locusts.
Sorry... this just indicates you are going through life through blinders on.
Right now corporations are fronts for a very elite group of people. They are not representatives of their shareholders. Not in the least. When is the last time a shareholder meeting made a significant difference in the stance of a corporation?
Corporations are significant concentrations of power and the "executive class" use them to get their way.
Ok, lets start with basic demographic information of where people of Japanese decent are. Now, as a company if you get this information chances are you are going to put billboards up featuring Asian people, perhaps open up an Asian grocery store, maybe a sushi joint. But if you were the US (and Canadian) governments you take all those of Japanese decent and round them up and put them in concentration camps. Same information, very different results.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
What privacy? You signed that away a long time ago. This is merely the wider exercising of something that's been possible and legal for a very long time.
No-one yet has cited the precise point in time that this registration info became public, and who signed it off. Don't just whine, go and do some useful research instead.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
This is slashdot; the attribution was redundant. Most of us got it on the second line...
Not everyone read that book in English -- or at all, for that matter.
This is an English language forum, you can hardly complain about quoting English writers in English.
Also, if you are barely literate there is this handy invention called "google" where you can copy and paste quotes in and usually get an idea of the author straightaway.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you think that's creepy, checkout:
http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/elections-quebec-2012/carte-du-financement-politique-au-quebec/
Since 2011, any amount over 200$ was made public by the organisation overseeing elections. Since 2012 all amounts are public. This is (in part) to counter corporate fraud. Companies are not allowed to donate directly to political parties, so they ask their employees to do so.
Another authoritarian trying to confuse libertarians again. Will they ever stop? There is much more to politics than a simple left and right and it still amazes me that authoritarians are still able to keep libertarians, both social and conservative, fighting amongst themselves so they can continue to control them. Really now, is the debate over whether the order should be "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" or "Pursuit of Happiness, Liberty, and Life" that big of deal to let those who want to dictate to us stay in power?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
See post above about Democratic Republic of Congo. Also, recall that East Germany was the German Democratic Republic. Then, go read up about fascism and where it fits on the political spectrum. You scabrous spittoon of stable sweepings.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
No, actually, the people that own it aren't. The whole point of the corporation form is that it is a mechanism by which the government allows stockholders to have the financial benefits of "ownership" of a business operation without, except in the most extreme circumstances, bearing any responsibility other than the financial risk of the up-front investment (unlike an operator of a sole proprietorship or member of regular partnership, who can be held liable for all liabilities of the business entity even if they far exceed the amount voluntarily invested in the business.)
Actually, the executive class are just the best-paid agents of the capitalist class (the two overlap, which can confuse the issue, but its membership in the latter class that is the real source of power.)
Care to back that up with some argumentation?
He just did. "Anything less than Proportional Representation doesn't meet any sensible definition of democracy."
It's a sensible argument in some respects. It means no winner-takes-all-seats during elections. If there are N seats for an area, and votes are spread like 35%, 30%, 20%, 10%, and a couple of weenies, then each of the major parties involved get seats in proportion to their share of the votes. The alternative is to split the same area into N districts, and give a seat to the winning party in each one. The top party in that same area would usually get most if not all of the seats -- yet it's only 5% more popular than the next largest party, and only representing a third of the voters; it's the rule of the majority by the biggest minority.
In other respects, it's not that sensible. Depending on the threshold at which parties get one seat, it can give tremendous bargaining power to smaller parties since a ruling majority can seldom be formed without them; it's also the rule of the majority by minorities.
The two systems can be (and usually are) combined: allocate a seat or two to the leading party of each district, and the remaining seats proportionally over the whole area. That way, major parties can more readily form majorities in parliaments.
The same thing that they've been used for the whole time the information has been public. One campaign getting the information and providing it in a form (and with usage controls) optimizing it for use for that purpose on their side is just a way of reducing the costs of having every local campaign office paying the cost of getting paper records from the local government, and every party-friendly-but-independent effort doing the same thing.
When Adams wrote that, a lot of public records were still maintained on paper. That alone provided a huge natural barrier to intrusive searches, despite the fact that the information was technically public. Placing all this information online in a publicly searchable database creates the biggest invasion of privacy in history, yet the legal basis has not changed.
Everybody here always mocks "security through obscurity" so it's interesting to look back to a time when it actually was quite plausible.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's because we Americans are simply too stupid to select an election system that allows more than two parties
Please don't expect this to help. There are enough clueless idiots out there to fill any number of political party nominations. I'm not sure that choosing the least worse of 3 or more is much better than least worse of two. But you should definitely keep party membership lists private - it opens all sorts of possibilities for abuse otherwise.
Even murderers know that republicans are crazy!
Based on what GP actual said, I'd think he's afraid of people who both have a membership that indicates a high probability of gun ownership and act in a manner which indicates paranoia directed at him personally. He didn't say the problem was that the person was an NRA member, but that that he was "that fellow that accuses you of stealing mail when you give him the NRA pamphlet the mailman mis-delivered." (I have highlighted the key part of the sentence you seem to have overlooked.)
In the real world, proportional representation is the name for a feature of certain systems of democracy (and there are several different ways of acheiving it) in which the representation in the legislature is proportional to the support for particular views in the electorate. You are probably thinking, in making this complaint, of specifically the party-list-proportional system, which does this directly by assigning seats in the legislature to parties who assign seats off their own lists which are set prior to the election. While this does reduce the direct accountability of individual members to the general electorate, it in practice produces governments which much higher popular satisfaction that first-past-the-post, single-member district systems like that in the US. This is because it is more effectively democratic.
Or at least vote Libertarian where the "evil plan" is to shrink government and leave you the hell alone. How diabolical is that!
Smug fools like you seriously don't realise what will happen if you "leave alone" the majority of the people. Here's a clue: they will rise up and restore democracy rather than the rule of the rich that libertarians desire like spoiled children.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So-called anarcho-capitalism would simply end up with some Blade Runner-style dystopia with a few obcscenely rich people in control and the vast majority reduced to a level barely above slavery.
Incidentally, true anarchists have nothing to do with US libertarianism. The key words for radical left wing political philosophy are: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Together.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The Colorado dude was a college guy. Clearly a liberal.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I honestly don't care what Wikipedia says here; what I told you is how elections are handled here. If you don't register with one of the parties a certain amount of time before the election, you CANNOT vote in that party's (D or R) primary.
Democrats and Liberals are business hostile. I applaud this new tool for qualifying hiring candidates.
People like you are the reason they invented lampposts and rope.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Upon further reading, I don't see how my statements contradict the Wikipedia page at all. Maybe you should read more before spouting off and looking like an idiot. Arizona's primaries are indeed "open"; there's no check to make sure you're a "party member", you just have to declare an affiliation a certain amount of time before the election with the state government, and then they'll send you a ballot for that party's primaries. From the Wikipedia page for "Primary Election": "Open primary.[3] All voters can take part in an open primary and may cast votes on a ballot of any party. The party may require them to express their support to the party's values and pay a small contribution to the costs of the primary."
This is what we have, with the caveat that you have to sign up for a particular party a certain amount of time beforehand (whenever you register to vote, since the deadline for voter registration is one or two months or so before voting starts). There's no contribution required, nor any requirement to "express their support to the party's values".
So, people who think that serial killers should be executed are just being judgmental?
well, i'm shocked as to why america has to use brute force to get anywhere in the world, being as friendy and understanding you obviously are :)
when the greenback loses its global reserve status (it will eventually), you may find that america literally becomes a mud infested shit hole, because your debt is the only thing keeping you afloat.
All members of the government are a member of a political party. So yes, political parties *are* the government.
Learn to love Alaska
And really, what else could it possibly be good for?
Your stupidity and ignorance isn't a good refutation of it. Just because you can't think of anything off the top of your head when you obviously aren't even trying, doesn't mean there aren't any other reasons. In fact, I've found that the more people say "I can't think of a good reason" the more it seems to me that there are plenty.
Learn to love Alaska
Leave the country?
Yes. That's what I did. The US is going to collapse violently within 20 years. I didn't want to be there when that happened.
Learn to love Alaska
I don't see it as any more "creepy" than the political robo-calls I get, the mailers I receive, or the knocks on my door from political workers.
Annoying and inconvenient, yes.
If you are going to participate in the political process, which is a guaranteed right, and nothing to hide or be ashamed of, you are not going to, and have never been able to, do it anonymously.
Transparency runs both ways, how are you going to know if there's ballot stuffing or fraud if it's all a big secret ?
Legitimate privacy concerns are one thing; the tendency to shirk social responsibilities and try and justify this under the guise of "privacy concerns" is quite another.
Newsflash: Many Americans are willing to give up their rights and responsibilities for some perceived convenience. It's pathetic and childish, but hey, at least it's representative government at work.
No, but instead of addressing the actual comment, that is the fantasy you're more comfortable with.
Also, what is "individual thought"? Thinking for myself? Oh the irony.
And aren't you quite the shining example of that...
Vote third party. Change has to start somewhere.
Using your sample size of 1? Maybe 2? (assuming you mean Bush and Reagan). Bush Senior didn't drive anything into the ground, and actually inherited Reagan's mess. You're honestly going to let the actions of men you can enumerate on less than one hand categorize an entire party of people? Nearly 50% of the country? Sad.
Oh, I guess it's good that Barack Obama did the opposite and bailed out Main Street while sticking it to the banks. Oh wait...
That's the most assinine and frankly saddest thing I've ever heard. What if Martin Luther King said "man, there's no way my single voice will ever change anything -- it'll always be status quo -- I might as well just walk the line"? Even if you can't WIN with a vote, the fact you're standing up to be counted amongst a group standing in opposition of "business as usual" has value. Ron Paul may not have won in the 2 presidencies he has run in, but he has spread more awareness for the cause than was ever originally dreamed of
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
If you want to determine the future direction of the country, the primaries is where it's being decided. By the time the general election comes around, you have two choices that tend to be quite similar (despite all the rhetoric). And that's actually a pretty good system, provided people participate in the primaries.