We, the FBI, uncovered several solid clues that company X is involved in a certain computer crime. Several listings of our intercepts are provided for your review, all printed in octal code for your convenience. We ask you to allow us to perform search of premises of company X and to seize the computer equipment present, for our crime labs to work upon and determine if further proceedings are required.
Privacy is not a binary issue, it's not black and white. You can have more privacy and you can have less privacy, and there is also a subject of your exposure. Here is a simple example. You and your barber talk politics and you express some strong feelings about something. A client in the next chair - a stranger to you - hears every word. Do you care? Not likely - your speech is protected, and though you may express some stupid ideas (in your own opinion, after the fact) the only person who really heard you talking stupid is the barber, and he is your friend. The other guy doesn't count - chances that your paths will cross is microscopic, and even if that happens he is likely to forget. So you spoke in a public location (a barber shop that is open to anyone who walks in) and you were heard by others, but you still consider the conversation to be fairly private.
Now imagine that someone planted a microphone in that public place, and the entire rant of yours was broadcast on radio, along with your name and address. Legally you were speaking in a public place, so no laws are broken - anyone could walk in and hear your rant, after all. But after you return home you suddenly feel the heat because your best client called and mumbled something about cancelling the project, then your friends called and talked weird until you realized they heard your speech at the barber's, then Secret Service visits you and asks if you are really that much against the President, and so on...
If I park my car in the driveway, it is in public view, and I can't bitch about privacy
True; but you sleep well because you know that only your neighbors are likely to see that your new Ferrari is parked in your driveway. If, however, that is announced to the entire planet, including thousands of car thiefs in your area, I'm sure you'd be not sleeping at all.
Your house is one of millions to be archived, and though anyone can see them, your house isn't any more interesting than any other house in the big scheme of things.
This is not true from your point of view because you don't care how many other homes are photographed, you only care about yours. Here is another analogy, good or bad - you decide. A large Internet company has a plan to photograph every human on the planet, with their name and other information. Advocates of this plan say: "Your face is one of millions to be archived, and though anyone can see them, your face isn't any more interesting than any other face in the big scheme of things." You, however, may say that you don't care how many *other* bad things they plan to do, you only want to make sure this doesn't happen to you. You say that because the reverse query - "what face belongs to John Doe who lives on Main St #12345" has more value than the forward query that the company declares to be harmless ("what is the name of this guy?") For example, such a database could be used by some evil HR for pre-screening job applicants (if they aren't white enough the resume gets trashed.) Someone else already commented that ability to see neighborhoods may be used, along with the applicant's address, to gauge what could be expected from someone. If an applicant lives in a place full of gangs he is probably one of them (or so they think); if an applicant lives in an expensive location then probably he is well educated and had good jobs before (or so they think...) The point is that this kind of information gives more ammunition to people who are likely to abuse the information.
At this point in the discussion I tend to argue that residential neighborhoods should be dropped from StreetView just because there is so little value in having their pictures, and there is potential for abuse and other forms of displeasure. This will also cut costs, and allows Google to improve StreetView coverage of public and commercial buildings (which are in higher demand that some abstract house on a residential street.)
I can make only a small comment here. Nobody argues that StreetView is not great for public and commercial property. It definitely is. However there is very little value in having StreetView of *residential* neighborhoods.
If your wife is lost she is not likely to say that she is in front of the house with a basketball ring above the garage door. She will tell you which intersection she is at, and then you find the intersection on a plain map (not a StreetView) and then you tell her which turns to take. If you want to be thorough you may switch to the satellite view and tell her which lanes to take if there is some complex traffic ahead. You won't need StreetView for guidance.
If it is you who is investigating how to get somewhere you are in the same boat. You want to know major roads that lead to where you want to go. If you tell me that you need to *see* a home in a residential street I'd think you are joking. StreetView does not even tell you exactly what house number you are looking at, it's all "approximately". If you go to someone you just ask for directions after you turn into the residential maze, and every homeowner will recite them by heart. We are talking about going 100 feet on one tiny street, turning right and doing another 50 feet, stop in front of number 3456. And if the number is hard to see the owner will tell you other signs. No StreetView will help you here, unless you got your driving license yesterday and need to study ahead of time where all the stop signs are;-)
Yes, I know of some such packages, but it takes good source photos to build a complete 3D model, and it also takes considerable effort - far more than it takes to snap a frame while driving a Googlemobile down the road. Anyone interested enough to do this 3D work on your house is probably capable enough to come and inspect it from inside, and that labor alone is a sufficient[*] deterrent.
[*] "Sufficient" here means just a level of compromise between the townfolk who don't want to be exposed to the world and the people's right to walk around and look. This compromise says "yes, if you are that curious you are free to come and look, but don't be surprised if we will have a good look at you also." Coming is not easy, but clicking on Google is. People are saying "yes, you may see our houses, but you have to work for it just by coming here in person." It's their town, after all, and if they want they are perfectly entitled to build a wall around it, but they don't want to go that far without first trying to reach a simpler solution - "you don't do X and we won't do Y". Negotiating a deal is a civilized approach; doing things unilaterally (building a wall or driving in and photographing everything) is a military approach.
You raise a whole bunch of serious questions here. One of most important ones is this: what is the source of the law? I'd say the source of the law in a democracy is people. Now use this assertion to parse this: "they have no right ot block any member of the public from doing so" - it appears that *they* have every right to block any member from doing so, and if they want they can make a law (local to their town) that expressly forbids certain things. Most towns have a large set of such laws already, and even homeowners' associations have their own laws.
With regard to the balcony, Google did two things - they improved the technology so that a 3D view can be captured, and they then used this technology to capture billions of views. Let's introduce this into your balcony scenario. You plan to buy a house where someone standing in a certain spot in the street can see your balcony (and you can see that individual if s/he is there.) Fine, you accepted these conditions and bought the house knowing that it's easy to spot an observer, and hardly anyone is ever there. Now someone widened the street so much that there are thousands of people who are there all the time and they all can see your balcony and you can't know who is looking at any given time. This changes the deal that you had when you bought the house - your use of the balcony is now more restricted, to the point that you can't use it at all (without wearing a burqa:-) You now see that the value of your purchase is dropping because certain facilities that you originally had are no longer working. It would be natural for you to argue that the street should not be widened because you'd lose some enjoyment of your house. Any arguments that you need to buy a shield for your balcony would sound silly because it's *them* who are doing the changing, and you only want to keep things as they are. This extra expense could be not affordable, and besides who wants to live in a bunker? And another catch with these fences, walls and screens is that the same laws of the town may *forbid* you from building those walls - and many places do forbid them. Now what?
it is no different than someone walking down the street
A full-auto rifle is the same as semi-auto rifle with the only difference that you don't have to pull the trigger for each shot. Therefore there is no point in banning full-auto weapons. I wish you luck in selling this idea to the CA government:-)
The difference of scale that Google offers quite compensates for the low resolution of images. It removes a layer of privacy that until now was maintained by the need for an observer to physically travel somewhere, walk some streets, be seen and possibly also photographed by residents. No human observer can walk streets of thousands of towns; but Google makes this possible. If, until now, you'd want to know what houses are near 2846 Fortesque Ave, Hempstead, NY, you'd have to go there or to hire someone to do it for you, which are both not that easy if your interest is casual. Today you can see those houses on Google, estimate their value, count cars parked nearby and estimate their value also, and so on. I don't know how it helps you if you are an honest citizen; but for a criminal such functions may be of some use (though I saw some comments made by people "in the know" who say it isn't so.)
In other words, if we refer to the tragedy of commons, if new technology allows some people to do more with a public resource the society either loses the resource (loses privacy) or removes the resource from public use (homeowners erect fences). Neither option is an improvement to the entire society, but definitely some people will gain from such developments.
I'd have less problem with photos submitted by such tourists because you can be assured that those photos will be all completely random - taken mostly from the same vantage point (and missing many other), taken in various lighting conditions, and most importantly they will be taken with a conventional camera (resulting in a 2D frame) as opposed to Googlemobile's spherical view, captured by 6 (IIRC) cameras.
Google's fault here is in its methodical approach - every street is surveyed, a 3D picture taken every 10 yards, and so on. They were able to construct a very serious technical database this way. I do not believe a collection of tourists' photos will ever reach that level of quality (and that level of concern) simply because tourists will never be that methodical. There are probably millions of photos of Eiffel Tower, but probably not a single tourist had desire to photograph every metal beam of the tower from all angles. Google did an equivalent of that.
Yes, and I can see you. If you pay way too much attention to things I can call police and have you investigated. This is not possible with Street View.
Google just makes it easier to get a feel for what the neighborhood is like, or to see what amenities it has to offer.
This has two problems. First, there is no appeal. If the neighborhood was photographed during some major construction (which took all of three days but caused a lot of dirt everywhere) it drops the resale value of the property. This is not the case with a personal visit because then you see things in real time, and you can always ask.
The second problem is with "what amenities it has to offer." Residential neighborhoods offer nothing to strangers, and do not want strangers around to begin with. If Google limits itself to public and commercial zones there is no problem. But what "amenities" a private house could offer? By definition a private residence is private.
If you don't want people walking or driving down the street (or seeing the photos those people took) then live in a gated community.
The point of this thread is simple - how much abuse the public street can take until people rebel. We see that in one town they already rebelled. What you propose is abuse of public space, and your recipe of further hiding behind the walls is counterproductive and expensive, requiring huge amounts of labor only because a few people have means and ability to abuse the commons. Their behavior is not against the letter of the law, but it is against morals of people, and that's why the posse was able to kick Google out.
if I did, I certainly wouldn't be living in a house that's on a public street.
I personally live on a lot where the house is not visible from the street. However I'd be the last person to blame people who live in residential neighborhoods. It is not possible physically to avoid packing houses together (with 0.1 acre per house) because the city has certain size restrictions. Again the proposal I hear is to accomodate abusers and spend more money to compensate, instead of simply riding the abusers out of town on a rail.
So what about tourists taking photos on vacation? Do they have the right to take photos of interesting buildings?
If the building is privately owned then maybe not. Imagine that you own a house and work in the yard that is visible from the street, and thousands of tourists come and take pictures of you and your house and your family as you do things around the house. I'm sure pretty soon you'd wish that they all go away because they take your privacy away from you.
If one tourist takes one picture for personal use you probably won't notice. But if TV vans show up, and movies are shot with your house as background, and if politicians of all kinds choose the sidewalk in front of your house for their rallies you probably won't like it, especially if you get no consideration from all these for-profit activities.
Suppose Google Maps solicited private photos rather than taking the photos themselves. Woudl that make a difference?
If by "private photos" you mean photos taken by owners of the property then definitely it'd make a huge difference. Every single photo would be voluntarily contributed, and the photographer would take care to exclude unwanted items from the frame.
But if by "private photos" you mean photos taken by tourists that wouldn't make any difference because tourists would be then agents of Google, just as the driver of the Googlemobile is. The tourists would even have less rights to take a photo because it is no longer for private use.
One key difference here is in distribution. There are millions of tourists taking photos all over the world, but we haven't seen or heard about any burglars using that for preparations to a crime. The reason is clear - these photos are all random, taken with artistic purpose or using the property as a mere background (with focus on your family in front of that house, for example.) Most of those photos never leave hands of the photographer. This is exactly not how Google uses its photos.
To offer yet another analogy, if you and your buddy talk in the street you probably don't mind that a random passerby can overhear fragments of your conversation. There are just too many people, and each hears very little, and none of them tell others what they heard, so your conversation - even in public - is relatively secure. However it'd be a different story if Google plants a microphone near you, records everything and plays back to anyone who wants. By using technical means they will break the classical pattern and become essentially a global spy system.
This whole story can be reduced to one simple question: do we, people of town X, want to allow infinite number of strangers to invisibly walk our streets, look into our gardens and see who is where? I don't think there is a simple answer to that, since all classical answers hinge on the fact that until now infinite number of strangers couldn't invisibly walk the streets of any town. In many small US towns, actually, strangers are (or were) not welcome - sooner or later a police officer would approach you and ask what is your business here, and whether you need help with getting out.
If I take pictures of the family in my yard, the neighbors can't object to the fact that their houses might be in the photo.
In your case you are the owner of the property that is in the picture, you have a legitimate claim on the right to take the photo. Your neighbors' worry may be real, but their property is not the main subject of the photo. Besides a single image is not going to provide burglars with enough information - as opposed to cataloged, continuous series of images on StreetView.
Google, on the other hand, takes pictures of homes and property in which it has not a gram of ownership or any other legal claim. It's true that public space is relatively free for all, but it's still not OK to set up a telescope on a public sidewalk and look into peoples' windows, and it's not OK to follow someone on public streets for hours and days...
Weirdly logical, except I wonder how all the people who do not have guns manage to survive
without them?
Despite all the popular belief and all the Hollywood movies, crime rate in the USA is not *that* high so that you have to carry a weapon with you all the time:-) There are maybe 50 cases per year when an armed homeowner confronts an intruder, and out of these even fewer result in shooting. Most of guns that are owned for personal defense are purchased "just in case" and most likely will never be used for the stated purpose - they are like a fire extinguisher, you don't want to need it, you don't expect to need it, but you own one anyway, just to be prepared. If you shoot an intruder there will be an investigation, and you may be charged with a crime if you exceeded certain limits of self-defense. For example, it is OK to shoot within your house, but majorly not OK to shoot a burglar outside. These decisions are not taken lightly. But there are cases every year when a burglar breaks into a house and is promptly shot by an old lady. I can't think of any alternative to that, except that the old lady may beg the burglar to spare her.
Surely, if criminals obtain their guns illegally, most of them would come from stealing legal guns from their owners, therefore less legal guns would eventually result in less guns for criminals.
This assumption is most definitely not true. Many simpler guns (single shot) are homemade; they are massively illegal, but as I mentioned that doesn't bother criminals. On the other end of the scale, military style weapons are also effectively banned for decades, but recently a gangbanger in Oakland managed to get an AK-47 and shoot two police officers with it. You and me, if living in CA, can't go to a store and buy AK-47, they are not available at all. Nevertheless he got one. How? Illegal import. International weapon trade is a very active market, and you get to pay no taxes, and you have no serial numbers, and no registration, and so on. Very few legal weapons are stolen and used in crime - in part because that's dangerous, they are registered since the moment of manufacturing, many have been test-shot and bullets saved, so if such a well-known gun shows up at a crime scene it instantly gets traced and a whole new set of clues may lead to the criminal. Criminals hate that, they want "clean" guns. This is exactly why removal of legal guns will have no effect on reduction of crime - just as removal of birdshot shells from stores in Texas will not stop Mexican drug cartels from owning anti-tank rockets (and they do have those.)
I would have thought that one of the main advantages of not having guns in society in general is that the sight of a gun is unusual, and therefore promptly reported to police, and rapidly removed.
And that raises many rights questions in the USA. Why would an honest, law-abiding citizen be not trusted with a gun when pretty much anyone is trusted with a car? It's a matter of respect. If, say, my neighbor walks his property with a revolver in a holster this will not cause any alarm in me; I trust him with a gun just as I trust him with his truck and with his chainsaw and with every other tool that is potentially dangerous. Lawful, trained firearm owners are least likely to shoot you; where I live, the highest level of danger comes from a random rattlesnake that might find its way onto my land. I have deer too, but they are harmless and do good job on cutting the grass, so I do not interfere with their work. [Also a deer tag is a hassle to get, and you can't hunt them whenever you want.]
Complementary to that train of thought, yes - a society where guns are banned will definitely identify an open-carry gun quickly, and if you trust your police that may be a good thing. However only long guns will be visible like that, and there are very few crimes committed with long guns. Most sho
I respect your opinions and your culture. It may be that your country is indeed a far safer and more pleasant place to be. I do not know that firsthand, so I just listen to what you are telling me.
There is probably some misunderstanding in terms of marksmanship because it can't be "very easy [...] unless one is physically defective" - you can always move the target farther away until it ceases to be easy. And if you can hit a 1" tall chicken target from a mile away I suggest you sign up for your country's Olympic team:-)
My reference to Mexico only illustrates that criminals ignore laws, so every new anti-gun law that is adopted is only applicable to honest people, this way it punishes victims and has no effect on criminals. Indeed, if Mexico (or any country) could enforce the laws it would be a safer society. But it can't, and no country on this planet can't 100% enforce its laws. In Mexico's case one needs to understand that the government basically abdicated its responsibilities to keep people safe. It can't even keep its police safe! If you or me were in charge of Mexico and omnipotent to boot, we'd probably do something drastic, like what you propose - but the current government can't fight the criminals, it'd be a civil war and the government is very likely to lose it!
the US has the highest murder rate in the world regardless of your the false "protection"
It is important to note that the high[est] murder rate is the cause, and the need for protection is a reaction to that. The high murder rate is caused by high number of drug-crazed criminals, and that in turn is caused by rotting society where kids feel OK to dabble in drugs, run with gangs and such. If somehow all legal weapons would be removed from the US society this would do no help on crime rate. As I said, the only help here is to get rid of criminals. But yet another defect of the US society - its parole system - releases violent criminals just because the prisons are full. The ship of the USA is sinking because there are huge holes in the bottom, and tossing life preservers overboard to lighten the ship is a bad idea. In any case, you asked why US people are so enamored with guns, so I explained some of the reasons for that.
You elect your Police bosses dont you?
Not really. Police, as well as many other government agencies, are for all practical purposes outside of civilian control and oversight. This was not supposed to be this way, but it is. The police are heavily armed, and they are not there to protect you - they are there to document the crime and take your cold body away; they take care to arrive 20 minutes after the crime is reported. Many police officers are corrupt, and even more are power-trippers who enjoy the authority that they are given over the "civilians", as they call people. Some police groups are militarized and act as a group of commandos on enemy territory, shooting their way into a wrong house, killing dogs and holding innocent families beaten, handcuffed and under threat of death while they slowly figure out which house number they broke into. Then they leave without apology, and might even arrest you for something just to make you shut up about it. Or they will use a tazer on you until your heart stops. The very last thing you want to do is to trust US police.
You should not expect everyone to share your paranoia.
And I do not expect that - good for you that you live in a safer place. This place is anything but safe, and what foreigners see as paranoia is only an everyday reality in the USA. I don't particularly like many aspects of US life - crime rate first and foremost - but that's what it is. Again, you asked for reasons and I think you have plenty now:-)
please don't try to press the lie that local yokels doling out justice can be called more just, according to any fanciful stretch of creative reasoning
Well, it was nice to have the "jury of your peers" until CTS cancelled it:-(
but if immigration is diffuse enough, european values are impressed on children of muslim immigrants just as much as if the euros had their own kids
Two problems with that:
"European values" are something that is thoroughly lost. I don't believe that any european knows what those values might be these days. I think these values drowned in the sea of political correctness, and without those values you have English clergymen surrendering to Sharia law, for example - which has already happened.
Children of Muslim immigrants have their own values that are very well defined, are very emotional and are woven into the structure of the Islamic society. It is naive to think that an immigrant child one day walks out of mosque and suddenly decides to abandon all that and switch to some of those secular "european values", whatever they might be [*]. Islamic values are more aggressive, have more life energy, and when applied to the diseased, ossified, impotent, half-dead body of Europe they take over like a virus.
[*] This is not unique to Europe. The USA called itself "the melting pot" but now less and less of that melting is occurring, and layering of social groups becomes visible. So far Europe's layers are more obvious, with all these riots and such, but it only means that Europe's problems started earlier and developed faster, and still there is nobody in Europe who'd propose any plan what to do about it. I guess the unspoken plan is to do nothing, let the nature take its course and bury the last european by the end of 21st century.
I just dont understand this paticularly American love of gun ownership. In my country, all the auto and semi auto guns were removed from society years ago.
And here is why you don't understand - in your society you probably never had a chance to shoot at targets or hunt. Hard to miss something that you never experienced...
Why are you so devoted to having weapons when it is obvious that you would never really use them to overthrow your government?
First, weapons are owned and used because they represent power over others (animals and people.) In the USA such power is often needed against burglars who don't mind killing you and your family so that they can clean your house. In rural areas a gun is a necessary tool (!) to protect your cattle or your crops from predators and many ranchers have guns with them all the time - you don't drive a few miles away from your house, unarmed, to face a pack of wolves, or a overprotective wild pig, or a rabid mountain lion, or a rattlesnake. In the wild these should be let alone, but on your property they are a serious danger to you and your family.
Secondly, ownership of weapons has historical roots. The USA is a young country, relatively, and much of its independence came out of bloody wars waged by armed people.
Third, an unarmed person is a subject; an armed person is a citizen. There is a difference. It is true that a healthy modern government can't be overthrown by a bunch of rebels with muzzleloaders. However if the government becomes sick, the army will not fight [much] and the citizens will be first of all free, and also they will have to protect themselves. You don't want to defend yourself with a pillow if, during street riots, a gang of thugs breaks into your house. And those riots are not a fiction - they happen here on a regular basis.
Fourth, shooting a weapon accurately is not easy, so it is a sport and a skill that can be learned. If you are ever in a survival situation then your ability to shoot food (or defend yourself) may be essential. The USA is very vulnerable, actually - high gas prices can destroy the economy in no time because there are almost no railways, so if trucks stop bringing goods into cities the cities will become, let's say, a bad place to be at. If the dollar falls the same will happen as well, since so few goods are now made within the USA. I can't say what are the chances of some calamity, but they are not zero.
I have never seen a gun in the possesion of anyone other than the police, or at a shooting range. I have never needed a gun for self defence either.
It's understandable that you never saw a gun in someone's home if it is nearly illegal. I haven't yet needed a gun for self-defense either, but the trick is that you'd better have it when you do need it.
Since the guns were removed there has not been one mass shooting here.
I bet if the government chops hands of all citizens off then there will be no stabbings either. Seriously, this is a political issue because many US citizens do not see the government as being above them - and armed police is clearly in the commanding position over unarmed populace. By the way, a crossbow is a weapon worse than many guns, and a typical longbow can be made by anyone, anywhere, out of many materials, and it's silent too. UK can give you many examples on knife crimes, now that the guns are out of the picture - and the bad part is that knife is seen as an a casual weapon, with lesser "use threshold" than a gun. Anyway, if there is a criminal mind there will be a crime.
One line seems to be that if guns are banned only criminals would have guns, but it simply does not make sense, lees guns in general means less guns available to criminals, our experience is certainly that is the case.
The case of Mexico is a shining counter-example - ownership of most guns is prohibited but the drug cartels have and use military weapons. The reason is that criminals are not concerned about those l
and the general trend among all developed nations, not just the west, to stop having children
This is because those "developed nations" developed themselves past any common sense in marriage, family and law. This whole thread is one proof of it. Take the movie "Fanfan la Tulipe" set in 1700 or something. Fanfan successfully negotiates a difficult agreement, but some other peasant notices and runs to the father of the girl, screaming "Hey, your daughter has fallen on her back already!" and the father immediately runs to punish the offender. The offender escapes, naturally, but that's the rest of the movie. The point is that affairs of this sort were back then handled locally and within common sense; nobody would appeal to the Royal Court for a judgement over such a minor, usual incident. Contemporary literature is full of such stories.
But today, were that to happen, both perpetrators would be first arrested for public obscenity, then probably the family would pressure the girl to claim rape, and then the man would be toast. And that is assuming that they are both old enough (which one can't safely say in the movie, back in 1700's people lived fast and died young.)
Modern societies of those "developed nations" - or at least the USA - are set, legally and practically, against families. In old times a divorce could consist of one family member booting the other one out of the door, that simple. Today it is a lifetime affair, and be prepared to lose everything that you own. I know someone who lost her home in a divorce recently, owes tons of money to lawyers and has to live at a friend's place in a corner, literally. Who in his/her right mind would take such a risk, and why? Then the subject of children - most families want them (or at least women want them) but in case of divorce the woman gets the children and the man gets to pay for them. Great, sign me up - right?
On top of that, the value of a child used to be positive (a helper when young, an earner when adult, a life saver when you get old.) A peasant family could work land and manage some cattle and be reasonably OK, with all children typically contributing to the family and marrying nearby. But today a child has negative value - it costs probably hundreds of thousands of dollars up front, counting the birth, food, doctors, schools, wages/opportunities lost, etc. Once s/he is an adult the child takes off and lives independently, and you as a parent have to depend primarily on your retirement funds to finance your last years on this Earth. Not that all children are evil, they are too poor to feed you if they start their own family, and by the time they are kind of OK you are long dead, and so the cycle continues.
This way a developed society kills itself, and "less developed" but far more vital societies move in. This is what is happening in Europe right now - immigrants from Africa and Asia are taking over, and I say that's a natural process. The Roman Empire fell, in part, due to decay of the society.
You say that as if the world was free before, and then tyranny descended on us. In reality, more people have more freedoms than ever before.
Freedom and tyranny come and go in waves. A revolution (if successful) brings freedom for a while, then new tyranny takes hold, then a new revolution... and so on. I haven't lived in those times, but, say, UK in 1900's (Sherlock Holmes' times) was a fairly free society, compared to what's there today - gentlemen carried guns if they so desired, opium was sold in drug stores, no CCTV cameras on each corner, and policemen didn't treat you as a prisoner. And of course the USA was much more free in its first years than it is today - examples of that are obvious.
As societies mature they collect more and more arcane laws and rules and taxes, and those never decrease in number. At some point the society just can't take it any more, and that's when revolutions happen. Right now the USA is burdened with many issues - the economy, the national debt and personal debts of many citizens, lack of vision for the future, a thoroughly rotten political system, schools that are ran like jails, police that is militarized and without shame, taxes that just go up and up, army spread all over the planet and fighting unwinnable wars against ideas... and so on. This can't continue forever, and I can't predict in what way the US society will be unraveling when time comes for artificial supports of the "richest country on the planet" to finally snap.
Unfortunately the Constitution can be ignored by the President if that suits him. Who is going to stop him? The Congress is under his party's control (as if that matters, really) and anything with the Supreme Court will take years to decide. The 2nd Amendment is routinely denied by a variety of means (mostly psychological warfare against clueless voters,) and it was G. W. Bush who created "First Amendment Zones" - implicitly denying the right everywhere else near his Royal persona. Photographers were attacked by police at both party conventions. Bush said that the constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper" and he was speaking from experience.
Countries have defamation laws against individuals - i.e., false claims that cause harm to a person. What is meant by defamation of a religion?
Even worse, religions are full of claims that are on that side of reality. For example, a prophet is given a flying horse to go places and see things. If someone says that this claim is false, how can anyone prove or disprove anything here?
You need to wait a bit until a binding one is accepted, "for your own good and world's peace." It will indeed contribute to peace if everyone's mouth is duct-taped.
Freedom of individuals is not just on the back burner, it was taken out of the building and buried long ago. I read quite a few sci-fi books which depict a computer that takes over and rules the humanity (one of Deus Ex endings also has that theme.) But it seems that the computer here is an unnecessary part - certain groups of humans are more than willing to step in, lend a hand and finally round up all those 6 billion troublemakers, denying them anything but the right to obey orders.
They are thinking of selling you a $1,000 option that costs $10 to build. Include a few of these and suddenly their business is profitable... which may be a necessity because parts for electric cars still cost too much. Nobody can afford a common Volkswagen-class all-electric car, that's why all these premium options are there - to mask the cost.
The company that still employs me recently laid off about 15% of its workforce - not because they were old or poorly performing but simply because sales dove into the ground and there is simply no revenue to pay their salaries. This may be not the last layoff. We all may plan to do various things, but the coming depression will test many of these plans. Don't ignore the talk about replacing USD as the world's reserve currency - if that ever happens the country is done for, you wouldn't even have time to run for the hills.
Unfortunately defendants aren't allowed to set rules of the Court. Judge usually does that, and if instead of answering questions you start a political speech in the witness box you'd be silenced pretty quick (and it's not a good idea to anger the judge.) The defendant is free to argue that the lab is at fault, but unless your name is OJ Simpson you aren't getting anywhere, statistically speaking.
Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you didn't screw up
Yes, tell the judge that you want a negative proven:-)
I guess it's possible to dismiss the DNA evidence, but labs handle millions of tests, so you will have to essentially demonstrate that either these labs were doing worthless job for years, or that this particular piece of evidence was mishandled in a specific, proven way (I recall that in Simpson's case there were such admitted violations.) You can't just say "I posit that you screwed up, now prove that you didn't!" Even if you show prior instances of errors done by labs, you'd have to show that this particular error was done this time by this lab - generalities have little weight. Hardly anyone in the courtroom (except you) has any strong feelings toward your innocence, and if the prosecution concludes by saying "his DNA was found at the crime scene, and he failed to explain it in any meaningful way" then your goose is cooked.
Slashdot Mirror
The Judge may have been misled:
Dear Judge,
We, the FBI, uncovered several solid clues that company X is involved in a certain computer crime. Several listings of our intercepts are provided for your review, all printed in octal code for your convenience. We ask you to allow us to perform search of premises of company X and to seize the computer equipment present, for our crime labs to work upon and determine if further proceedings are required.
Signed, [...]
$ touch MPAA
$ ls **AA
MPAA
$
Privacy is not a binary issue, it's not black and white. You can have more privacy and you can have less privacy, and there is also a subject of your exposure. Here is a simple example. You and your barber talk politics and you express some strong feelings about something. A client in the next chair - a stranger to you - hears every word. Do you care? Not likely - your speech is protected, and though you may express some stupid ideas (in your own opinion, after the fact) the only person who really heard you talking stupid is the barber, and he is your friend. The other guy doesn't count - chances that your paths will cross is microscopic, and even if that happens he is likely to forget. So you spoke in a public location (a barber shop that is open to anyone who walks in) and you were heard by others, but you still consider the conversation to be fairly private.
Now imagine that someone planted a microphone in that public place, and the entire rant of yours was broadcast on radio, along with your name and address. Legally you were speaking in a public place, so no laws are broken - anyone could walk in and hear your rant, after all. But after you return home you suddenly feel the heat because your best client called and mumbled something about cancelling the project, then your friends called and talked weird until you realized they heard your speech at the barber's, then Secret Service visits you and asks if you are really that much against the President, and so on...
If I park my car in the driveway, it is in public view, and I can't bitch about privacy
True; but you sleep well because you know that only your neighbors are likely to see that your new Ferrari is parked in your driveway. If, however, that is announced to the entire planet, including thousands of car thiefs in your area, I'm sure you'd be not sleeping at all.
Your house is one of millions to be archived, and though anyone can see them, your house isn't any more interesting than any other house in the big scheme of things.
This is not true from your point of view because you don't care how many other homes are photographed, you only care about yours. Here is another analogy, good or bad - you decide. A large Internet company has a plan to photograph every human on the planet, with their name and other information. Advocates of this plan say: "Your face is one of millions to be archived, and though anyone can see them, your face isn't any more interesting than any other face in the big scheme of things." You, however, may say that you don't care how many *other* bad things they plan to do, you only want to make sure this doesn't happen to you. You say that because the reverse query - "what face belongs to John Doe who lives on Main St #12345" has more value than the forward query that the company declares to be harmless ("what is the name of this guy?") For example, such a database could be used by some evil HR for pre-screening job applicants (if they aren't white enough the resume gets trashed.) Someone else already commented that ability to see neighborhoods may be used, along with the applicant's address, to gauge what could be expected from someone. If an applicant lives in a place full of gangs he is probably one of them (or so they think); if an applicant lives in an expensive location then probably he is well educated and had good jobs before (or so they think...) The point is that this kind of information gives more ammunition to people who are likely to abuse the information.
At this point in the discussion I tend to argue that residential neighborhoods should be dropped from StreetView just because there is so little value in having their pictures, and there is potential for abuse and other forms of displeasure. This will also cut costs, and allows Google to improve StreetView coverage of public and commercial buildings (which are in higher demand that some abstract house on a residential street.)
I can make only a small comment here. Nobody argues that StreetView is not great for public and commercial property. It definitely is. However there is very little value in having StreetView of *residential* neighborhoods.
If your wife is lost she is not likely to say that she is in front of the house with a basketball ring above the garage door. She will tell you which intersection she is at, and then you find the intersection on a plain map (not a StreetView) and then you tell her which turns to take. If you want to be thorough you may switch to the satellite view and tell her which lanes to take if there is some complex traffic ahead. You won't need StreetView for guidance.
If it is you who is investigating how to get somewhere you are in the same boat. You want to know major roads that lead to where you want to go. If you tell me that you need to *see* a home in a residential street I'd think you are joking. StreetView does not even tell you exactly what house number you are looking at, it's all "approximately". If you go to someone you just ask for directions after you turn into the residential maze, and every homeowner will recite them by heart. We are talking about going 100 feet on one tiny street, turning right and doing another 50 feet, stop in front of number 3456. And if the number is hard to see the owner will tell you other signs. No StreetView will help you here, unless you got your driving license yesterday and need to study ahead of time where all the stop signs are ;-)
Yes, I know of some such packages, but it takes good source photos to build a complete 3D model, and it also takes considerable effort - far more than it takes to snap a frame while driving a Googlemobile down the road. Anyone interested enough to do this 3D work on your house is probably capable enough to come and inspect it from inside, and that labor alone is a sufficient[*] deterrent.
[*] "Sufficient" here means just a level of compromise between the townfolk who don't want to be exposed to the world and the people's right to walk around and look. This compromise says "yes, if you are that curious you are free to come and look, but don't be surprised if we will have a good look at you also." Coming is not easy, but clicking on Google is. People are saying "yes, you may see our houses, but you have to work for it just by coming here in person." It's their town, after all, and if they want they are perfectly entitled to build a wall around it, but they don't want to go that far without first trying to reach a simpler solution - "you don't do X and we won't do Y". Negotiating a deal is a civilized approach; doing things unilaterally (building a wall or driving in and photographing everything) is a military approach.
You raise a whole bunch of serious questions here. One of most important ones is this: what is the source of the law? I'd say the source of the law in a democracy is people. Now use this assertion to parse this: "they have no right ot block any member of the public from doing so" - it appears that *they* have every right to block any member from doing so, and if they want they can make a law (local to their town) that expressly forbids certain things. Most towns have a large set of such laws already, and even homeowners' associations have their own laws.
With regard to the balcony, Google did two things - they improved the technology so that a 3D view can be captured, and they then used this technology to capture billions of views. Let's introduce this into your balcony scenario. You plan to buy a house where someone standing in a certain spot in the street can see your balcony (and you can see that individual if s/he is there.) Fine, you accepted these conditions and bought the house knowing that it's easy to spot an observer, and hardly anyone is ever there. Now someone widened the street so much that there are thousands of people who are there all the time and they all can see your balcony and you can't know who is looking at any given time. This changes the deal that you had when you bought the house - your use of the balcony is now more restricted, to the point that you can't use it at all (without wearing a burqa :-) You now see that the value of your purchase is dropping because certain facilities that you originally had are no longer working. It would be natural for you to argue that the street should not be widened because you'd lose some enjoyment of your house. Any arguments that you need to buy a shield for your balcony would sound silly because it's *them* who are doing the changing, and you only want to keep things as they are. This extra expense could be not affordable, and besides who wants to live in a bunker? And another catch with these fences, walls and screens is that the same laws of the town may *forbid* you from building those walls - and many places do forbid them. Now what?
it is no different than someone walking down the street
A full-auto rifle is the same as semi-auto rifle with the only difference that you don't have to pull the trigger for each shot. Therefore there is no point in banning full-auto weapons. I wish you luck in selling this idea to the CA government :-)
The difference of scale that Google offers quite compensates for the low resolution of images. It removes a layer of privacy that until now was maintained by the need for an observer to physically travel somewhere, walk some streets, be seen and possibly also photographed by residents. No human observer can walk streets of thousands of towns; but Google makes this possible. If, until now, you'd want to know what houses are near 2846 Fortesque Ave, Hempstead, NY, you'd have to go there or to hire someone to do it for you, which are both not that easy if your interest is casual. Today you can see those houses on Google, estimate their value, count cars parked nearby and estimate their value also, and so on. I don't know how it helps you if you are an honest citizen; but for a criminal such functions may be of some use (though I saw some comments made by people "in the know" who say it isn't so.)
In other words, if we refer to the tragedy of commons, if new technology allows some people to do more with a public resource the society either loses the resource (loses privacy) or removes the resource from public use (homeowners erect fences). Neither option is an improvement to the entire society, but definitely some people will gain from such developments.
I'd have less problem with photos submitted by such tourists because you can be assured that those photos will be all completely random - taken mostly from the same vantage point (and missing many other), taken in various lighting conditions, and most importantly they will be taken with a conventional camera (resulting in a 2D frame) as opposed to Googlemobile's spherical view, captured by 6 (IIRC) cameras.
Google's fault here is in its methodical approach - every street is surveyed, a 3D picture taken every 10 yards, and so on. They were able to construct a very serious technical database this way. I do not believe a collection of tourists' photos will ever reach that level of quality (and that level of concern) simply because tourists will never be that methodical. There are probably millions of photos of Eiffel Tower, but probably not a single tourist had desire to photograph every metal beam of the tower from all angles. Google did an equivalent of that.
If I walk down your street, I can see your house.
Yes, and I can see you. If you pay way too much attention to things I can call police and have you investigated. This is not possible with Street View.
Google just makes it easier to get a feel for what the neighborhood is like, or to see what amenities it has to offer.
This has two problems. First, there is no appeal. If the neighborhood was photographed during some major construction (which took all of three days but caused a lot of dirt everywhere) it drops the resale value of the property. This is not the case with a personal visit because then you see things in real time, and you can always ask.
The second problem is with "what amenities it has to offer." Residential neighborhoods offer nothing to strangers, and do not want strangers around to begin with. If Google limits itself to public and commercial zones there is no problem. But what "amenities" a private house could offer? By definition a private residence is private.
If you don't want people walking or driving down the street (or seeing the photos those people took) then live in a gated community.
The point of this thread is simple - how much abuse the public street can take until people rebel. We see that in one town they already rebelled. What you propose is abuse of public space, and your recipe of further hiding behind the walls is counterproductive and expensive, requiring huge amounts of labor only because a few people have means and ability to abuse the commons. Their behavior is not against the letter of the law, but it is against morals of people, and that's why the posse was able to kick Google out.
if I did, I certainly wouldn't be living in a house that's on a public street.
I personally live on a lot where the house is not visible from the street. However I'd be the last person to blame people who live in residential neighborhoods. It is not possible physically to avoid packing houses together (with 0.1 acre per house) because the city has certain size restrictions. Again the proposal I hear is to accomodate abusers and spend more money to compensate, instead of simply riding the abusers out of town on a rail.
So what about tourists taking photos on vacation? Do they have the right to take photos of interesting buildings?
If the building is privately owned then maybe not. Imagine that you own a house and work in the yard that is visible from the street, and thousands of tourists come and take pictures of you and your house and your family as you do things around the house. I'm sure pretty soon you'd wish that they all go away because they take your privacy away from you.
If one tourist takes one picture for personal use you probably won't notice. But if TV vans show up, and movies are shot with your house as background, and if politicians of all kinds choose the sidewalk in front of your house for their rallies you probably won't like it, especially if you get no consideration from all these for-profit activities.
Suppose Google Maps solicited private photos rather than taking the photos themselves. Woudl that make a difference?
If by "private photos" you mean photos taken by owners of the property then definitely it'd make a huge difference. Every single photo would be voluntarily contributed, and the photographer would take care to exclude unwanted items from the frame.
But if by "private photos" you mean photos taken by tourists that wouldn't make any difference because tourists would be then agents of Google, just as the driver of the Googlemobile is. The tourists would even have less rights to take a photo because it is no longer for private use.
One key difference here is in distribution. There are millions of tourists taking photos all over the world, but we haven't seen or heard about any burglars using that for preparations to a crime. The reason is clear - these photos are all random, taken with artistic purpose or using the property as a mere background (with focus on your family in front of that house, for example.) Most of those photos never leave hands of the photographer. This is exactly not how Google uses its photos.
To offer yet another analogy, if you and your buddy talk in the street you probably don't mind that a random passerby can overhear fragments of your conversation. There are just too many people, and each hears very little, and none of them tell others what they heard, so your conversation - even in public - is relatively secure. However it'd be a different story if Google plants a microphone near you, records everything and plays back to anyone who wants. By using technical means they will break the classical pattern and become essentially a global spy system.
This whole story can be reduced to one simple question: do we, people of town X, want to allow infinite number of strangers to invisibly walk our streets, look into our gardens and see who is where? I don't think there is a simple answer to that, since all classical answers hinge on the fact that until now infinite number of strangers couldn't invisibly walk the streets of any town. In many small US towns, actually, strangers are (or were) not welcome - sooner or later a police officer would approach you and ask what is your business here, and whether you need help with getting out.
If I take pictures of the family in my yard, the neighbors can't object to the fact that their houses might be in the photo.
In your case you are the owner of the property that is in the picture, you have a legitimate claim on the right to take the photo. Your neighbors' worry may be real, but their property is not the main subject of the photo. Besides a single image is not going to provide burglars with enough information - as opposed to cataloged, continuous series of images on StreetView.
Google, on the other hand, takes pictures of homes and property in which it has not a gram of ownership or any other legal claim. It's true that public space is relatively free for all, but it's still not OK to set up a telescope on a public sidewalk and look into peoples' windows, and it's not OK to follow someone on public streets for hours and days...
Weirdly logical, except I wonder how all the people who do not have guns manage to survive without them?
Despite all the popular belief and all the Hollywood movies, crime rate in the USA is not *that* high so that you have to carry a weapon with you all the time :-) There are maybe 50 cases per year when an armed homeowner confronts an intruder, and out of these even fewer result in shooting. Most of guns that are owned for personal defense are purchased "just in case" and most likely will never be used for the stated purpose - they are like a fire extinguisher, you don't want to need it, you don't expect to need it, but you own one anyway, just to be prepared. If you shoot an intruder there will be an investigation, and you may be charged with a crime if you exceeded certain limits of self-defense. For example, it is OK to shoot within your house, but majorly not OK to shoot a burglar outside. These decisions are not taken lightly. But there are cases every year when a burglar breaks into a house and is promptly shot by an old lady. I can't think of any alternative to that, except that the old lady may beg the burglar to spare her.
Surely, if criminals obtain their guns illegally, most of them would come from stealing legal guns from their owners, therefore less legal guns would eventually result in less guns for criminals.
This assumption is most definitely not true. Many simpler guns (single shot) are homemade; they are massively illegal, but as I mentioned that doesn't bother criminals. On the other end of the scale, military style weapons are also effectively banned for decades, but recently a gangbanger in Oakland managed to get an AK-47 and shoot two police officers with it. You and me, if living in CA, can't go to a store and buy AK-47, they are not available at all. Nevertheless he got one. How? Illegal import. International weapon trade is a very active market, and you get to pay no taxes, and you have no serial numbers, and no registration, and so on. Very few legal weapons are stolen and used in crime - in part because that's dangerous, they are registered since the moment of manufacturing, many have been test-shot and bullets saved, so if such a well-known gun shows up at a crime scene it instantly gets traced and a whole new set of clues may lead to the criminal. Criminals hate that, they want "clean" guns. This is exactly why removal of legal guns will have no effect on reduction of crime - just as removal of birdshot shells from stores in Texas will not stop Mexican drug cartels from owning anti-tank rockets (and they do have those.)
I would have thought that one of the main advantages of not having guns in society in general is that the sight of a gun is unusual, and therefore promptly reported to police, and rapidly removed.
And that raises many rights questions in the USA. Why would an honest, law-abiding citizen be not trusted with a gun when pretty much anyone is trusted with a car? It's a matter of respect. If, say, my neighbor walks his property with a revolver in a holster this will not cause any alarm in me; I trust him with a gun just as I trust him with his truck and with his chainsaw and with every other tool that is potentially dangerous. Lawful, trained firearm owners are least likely to shoot you; where I live, the highest level of danger comes from a random rattlesnake that might find its way onto my land. I have deer too, but they are harmless and do good job on cutting the grass, so I do not interfere with their work. [Also a deer tag is a hassle to get, and you can't hunt them whenever you want.]
Complementary to that train of thought, yes - a society where guns are banned will definitely identify an open-carry gun quickly, and if you trust your police that may be a good thing. However only long guns will be visible like that, and there are very few crimes committed with long guns. Most sho
I respect your opinions and your culture. It may be that your country is indeed a far safer and more pleasant place to be. I do not know that firsthand, so I just listen to what you are telling me.
There is probably some misunderstanding in terms of marksmanship because it can't be "very easy [...] unless one is physically defective" - you can always move the target farther away until it ceases to be easy. And if you can hit a 1" tall chicken target from a mile away I suggest you sign up for your country's Olympic team :-)
My reference to Mexico only illustrates that criminals ignore laws, so every new anti-gun law that is adopted is only applicable to honest people, this way it punishes victims and has no effect on criminals. Indeed, if Mexico (or any country) could enforce the laws it would be a safer society. But it can't, and no country on this planet can't 100% enforce its laws. In Mexico's case one needs to understand that the government basically abdicated its responsibilities to keep people safe. It can't even keep its police safe! If you or me were in charge of Mexico and omnipotent to boot, we'd probably do something drastic, like what you propose - but the current government can't fight the criminals, it'd be a civil war and the government is very likely to lose it!
the US has the highest murder rate in the world regardless of your the false "protection"
It is important to note that the high[est] murder rate is the cause, and the need for protection is a reaction to that. The high murder rate is caused by high number of drug-crazed criminals, and that in turn is caused by rotting society where kids feel OK to dabble in drugs, run with gangs and such. If somehow all legal weapons would be removed from the US society this would do no help on crime rate. As I said, the only help here is to get rid of criminals. But yet another defect of the US society - its parole system - releases violent criminals just because the prisons are full. The ship of the USA is sinking because there are huge holes in the bottom, and tossing life preservers overboard to lighten the ship is a bad idea. In any case, you asked why US people are so enamored with guns, so I explained some of the reasons for that.
You elect your Police bosses dont you?
Not really. Police, as well as many other government agencies, are for all practical purposes outside of civilian control and oversight. This was not supposed to be this way, but it is. The police are heavily armed, and they are not there to protect you - they are there to document the crime and take your cold body away; they take care to arrive 20 minutes after the crime is reported. Many police officers are corrupt, and even more are power-trippers who enjoy the authority that they are given over the "civilians", as they call people. Some police groups are militarized and act as a group of commandos on enemy territory, shooting their way into a wrong house, killing dogs and holding innocent families beaten, handcuffed and under threat of death while they slowly figure out which house number they broke into. Then they leave without apology, and might even arrest you for something just to make you shut up about it. Or they will use a tazer on you until your heart stops. The very last thing you want to do is to trust US police.
You should not expect everyone to share your paranoia.
And I do not expect that - good for you that you live in a safer place. This place is anything but safe, and what foreigners see as paranoia is only an everyday reality in the USA. I don't particularly like many aspects of US life - crime rate first and foremost - but that's what it is. Again, you asked for reasons and I think you have plenty now :-)
please don't try to press the lie that local yokels doling out justice can be called more just, according to any fanciful stretch of creative reasoning
Well, it was nice to have the "jury of your peers" until CTS cancelled it :-(
but if immigration is diffuse enough, european values are impressed on children of muslim immigrants just as much as if the euros had their own kids
Two problems with that:
[*] This is not unique to Europe. The USA called itself "the melting pot" but now less and less of that melting is occurring, and layering of social groups becomes visible. So far Europe's layers are more obvious, with all these riots and such, but it only means that Europe's problems started earlier and developed faster, and still there is nobody in Europe who'd propose any plan what to do about it. I guess the unspoken plan is to do nothing, let the nature take its course and bury the last european by the end of 21st century.
I just dont understand this paticularly American love of gun ownership. In my country, all the auto and semi auto guns were removed from society years ago.
And here is why you don't understand - in your society you probably never had a chance to shoot at targets or hunt. Hard to miss something that you never experienced...
Why are you so devoted to having weapons when it is obvious that you would never really use them to overthrow your government?
First, weapons are owned and used because they represent power over others (animals and people.) In the USA such power is often needed against burglars who don't mind killing you and your family so that they can clean your house. In rural areas a gun is a necessary tool (!) to protect your cattle or your crops from predators and many ranchers have guns with them all the time - you don't drive a few miles away from your house, unarmed, to face a pack of wolves, or a overprotective wild pig, or a rabid mountain lion, or a rattlesnake. In the wild these should be let alone, but on your property they are a serious danger to you and your family.
Secondly, ownership of weapons has historical roots. The USA is a young country, relatively, and much of its independence came out of bloody wars waged by armed people.
Third, an unarmed person is a subject; an armed person is a citizen. There is a difference. It is true that a healthy modern government can't be overthrown by a bunch of rebels with muzzleloaders. However if the government becomes sick, the army will not fight [much] and the citizens will be first of all free, and also they will have to protect themselves. You don't want to defend yourself with a pillow if, during street riots, a gang of thugs breaks into your house. And those riots are not a fiction - they happen here on a regular basis.
Fourth, shooting a weapon accurately is not easy, so it is a sport and a skill that can be learned. If you are ever in a survival situation then your ability to shoot food (or defend yourself) may be essential. The USA is very vulnerable, actually - high gas prices can destroy the economy in no time because there are almost no railways, so if trucks stop bringing goods into cities the cities will become, let's say, a bad place to be at. If the dollar falls the same will happen as well, since so few goods are now made within the USA. I can't say what are the chances of some calamity, but they are not zero.
I have never seen a gun in the possesion of anyone other than the police, or at a shooting range. I have never needed a gun for self defence either.
It's understandable that you never saw a gun in someone's home if it is nearly illegal. I haven't yet needed a gun for self-defense either, but the trick is that you'd better have it when you do need it.
Since the guns were removed there has not been one mass shooting here.
I bet if the government chops hands of all citizens off then there will be no stabbings either. Seriously, this is a political issue because many US citizens do not see the government as being above them - and armed police is clearly in the commanding position over unarmed populace. By the way, a crossbow is a weapon worse than many guns, and a typical longbow can be made by anyone, anywhere, out of many materials, and it's silent too. UK can give you many examples on knife crimes, now that the guns are out of the picture - and the bad part is that knife is seen as an a casual weapon, with lesser "use threshold" than a gun. Anyway, if there is a criminal mind there will be a crime.
One line seems to be that if guns are banned only criminals would have guns, but it simply does not make sense, lees guns in general means less guns available to criminals, our experience is certainly that is the case.
The case of Mexico is a shining counter-example - ownership of most guns is prohibited but the drug cartels have and use military weapons. The reason is that criminals are not concerned about those l
and the general trend among all developed nations, not just the west, to stop having children
This is because those "developed nations" developed themselves past any common sense in marriage, family and law. This whole thread is one proof of it. Take the movie "Fanfan la Tulipe" set in 1700 or something. Fanfan successfully negotiates a difficult agreement, but some other peasant notices and runs to the father of the girl, screaming "Hey, your daughter has fallen on her back already!" and the father immediately runs to punish the offender. The offender escapes, naturally, but that's the rest of the movie. The point is that affairs of this sort were back then handled locally and within common sense; nobody would appeal to the Royal Court for a judgement over such a minor, usual incident. Contemporary literature is full of such stories.
But today, were that to happen, both perpetrators would be first arrested for public obscenity, then probably the family would pressure the girl to claim rape, and then the man would be toast. And that is assuming that they are both old enough (which one can't safely say in the movie, back in 1700's people lived fast and died young.)
Modern societies of those "developed nations" - or at least the USA - are set, legally and practically, against families. In old times a divorce could consist of one family member booting the other one out of the door, that simple. Today it is a lifetime affair, and be prepared to lose everything that you own. I know someone who lost her home in a divorce recently, owes tons of money to lawyers and has to live at a friend's place in a corner, literally. Who in his/her right mind would take such a risk, and why? Then the subject of children - most families want them (or at least women want them) but in case of divorce the woman gets the children and the man gets to pay for them. Great, sign me up - right?
On top of that, the value of a child used to be positive (a helper when young, an earner when adult, a life saver when you get old.) A peasant family could work land and manage some cattle and be reasonably OK, with all children typically contributing to the family and marrying nearby. But today a child has negative value - it costs probably hundreds of thousands of dollars up front, counting the birth, food, doctors, schools, wages/opportunities lost, etc. Once s/he is an adult the child takes off and lives independently, and you as a parent have to depend primarily on your retirement funds to finance your last years on this Earth. Not that all children are evil, they are too poor to feed you if they start their own family, and by the time they are kind of OK you are long dead, and so the cycle continues.
This way a developed society kills itself, and "less developed" but far more vital societies move in. This is what is happening in Europe right now - immigrants from Africa and Asia are taking over, and I say that's a natural process. The Roman Empire fell, in part, due to decay of the society.
You say that as if the world was free before, and then tyranny descended on us. In reality, more people have more freedoms than ever before.
Freedom and tyranny come and go in waves. A revolution (if successful) brings freedom for a while, then new tyranny takes hold, then a new revolution... and so on. I haven't lived in those times, but, say, UK in 1900's (Sherlock Holmes' times) was a fairly free society, compared to what's there today - gentlemen carried guns if they so desired, opium was sold in drug stores, no CCTV cameras on each corner, and policemen didn't treat you as a prisoner. And of course the USA was much more free in its first years than it is today - examples of that are obvious.
As societies mature they collect more and more arcane laws and rules and taxes, and those never decrease in number. At some point the society just can't take it any more, and that's when revolutions happen. Right now the USA is burdened with many issues - the economy, the national debt and personal debts of many citizens, lack of vision for the future, a thoroughly rotten political system, schools that are ran like jails, police that is militarized and without shame, taxes that just go up and up, army spread all over the planet and fighting unwinnable wars against ideas ... and so on. This can't continue forever, and I can't predict in what way the US society will be unraveling when time comes for artificial supports of the "richest country on the planet" to finally snap.
Unfortunately the Constitution can be ignored by the President if that suits him. Who is going to stop him? The Congress is under his party's control (as if that matters, really) and anything with the Supreme Court will take years to decide. The 2nd Amendment is routinely denied by a variety of means (mostly psychological warfare against clueless voters,) and it was G. W. Bush who created "First Amendment Zones" - implicitly denying the right everywhere else near his Royal persona. Photographers were attacked by police at both party conventions. Bush said that the constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper" and he was speaking from experience.
Countries have defamation laws against individuals - i.e., false claims that cause harm to a person. What is meant by defamation of a religion?
Even worse, religions are full of claims that are on that side of reality. For example, a prophet is given a flying horse to go places and see things. If someone says that this claim is false, how can anyone prove or disprove anything here?
It's a non-binding resolution.
You need to wait a bit until a binding one is accepted, "for your own good and world's peace." It will indeed contribute to peace if everyone's mouth is duct-taped.
Freedom of individuals is not just on the back burner, it was taken out of the building and buried long ago. I read quite a few sci-fi books which depict a computer that takes over and rules the humanity (one of Deus Ex endings also has that theme.) But it seems that the computer here is an unnecessary part - certain groups of humans are more than willing to step in, lend a hand and finally round up all those 6 billion troublemakers, denying them anything but the right to obey orders.
What the hell are they thinking...
They are thinking of selling you a $1,000 option that costs $10 to build. Include a few of these and suddenly their business is profitable... which may be a necessity because parts for electric cars still cost too much. Nobody can afford a common Volkswagen-class all-electric car, that's why all these premium options are there - to mask the cost.
The reasons you would shut off a car in that position aren't present in a full electric car.
Reasons like climate control and DRL and radio are present in all cars.
I plan on working until I'm around 70.
The company that still employs me recently laid off about 15% of its workforce - not because they were old or poorly performing but simply because sales dove into the ground and there is simply no revenue to pay their salaries. This may be not the last layoff. We all may plan to do various things, but the coming depression will test many of these plans. Don't ignore the talk about replacing USD as the world's reserve currency - if that ever happens the country is done for, you wouldn't even have time to run for the hills.
Unfortunately defendants aren't allowed to set rules of the Court. Judge usually does that, and if instead of answering questions you start a political speech in the witness box you'd be silenced pretty quick (and it's not a good idea to anger the judge.) The defendant is free to argue that the lab is at fault, but unless your name is OJ Simpson you aren't getting anywhere, statistically speaking.
Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you didn't screw up
Yes, tell the judge that you want a negative proven :-)
I guess it's possible to dismiss the DNA evidence, but labs handle millions of tests, so you will have to essentially demonstrate that either these labs were doing worthless job for years, or that this particular piece of evidence was mishandled in a specific, proven way (I recall that in Simpson's case there were such admitted violations.) You can't just say "I posit that you screwed up, now prove that you didn't!" Even if you show prior instances of errors done by labs, you'd have to show that this particular error was done this time by this lab - generalities have little weight. Hardly anyone in the courtroom (except you) has any strong feelings toward your innocence, and if the prosecution concludes by saying "his DNA was found at the crime scene, and he failed to explain it in any meaningful way" then your goose is cooked.