F*cking Wah! If you'd taken steps to protect your property like buying Lowjack or OnStar, you'd have gotten your Pinto back without the rest of us being watched like common criminals. A little forethought on your part would have saved the rest of us from your endorsement of a police state.
The fact that the license plate is public property, and designed to be displayed publically aside, the privacy issue matters only in respect to how the data is collected.
If an automated system only records positive results, and ignores negative results discarding them, then the negative result vehicles aren't under surveillance- the computer can't tell "who" passed in front of it, it's just looking for a specific pattern that's it's been told to spot.
If there is a record of all the vehicles passing by the sensor, then everyone is under surveillance- which may or may not be illegal on a state-by-state basis. Radar detectors have been justified in states where there is a "right to know" if you are under surveillance, and outlawed in states where that right is not presumed to exist.
FTR, I completely expect to see GPS tagged license plates in the near future that narc on me whenever I speed, or are activated if a warrant is issued for my arrest, or my car is stolen or suspected to be involved in criminal activity. I knew I shouldn't have bought that black 1986 Trans Am with the glowing red hood lights...
Remember, when non-GPS tagged license plates are outlawed, only outlaws will have non-GPS tagged license plates.
tbannist wrote:
>Think about this for a second. The Saturn didn't have computers on board, it's older than the computer age. When it was >designed, you probably couldn't fit a computer into it's entire cargo area. It doesn't make sense on any level to try to >even pretend that the technology should be classified...
Computers don't make rockets fly. Rocket fuel makes rockets fly. In the case of liquid fuel rockets, fuel pumps do all of the magic, and computers help with managing the show.
The Saturn V was well beyond it's time when it flew (as evidenced by the fact that no one has repeated the trick for 35 years). The designs for Saturn's high pressure pumps and fuel management systems are still relevant and valuable to anyone looking to design and build a liqued fuel rocket that uses readily available kerosene and LOX for propellant and doesn't want a lot of computer managed hardware.
However, invoking ITAR for this reason falls into the category of "too little too late." It'd be like censoring the designs of Colt.45's because terrorists might learn to design guns.
The government needs to assume that someone who wants to build a missile can do so, and instead concentrate preventing one from launching- politically or militarily.
Sounds to me like there is a Dilburtian failure of imagination at the security contractor level.
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Maybe Fox will prempt Futurama yet again by slipping some lousy NFL highlights video into the Futurama DVD jacket instead.
Terrific news about 16 new episodes though! Katay Sagal needs the work.
F*cking Wah! If you'd taken steps to protect your property like buying Lowjack or OnStar, you'd have gotten your Pinto back without the rest of us being watched like common criminals. A little forethought on your part would have saved the rest of us from your endorsement of a police state.
The fact that the license plate is public property, and designed to be displayed publically aside, the privacy issue matters only in respect to how the data is collected.
If an automated system only records positive results, and ignores negative results discarding them, then the negative result vehicles aren't under surveillance- the computer can't tell "who" passed in front of it, it's just looking for a specific pattern that's it's been told to spot.
If there is a record of all the vehicles passing by the sensor, then everyone is under surveillance- which may or may not be illegal on a state-by-state basis. Radar detectors have been justified in states where there is a "right to know" if you are under surveillance, and outlawed in states where that right is not presumed to exist.
FTR, I completely expect to see GPS tagged license plates in the near future that narc on me whenever I speed, or are activated if a warrant is issued for my arrest, or my car is stolen or suspected to be involved in criminal activity. I knew I shouldn't have bought that black 1986 Trans Am with the glowing red hood lights...
Remember, when non-GPS tagged license plates are outlawed, only outlaws will have non-GPS tagged license plates.
tbannist wrote: >Think about this for a second. The Saturn didn't have computers on board, it's older than the computer age. When it was >designed, you probably couldn't fit a computer into it's entire cargo area. It doesn't make sense on any level to try to >even pretend that the technology should be classified... Computers don't make rockets fly. Rocket fuel makes rockets fly. In the case of liquid fuel rockets, fuel pumps do all of the magic, and computers help with managing the show. The Saturn V was well beyond it's time when it flew (as evidenced by the fact that no one has repeated the trick for 35 years). The designs for Saturn's high pressure pumps and fuel management systems are still relevant and valuable to anyone looking to design and build a liqued fuel rocket that uses readily available kerosene and LOX for propellant and doesn't want a lot of computer managed hardware. However, invoking ITAR for this reason falls into the category of "too little too late." It'd be like censoring the designs of Colt .45's because terrorists might learn to design guns.
The government needs to assume that someone who wants to build a missile can do so, and instead concentrate preventing one from launching- politically or militarily.
Sounds to me like there is a Dilburtian failure of imagination at the security contractor level.