You make some good points, but you seem to be painting all policemen/security guards with as broad a positive brush as some posters here do with a negative brush. You give the example of approaching someone in a parking lot and saying "Heh, how ya' doin'?" and asking if that's harrassment. No, of course it isn't. But what about when a cop grabs you from behind and says angrily, "What do you think you're doing?" (It's happened to me.) There's a broad spectrum of possible behaviors, and I think part of the fear is that this technology will embolden the negative end of the spectrum without any corresponding positive gains.
You also make a good point about the cameras vs. the old guy in a uniform watching the door; it's true that there's not as much of a difference as people sometimes make it sound. But the old man in the uniform is a human being with human judgement. To my way of thinking, there's a difference between that, and omnipresent cameras that record your actions.
I'm reminded of the case in (IIRC) New York State, where the roads authority implemented an automatic electronic toll-collection system, with the promise that records would be kept only long enough for billing purposes, and they would never use it to monitor the comings and goings of people. Well, only months after they introduced it, a fellow wanted for some crime or other was caught because his passage of a tollgate was flagged by the system and passed on to the police. People feel that they have a right to travel without the knowledge of the state, and although I admit I can't provide a logically rigorous proof of why they should have it, I am sympathetic. There's already a great power dichotomy between the citizen and the state, and people are (IMHO, rightfully) leery of anything that suggests that that power balance will be tipped further in favor of the state.
You say that the police prevent crime; you should know that there is a theory which holds that the police create crime. (Check "police create crime" on Everything.) Probably the individual policeman is not interested in creating crime, sure, but the legal system as a whole actually thrives on crime - remember, crime is the very reason it exists, and why would anyone destroy the very thing that feeds his family? Possibly a saint. But most people aren't saints, and certainly most people in the justice system aren't, not when there are so many incentives to be otherwise.
Is most crime really committed by opportunists? It may depend on the definition of "crime". I'd guess that most real crime (ie, malum in se crime) is indeed committed by hardened criminals - robberies, rapes, murders... But there are huge categories of "crime" (the malum prohibitum) which generate huge numbers of casual "criminals". Don't sell a bottle of your homebrewed beer to your neighbor, brother, or else you're a criminal now! Remember the theory that the legal system creates crime in order to feed itself? The real fear may be that the system will criminalize so many things that you can't make it through the day without breaking the law, and ubiquitous monitoring will make it possible to catch all (or almost all) lawbreakers. The state won't arrest everyone - it can't, for purely practical reasons anyway - but it now has the authority and the power to arrest anyone at any time, and at that point the state's right to arrest people can be used in a purely subjective matter to threaten the undesirable.
This is a net zero to the issuer, the bank and the insurance company. They will just right it off as "Bad Debt" and save the same amout in taxes.
Hmm...not quite. Yes, if they're insured, the insurance will eat it, but then the insurance company has to pay out. Since insurance companies don't make money by paying out, they'll end up raising premiums just a touch (not necessarily because of one incident, but because of the possibility of more - and we've seen this happen before). The insurance buyers will end up spending a tiny bit more each. So it spreads the cost around, but in some ways that's a bad thing, because it decreases everyone's incentive to actually fight this kind of stupidity.
I would swear on a stack of K&R 1st editions this high that we've seen virtually this exact story on/. before, except it was a woman in California. What happened to that lawsuit?
Aha! Found it...it's here. $25k, nothing...this earlier one was $70k.
Re:What about the following FUD?
on
Stopping the FUD
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· Score: 1
OK, you're correct in that no, you can't just grab $RANDOM_USB_PERIPHERAL and necessarily expect it to work right away. However, it's equally incorrect to say "Linux does not have USB support" - if that were the case, my friend wouldn't be able to run Linux on his G3, would he? (Not very well, anyway. )
Who really cares about USB, though? I haven't noticed that Solaris supports USB either, and if you complained about Solaris on that count, you'd be very rightly laughed out of the room as sounding like a spoiled 14-year-old. ("This E10000 sucks! It can't even run Rogue Spear!") Choose an OS for what it's good for, eh? We'll have USB support soon enough, anyway.
Oh, and as for USB printers, scanners, and Zip drives: http://www.linux-usb.com It looks like the answer to your question is "yes". (Looks like you might have to compile something. So sorry. I'm sure Linus and crew are working on the "read-users-mind-and-automatically-download-and-in sert-module-so-he-never-has-to-actually- even-think-about-working" patch that will soon do away with all that ugliness.)
I'm sure they do, but appointed by who? I certinly don't remember that vote. In fact, the whole thing seems to be done so covertly, the average American (and I'll wager citizens of most other countries) have no idea what's going on or who's in charge.
Well said...that's really why the best term to describe our (OK, I'm being blatantly US-centric, so shoot me) form of government is "bureaucracy"! After all, when you elect someone, who votes with a whole lot of other people to appoint someone, who appoints someone else, who hires someone else, who directs somebody else, who makes a rule/policy/standard that effectively has the force of law, I think asking just how representative this system really is is a fair question. And unfortunately, this seems to be largely the situation with the WTO and other national and international organizations...
And what were the "militias" supposed to do, huh? March on downtown Seattle? That would have gone over real well... And which "citizens" are they supposed to have been defending? The protestors? The American members of the WTO? THe citizens of Seattle? The Americans who claim to have been hurt by the actions of the WTO? I think that their inaction speaks well for them, frankly; the issues involved here are rather complex and not amenable to being solved by fired-up folks claiming to be the great and heroic defenders of human rights and morality in general...
I don't think the internet will be large enough until it spans "heavenly bodies." When I can go to homer.crater.lun and end up sending packets to the sea of tranquility, THEN the internet will be alive.
Don't be too flippant - Vint Cerf ("father of the internet") has recently been talking about extending TCP/IP to interplanetary communications. (Saw him speak at NYU recently; he's a very good public speaker, and I urge you to go see him if you get a chance.) It makes sense, really - most computers already speak IP, so why not computers on space probes, etc? Of course, there are real issues to consider. You think your connections are slow and laggy now? Just wait until you're trying to talk to a machine on Mars, which can be several light-minutes away. Obviously, timeout lengths are the least of what will have to be reconsidered.
Slashdot Mirror
You also make a good point about the cameras vs. the old guy in a uniform watching the door; it's true that there's not as much of a difference as people sometimes make it sound. But the old man in the uniform is a human being with human judgement. To my way of thinking, there's a difference between that, and omnipresent cameras that record your actions.
I'm reminded of the case in (IIRC) New York State, where the roads authority implemented an automatic electronic toll-collection system, with the promise that records would be kept only long enough for billing purposes, and they would never use it to monitor the comings and goings of people. Well, only months after they introduced it, a fellow wanted for some crime or other was caught because his passage of a tollgate was flagged by the system and passed on to the police. People feel that they have a right to travel without the knowledge of the state, and although I admit I can't provide a logically rigorous proof of why they should have it, I am sympathetic. There's already a great power dichotomy between the citizen and the state, and people are (IMHO, rightfully) leery of anything that suggests that that power balance will be tipped further in favor of the state.
You say that the police prevent crime; you should know that there is a theory which holds that the police create crime. (Check "police create crime" on Everything.) Probably the individual policeman is not interested in creating crime, sure, but the legal system as a whole actually thrives on crime - remember, crime is the very reason it exists, and why would anyone destroy the very thing that feeds his family? Possibly a saint. But most people aren't saints, and certainly most people in the justice system aren't, not when there are so many incentives to be otherwise.
Is most crime really committed by opportunists? It may depend on the definition of "crime". I'd guess that most real crime (ie, malum in se crime) is indeed committed by hardened criminals - robberies, rapes, murders... But there are huge categories of "crime" (the malum prohibitum) which generate huge numbers of casual "criminals". Don't sell a bottle of your homebrewed beer to your neighbor, brother, or else you're a criminal now! Remember the theory that the legal system creates crime in order to feed itself? The real fear may be that the system will criminalize so many things that you can't make it through the day without breaking the law, and ubiquitous monitoring will make it possible to catch all (or almost all) lawbreakers. The state won't arrest everyone - it can't, for purely practical reasons anyway - but it now has the authority and the power to arrest anyone at any time, and at that point the state's right to arrest people can be used in a purely subjective matter to threaten the undesirable.
Aha! Found it...it's here. $25k, nothing...this earlier one was $70k.
Who really cares about USB, though? I haven't noticed that Solaris supports USB either, and if you complained about Solaris on that count, you'd be very rightly laughed out of the room as sounding like a spoiled 14-year-old. ("This E10000 sucks! It can't even run Rogue Spear!") Choose an OS for what it's good for, eh? We'll have USB support soon enough, anyway.
Oh, and as for USB printers, scanners, and Zip drives: http://www.linux-usb.com It looks like the answer to your question is "yes". (Looks like you might have to compile something. So sorry. I'm sure Linus and crew are working on the "read-users-mind-and-automatically-download-and-in sert-module-so-he-never-has-to-actually- even-think-about-working" patch that will soon do away with all that ugliness.)
Hmm, should have read the article before the one I was responding to a little better. Nonetheless, my points generally hold.
And what were the "militias" supposed to do, huh? March on downtown Seattle? That would have gone over real well... And which "citizens" are they supposed to have been defending? The protestors? The American members of the WTO? THe citizens of Seattle? The Americans who claim to have been hurt by the actions of the WTO? I think that their inaction speaks well for them, frankly; the issues involved here are rather complex and not amenable to being solved by fired-up folks claiming to be the great and heroic defenders of human rights and morality in general...