Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.
A thousand is not much of an issue but 28,000 could be. Both are estimates and it should be looked into.
Considering there are so many complaints in the media about the helicopters I would think that at least one lawyer would lodge a complaint with the police if it was illegal. I can't find any.
It's already an accepted standard of law that people have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when on their own property, including in their vehicles. Thus, photographing them by ANY means (my emphasis) is already illegal unless supported by a lawfully-obtained surveillance or search warrant.
Then why don't the paparazzi get convicted when they take long range shots of people on their own property? I see little legal difference between a drone hovering off property and a person climbing a tree or standing on a hill off property. Just look at the number of helicopters around celebrity weddings. What is the difference between a drone and a helicopter except size and placement of a pilot. Those helicopter shots are not illegal; why should similar drone shots be illegal?
Take a look at this comparison. Even though the US government pays much more per capita than Canada it does not cover everybody it while Canada does. Here is a possible reason;
A 1999 report found that after exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0% of health care expenditures in the United States, as compared with 16.7% of health care expenditures in Canada.
Single payer systems make administration much simpler.
Even just the East Coast, with reasonably affordable interconnects, would have 24/7/365 offshore
A hurricane such as Sandy causes high winds which would overs peed most wind generators off the coast. Wind generators are shut down in high/gusty winds to prevent damage. You need to look at worst case not average case.
There are numerous historical documents that lay out what the founding fathers intended when they wrote the constitution.
Were they written by the founding fathers. Otherwise they are interpretations of what they meant and therefore opinion. By the way, do you have any references to them. (please avoid the obvious politically motivated sites)
Why don't you stop moving your bullshit goalposts and being a hypocrite?
I guess you missed the fact that since there were no photographs and no computers to compare those photographs there is no way the founding fathers could have envision facial recognition software. I was just trying to point out the free speech on a computer is exactly the same as free speech on paper.
And I assure you that sending data over the Internet is far different from writing something on a piece of paper and mailing it
Both are the creation of text and transmission to another person. The mechanism is irrelevant.
Do you have a goddamn point?
Sorry you missed it. To put it as clearly as I can. There is nothing in the Forth Amendment that specifically outlaws the use of facial recognition from the passport database to identify suspects.
As opposed to the opinion of one person on the internet.
What, you?
The attempt to apply "unreasonable search" to facial recognition is an opinion. Your opinion differs from mine. The only opinion that matters is the SCOTUS. It may get there.
You will never change your mind and I will never change my mind about this issue. I agree to disagree.
What is moral is also arbitrary. What was not moral decades ago is moral today.
Oh, fuck off. It's obvious you don't understand the spirit of the constitution.
And unless you you can speak to the founding fathers neither do you. Everything from the Constitution is an interpretation backed up buy SCOTUS rulings which are also interpretations.
They couldn't have conceived of computers, either, and yet the ridiculous posts you're sending using them are clearly free speech.
Writing something on a piece of paper and mailing it, which the founding fathers could do, is not very different than typing and sending on a computer. Therefore the same freedom of speech is applicable to computers as to paper. Where in the constitution does is state anything about looking into government files and/or facial recognition? Trying to apply the Fourth Amendment is an interpretation and therefore open to opinion. It all revolves around the phrase "unreasonable searches". Again, what is or is not "unreasonable" is opinion.
The constitution is not just a list of rights.
I was not talking about the whole Constitution but the Bill of Rights which is a list of rights. Look at the text of the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It looks like it is listing rights to me.
Also, even that is a mere opinion, just an opinion by those who write laws.
As opposed to the opinion of one person on the internet.
What if someone invented a technology to see through your walls and recorded your every move?
They already have. It is called an infrared camera.
You'd have no problem with that?
I have a problem with that and it has been covered by a court ruling as there is an expectation of privacy withing the walls of one's own home. I see no expectation of privacy on a DL or passport database considering it can be accessed by thousands of authorized personnel around the world.
Where does your arbitrary nonsense end?
At both ends of the privacy issue are complete privacy and no privacy at all. Where we draw the line as to what is acceptable will always be arbitrary.
The fourth amendment,
The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizures. In my opinion facial recognition from passport databases is not unreasonable.
I know you're going to disagree with that interpretation and ignore the spirit of the fourth amendment,
The Fourth Amendment was ratified in 1792. They did not even have photography back then. You interpret the work "unreasonable" very differently than I do. Using the Fourth Amendment to mean a right to anonymity is a huge stretch.
Irrelevant. You acted as if them checking to see if you're a criminal is treating you as a law abiding citizen. Were that true, that logic could be used with anything; whether it happens physically or not does not matter.
That is your opinion. My opinion differs. To me a database search is not intrusive while a cavity search is. It has nothing to do with whether or not I have been convicted of a crime in the past.
Then you might need to check again, because performing facial recognition on people's pictures without a warrant is a violation of people's fundamental liberties, regardless of whether or not they have such data.
Restating the same thing over and over again does not make it a fact. Where is your evidence that it is a " violation of people's fundamental liberties"? Without such evidence it is merely opinion.
Would you also think so if the police decided to perform cavity searches on you just to check if you're a criminal, no evidence required
Running my DL picture does not require physical contact and is therefore very different than a cavity search.
What I would or would not believe if I were in a different situation than I am now is irrelevant to whether or not my arguments are correct; that's just an ad hominem.
It is an attempt to get you out of your narrow focus and see the broader picture from a different point of view.
Fundamental freedoms are not something we can give away for petty safety.
I have never heard of not being identified by the police as a fundamental freedom. Care to back that up with facts?
So you even listed a difference yourself. You do something the government doesn't like (perhaps break an unjust law) and they managed to capture a picture of you (probably by using all the surveillance you people encourage), and when you go to use your passport, you're fucked.
The way to fight unjust laws is to get them changed. Making just laws unenforceable is not the solution.
Adding in facial recognition makes it easier to catch people unless they also disguise their appearance. It's just another way to oppress people.
So catching criminals is oppressing the people. Just wow.
Can you choose to not have them treat you like a criminal by using facial recognition software on your picture?
That is a very broad definition of being treated like a criminal. I would consider having my picture use in facial recognition as being treated like a law abiding citizen.
Fine with me. I'd rather have freedom and privacy than safety.
You would say something different if you or someone close to you was a victim of a serious crime. Then why do we have any laws at all? Complete privacy and freedom and no safety.
Catching criminals is far from my prime concern.
Catching criminals is much higher on the list for law abiding citizens.
Why would they need facial recognition if they could just search a name or SSN?
Because people do not walk around with their names on their chests but their pictures are captured during crimes.
Obviously there is a difference.
If you can not explain what the difference is then there is no difference.
Facial recognition creates many more opportunities to oppress people, even if they manage to hide their names.
Those opportunities are? Yet again you bring up vague arguments with no basis.
Sorry but passports are also used as general identification. Go to any notary and they will accept a passport as identification.
I don't think passports should be used in this way, and I don't think drivers licenses should be used in this way. Get a warrant.
I disagree 100%. All you are doing is letting criminals get away. Again, what is the difference between doing facial recognition vs doing a text search on name or Social Security Number?
What does that have to do with facial recognition used to capture a serious criminal? The meme of "because it can be abused it should not be used" is stupid. Anything can be abused.
No, it isn't valid. Not if it's easily subject corruption like this is, and not if that's not what they said they'd do with the data.
Every tool of law enforcement is subject to corruption. By that standard police officers should not have batons because they can and have been used to beat innocent people. What needs to be done is the penalties for corruption need to be high enough to deter the corruption. In most cases they are.
You're being very disturbing by saying that any information the government has can be used for absolutely anything,
Don't put words in my mouth. In this case the person gave identification information to the government and the government used that information to identify him. It is not even a change of use.
By that standard police should never use radar guns as that is checking the speed on an "innocent" driver. Using every possible database to find a criminal is a valid use of data and not an invasion. He gave the information to the government as a picture for a passport. That they found him using that data is valid. There is no freedom to be anonymous.
One of the prerequisites of having a passport is not having an outstanding warrant.
I am not a criminal, owning a passport should not be cause to consider me a potential criminal.
Sorry but everyone on earth is a potential criminal. I don't care how many times my finger prints (they were taken for a background check) are compared because I have never committed a serious crime (I have a few speeding tickets).
The only valid reason for a passport photo is to make sure that one person doesn't have two passports.
It is also a valid use to match the person with the passport and therefore the name and other information on the passport. What is the difference between doing a text search on the name on a passport and doing a facial recognition search on a passport?
Water from a farm escapes along every edge and goes into the ground water it then goes into creeks. To filter all the groundwater is just not possible.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article;
Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.
A thousand is not much of an issue but 28,000 could be. Both are estimates and it should be looked into.
Considering there are so many complaints in the media about the helicopters I would think that at least one lawyer would lodge a complaint with the police if it was illegal. I can't find any.
It's already an accepted standard of law that people have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when on their own property, including in their vehicles. Thus, photographing them by ANY means (my emphasis) is already illegal unless supported by a lawfully-obtained surveillance or search warrant.
Then why don't the paparazzi get convicted when they take long range shots of people on their own property? I see little legal difference between a drone hovering off property and a person climbing a tree or standing on a hill off property. Just look at the number of helicopters around celebrity weddings. What is the difference between a drone and a helicopter except size and placement of a pilot. Those helicopter shots are not illegal; why should similar drone shots be illegal?
Take a look at this comparison. Even though the US government pays much more per capita than Canada it does not cover everybody it while Canada does. Here is a possible reason;
A 1999 report found that after exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0% of health care expenditures in the United States, as compared with 16.7% of health care expenditures in Canada.
Single payer systems make administration much simpler.
Even just the East Coast, with reasonably affordable interconnects, would have 24/7/365 offshore
A hurricane such as Sandy causes high winds which would overs peed most wind generators off the coast. Wind generators are shut down in high/gusty winds to prevent damage. You need to look at worst case not average case.
There are numerous historical documents that lay out what the founding fathers intended when they wrote the constitution.
Were they written by the founding fathers. Otherwise they are interpretations of what they meant and therefore opinion. By the way, do you have any references to them. (please avoid the obvious politically motivated sites)
Why don't you stop moving your bullshit goalposts and being a hypocrite?
I guess you missed the fact that since there were no photographs and no computers to compare those photographs there is no way the founding fathers could have envision facial recognition software. I was just trying to point out the free speech on a computer is exactly the same as free speech on paper.
And I assure you that sending data over the Internet is far different from writing something on a piece of paper and mailing it
Both are the creation of text and transmission to another person. The mechanism is irrelevant.
Do you have a goddamn point?
Sorry you missed it. To put it as clearly as I can. There is nothing in the Forth Amendment that specifically outlaws the use of facial recognition from the passport database to identify suspects.
As opposed to the opinion of one person on the internet.
What, you?
The attempt to apply "unreasonable search" to facial recognition is an opinion. Your opinion differs from mine. The only opinion that matters is the SCOTUS. It may get there.
You will never change your mind and I will never change my mind about this issue. I agree to disagree.
With some lines being more moral than others.
What is moral is also arbitrary. What was not moral decades ago is moral today.
Oh, fuck off. It's obvious you don't understand the spirit of the constitution.
And unless you you can speak to the founding fathers neither do you. Everything from the Constitution is an interpretation backed up buy SCOTUS rulings which are also interpretations.
They couldn't have conceived of computers, either, and yet the ridiculous posts you're sending using them are clearly free speech.
Writing something on a piece of paper and mailing it, which the founding fathers could do, is not very different than typing and sending on a computer. Therefore the same freedom of speech is applicable to computers as to paper. Where in the constitution does is state anything about looking into government files and/or facial recognition? Trying to apply the Fourth Amendment is an interpretation and therefore open to opinion. It all revolves around the phrase "unreasonable searches". Again, what is or is not "unreasonable" is opinion.
The constitution is not just a list of rights.
I was not talking about the whole Constitution but the Bill of Rights which is a list of rights. Look at the text of the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It looks like it is listing rights to me.
Also, even that is a mere opinion, just an opinion by those who write laws.
As opposed to the opinion of one person on the internet.
What if someone invented a technology to see through your walls and recorded your every move?
They already have. It is called an infrared camera.
You'd have no problem with that?
I have a problem with that and it has been covered by a court ruling as there is an expectation of privacy withing the walls of one's own home. I see no expectation of privacy on a DL or passport database considering it can be accessed by thousands of authorized personnel around the world.
Where does your arbitrary nonsense end?
At both ends of the privacy issue are complete privacy and no privacy at all. Where we draw the line as to what is acceptable will always be arbitrary.
The fourth amendment,
The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizures. In my opinion facial recognition from passport databases is not unreasonable.
I know you're going to disagree with that interpretation and ignore the spirit of the fourth amendment,
The Fourth Amendment was ratified in 1792. They did not even have photography back then. You interpret the work "unreasonable" very differently than I do. Using the Fourth Amendment to mean a right to anonymity is a huge stretch.
Without such evidence it is merely opinion.
All rights are.
Most rights are codified in documents such as the United States Bill of Rights
Irrelevant. You acted as if them checking to see if you're a criminal is treating you as a law abiding citizen. Were that true, that logic could be used with anything; whether it happens physically or not does not matter.
That is your opinion. My opinion differs. To me a database search is not intrusive while a cavity search is. It has nothing to do with whether or not I have been convicted of a crime in the past.
Then you might need to check again, because performing facial recognition on people's pictures without a warrant is a violation of people's fundamental liberties, regardless of whether or not they have such data.
Restating the same thing over and over again does not make it a fact. Where is your evidence that it is a " violation of people's fundamental liberties"? Without such evidence it is merely opinion.
Then change the laws instead of making just laws much more difficult to enforce.
Would you also think so if the police decided to perform cavity searches on you just to check if you're a criminal, no evidence required
Running my DL picture does not require physical contact and is therefore very different than a cavity search.
What I would or would not believe if I were in a different situation than I am now is irrelevant to whether or not my arguments are correct; that's just an ad hominem.
It is an attempt to get you out of your narrow focus and see the broader picture from a different point of view.
Fundamental freedoms are not something we can give away for petty safety.
I have never heard of not being identified by the police as a fundamental freedom. Care to back that up with facts?
So you even listed a difference yourself. You do something the government doesn't like (perhaps break an unjust law) and they managed to capture a picture of you (probably by using all the surveillance you people encourage), and when you go to use your passport, you're fucked.
The way to fight unjust laws is to get them changed. Making just laws unenforceable is not the solution.
Adding in facial recognition makes it easier to catch people unless they also disguise their appearance. It's just another way to oppress people.
So catching criminals is oppressing the people. Just wow.
Can you choose to not have them treat you like a criminal by using facial recognition software on your picture?
That is a very broad definition of being treated like a criminal. I would consider having my picture use in facial recognition as being treated like a law abiding citizen.
Fine with me. I'd rather have freedom and privacy than safety.
You would say something different if you or someone close to you was a victim of a serious crime. Then why do we have any laws at all? Complete privacy and freedom and no safety.
Catching criminals is far from my prime concern.
Catching criminals is much higher on the list for law abiding citizens.
Why would they need facial recognition if they could just search a name or SSN?
Because people do not walk around with their names on their chests but their pictures are captured during crimes.
Obviously there is a difference.
If you can not explain what the difference is then there is no difference.
Facial recognition creates many more opportunities to oppress people, even if they manage to hide their names.
Those opportunities are? Yet again you bring up vague arguments with no basis.
That's what passports should be about.
Sorry but passports are also used as general identification. Go to any notary and they will accept a passport as identification.
I don't think passports should be used in this way, and I don't think drivers licenses should be used in this way. Get a warrant.
I disagree 100%. All you are doing is letting criminals get away. Again, what is the difference between doing facial recognition vs doing a text search on name or Social Security Number?
What does that have to do with facial recognition used to capture a serious criminal? The meme of "because it can be abused it should not be used" is stupid. Anything can be abused.
No, it isn't valid. Not if it's easily subject corruption like this is, and not if that's not what they said they'd do with the data.
Every tool of law enforcement is subject to corruption. By that standard police officers should not have batons because they can and have been used to beat innocent people. What needs to be done is the penalties for corruption need to be high enough to deter the corruption. In most cases they are.
You're being very disturbing by saying that any information the government has can be used for absolutely anything,
Don't put words in my mouth. In this case the person gave identification information to the government and the government used that information to identify him. It is not even a change of use.
By that standard police should never use radar guns as that is checking the speed on an "innocent" driver. Using every possible database to find a criminal is a valid use of data and not an invasion. He gave the information to the government as a picture for a passport. That they found him using that data is valid. There is no freedom to be anonymous.
Considering how many criminals have not been caught yet I don't agree.
Conversely, if you have not been proven to be a criminal no one should suspect you. Reality is somewhere between those two extremes.
What is or is not abuse is an opinion and therefore variable. Too many people seem to think that "use" is the same as "abuse".
One of the prerequisites of having a passport is not having an outstanding warrant.
I am not a criminal, owning a passport should not be cause to consider me a potential criminal.
Sorry but everyone on earth is a potential criminal. I don't care how many times my finger prints (they were taken for a background check) are compared because I have never committed a serious crime (I have a few speeding tickets).
The only valid reason for a passport photo is to make sure that one person doesn't have two passports.
It is also a valid use to match the person with the passport and therefore the name and other information on the passport. What is the difference between doing a text search on the name on a passport and doing a facial recognition search on a passport?
If that ever happens there are much bigger problems than facial recognition.
I don't think using facial recognition to verify the identity of someone using a US passport is re purposing data.
Even if one in a million times it helps catch a pedo, that still doesn't justify the damage it does to a free society.
How will these identity verifications damage a free society? The will definitely impact passport fraud.
And by the way, SpaceX hasn't had 3 different crews killed in accidents, unlike NASA.
SpaceX hasn't flown crew yet. They also have not fired off as many rockets as NASA.
I think you may have confused "evolution" with "natural selection". Genetic drift and natural selection are both mechanisms, among others, of evolution.
Water from a farm escapes along every edge and goes into the ground water it then goes into creeks. To filter all the groundwater is just not possible.