Again you're right in theory. But that's because you're assuming that everyone will always be good, and never be evil, and that everyone who can check the evil-doer will always have perfect information, be un-evil themself, etc.
In the real world a government that can thwart a private terrorist organization is always one lie away from thwarting your local girl scout troop. If it can arrest one bad guy it can arrest any good guy simply by lying on the paperwork that determines whether he's a bad guy.
And you still haven't mentioned why, if checks and balances are so useful, a country with precisely zero checks or balances (the Brits) is actually freer then us in a lot of ways.
I took a class on the Soviets once, and a little anecdote about the Eastern Bloc was quite illuminating.
The Soviet Union actually had three votes in the UN. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all had seats, and all were constituent Soviet Republics. Sometimes the Russians would change their vote at the last minute, and not everybody would get the memo in time. In the first few years of the UN the Bulgarians voted against Russia less often then Ukraine. Kruschev loosened things up a bit, which was one reason the Communist Party fired him.
The Russians wanted obedient little puppets, which meant they wanted no street demonstrations, which in turn meant that all Eastern Bloc leaders needed something very much like the Stasi or they'd be replaced.
Clearly fingerprints shall forevermore be banned as evidence in Court trials. We have a moral duty to free all prisoners convicted by fingerprint evidence. There is clearly no difference between gathering fingerprints to having 3% of the population employed as informers, and sending anyone who questions the great leader to a re-education camp.
I'm not saying what the NSA does is acceptable, or that it shouldn't be stopped. I am saying that if you seriously think this post will convince anybody to stop the damn NSA snooping you are a fucking moron. The logic simply doesn't follow. An Agency that employs a guy like Snowden isn't a very good tool of mass repression, so implying it is only makes you look crazy.
This appeals to the miniscule minority that honestly thinks government databases are evil. And it's clearly a tiny minority because I can name three Federal agencies that know more about me then the NSA, and quite a few state and local agencies are even worse.
You're mistaken. Arkansas cops recently opened up on a guy who was driving away from them...yet none of them has been charged with a crime
First, in general, I am not mistaken. If the district attorney is complicit and refuses to prosecute, that only means it is a miscarriage of justice, not that it is any less inherently criminal.
I love arguing the Constitution with my fellow Americans.
They are truly convinced that the major story when the American government represses somebody isn't that the American government repressed somebody, it's that their post hoc rationalization "proving" a 225-year-old document banned this specific form of repression wasn't followed to the letter.
It never seems to occur to them that if one asshole Prosecutor can turn the entire system into a dictator's best friend, it follows that an elaborate and inefficient system of Checks and Balances is basically a really good way to generate pretentious BS.
Countries run by Prime Ministers protect freedom quite well with minimal checks and balances. Most of them have Constitutions that are difficult to change (not all: the UK Constitution could be replaced by simple majority vote in Parliament), and all have Court systems enforcing said Constitutions; but they do not have a bunch of elected institutions specifically designed to thwart each-other.
Second, in this particular case the guy was in fact actively attempting to kill people (according to the news article, at least): "Mounted cameras from three police vehicles, led by Officer Vance Plumhoff, show Rickard weaving in and out of traffic, then ramming a police car head-on. The Honda is later surrounded and as the suspect tries to back up, he sideswipes another cop car, and almost strikes one of the officers." Before he rammed the police car, shooting was not justified. After, it was (as long as the guy continued to drive recklessly... if he slowed down the chase, e.g. OJ-style, shooting would stop being justified).
You're vastly over-stating the case. He wasn't trying to kill people (first degree murder), he was trying to get away and didn't care if he hit them (involuntary manslaughter). His Girlfriend was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Al Awlaki was trying to convince people to engage in terror attacks in the US (conspiracy to commit a variety of crimes, including murder). All the collateral victims of the strike against him are the girlfriend.
The could argue the semantics of whether blowing up Al Awlaki was like shooting this dude with each-other for decades and never come to a sensible conclusion. Which is why the Courts won't step on Obama's toes and rule that he was wrong to blow the shit out of Al Awlaki.
Separation of Powers restricts all branches, which means that as long as the President can make a case that isn't obvious BS the Courts are not allowed to step on his toes. Congress could, by gutting funding for the CIA drone program and starting some nasty committee investigations, but they ain't gonna do that for Al Awlaki.
And yet again you simply assert that it is humanly possible to design such a system without giving any evidence that it is
To some degree, we already have it. If you're looking for perfection, you should look to your own imagination.
So you are not only asserting such a system is possible in theory, but are also asserting that it exists in practice?
It's fairly instructive that you didn't respond to any of the points I made about how our system has historically been abused, or the ease with which it could be abused in the future. The simple fact is you don't have an argument, you have faith in the rules. You have faith that no matter how evil the people we elect are, the rules will still be followed, not only in letter but also in spirit.
That's ridiculous BS. If we elect assholes they will find holes in the rules. They will stretch the rules. Which is pathetically easy because the Constitution fails to define any of it's terms, which means that it's very easy to shade definitions. All Checks and Balances does is ensure that a) we have to elect a lot of assholes bad shit happens, and b) it takes a lot of good guys to overcome the problems. There's a reason freeing the slaves took a Civil War and multiple Constitutional Amendments in the US, but it took one Act of Parliament.
So actual history apparently isn't good enough for you, because it happened in the past and now, we've like Amended that shit.
No, it's that you're equating the ability to stop oppression to the ability to oppress. A well-designed system rarely would allow such a thing without serious checks and balances, and your examples aren't examples of where it does. I have zero patience for long, pointless comments, so I'll cut it off here.
And yet again you simply assert that it is humanly possible to design such a system without giving any evidence that it is, in fact, possible to do so.
The problem you run into is in your basic logic. A government that cannot do things cannot stop private oppression. A government that can do things can (by definition) do oppressive things because oppressive things are (by definition) things. Time is also a huge enemy for your side. Every year your system runs is a year for bad guys to discover oversights that allow them to oppress people. In the US it would actually be trivial to create a reign of terror with only control of the White House: private militias don't have to follow any law enforcement amendment, Prosecutor Discretion means that Prosecutors are actually allowed to decide not to prosecute the guy who just necklaced the local opposition party chair on national TV, and the President appoints all Federal Prosecutors. Which means that if he decides it's a Federal crime that needs to be "investigated" the locals can't intervene, and our murder gets off until a new President appoints a new Prosecutor.
And they never have the ability to shoot anyone who isn't actively killing people?
Police never have the AUTHORITY to shoot anyone who isn't actively attempting to kill people. That's the important issue here: authority, not "ability." Without authority, the use of force is criminal.
You're mistaken. Arkansas cops recently opened up on a guy who was driving away from them, allegedly because because they soberly considered the situation and decided that the odds of him killing somebody were high, but probably because some rookie panicked and the vets decided riddling the dude was the popular thing to do; yet none of them has been charged with a crime. It's likely none will ever be charged with a crime. The wrongful death lawsuit from the driver's family is almost certainly gonna get thrown out by the Supremes.
The victim wasn't actively trying to kill anybody, he was actively trying to get the fuck away and in the process he was likely to kill somebody. His girlfriend/passenger was also totally innocent of intending to kill anybody. And due to the magic of prosecutorial discretion, even if the Supremes change their minds and rule the deaths were not justified nobody will ever go to jail for the crimes.
The second is simply false, because the authorities can shoot lots of people who aren't currently actively attacking anyone. You'll note that Federal troops...
Are you really too stupid to know the difference between police and the military?
Keep in mind that the military actually have fewer powers to use force on civilians then the police do. The posse comitatus act that allowed the KKK to drastically reduce the south's black population in the late 19th bans them from almost all law enforcement duties. But that act only applies within the 50 states.
As for powers to kill, they're quite similar. If you're in the military and you're not in a war-zone you don't get to shoot. Period. It doesn't really matter whether you hit your target, if you're on a base in Germany and you open fire on the local Imam you're going to Leavenworth. If you're in a war-zone you have to be able to prove you had some good reason to believe every shot you made wasn't heading towards some innocent person. It's generally easier to satisfy the brass that you had reason in the war-zone, because they wouldn't be giving you the extra pay if they didn't expect somebody to shoot at you, and they don't have the resources to investigate every single shell fired, but that doesn;t mean the legal theory is any different.
Now we've got many fewer enemies, and the process for finding them is much more complicated because they don't all wear the same shirt, but that just means that there's a lot of internal process the Executive branch has to go through before OKing the target.
The government also has to abide by the Geneva Conventions. Either the target is an enemy soldier and the Geneva Conventions apply, or he is not a soldier and US criminal law (including the 5th Amendment) applies. There is no other category. Obama (and GW Bush before him) might have claimed there was, but both of them are war criminals.
Dude,a treaty? Seriously?
Without an enforcement mechanism a treaty is a press release. This is because treaties are agreements between sovereign states, and sovereign states are allowed to do anything they want. That's the definition of sovereign. For example, they can re-define words. If Obama decrees Al Awlaki is an enemy combatant, because American English the name "Al Awlaki" has always been a synonym for "enemy combatant," it doesn't matter that that's ridiculous BS. Under international law, as Head of State of a Sovereign nation, he can do that, and the only people who can argue the point are other
This is because shit that actually happens proves you wrong.
Nothing that you listed proves me wrong. We have constitutional amendments for a reason, and I believe the constitution should be followed. Again, none of your examples show that ability to help people = direct ability to oppress innocents.
So actual history apparently isn't good enough for you, because it happened in the past and now, we've like Amended that shit.
So I'll give you a scenario. Let's say you have a government, and (like all government) you give it the ability to arrest people and hold them for a time without charge if said government has reason to think they're plotting to do some bad shit. So you hire cops. Some guy tells the cops that another guy is doing the exact bad shit you banned. Now the cops have to investigate him, and if they think he's actually doing the bad shit they have the power to detain him. That is a power to oppress, because all Obama has to do is find a junkie who will lie about Mitt Romney and the cops have to arrest him.
If you make the power to detain a little bit stronger Mitt Romney gets more oppressed. If you make it weaker he gets less opressed. Which means you have to limit it, but if you limit it too much your government can't actually hold criminals long enough to convict them and de facto you don't have a government. You have Mexico, which is a free country in the sense that government won;t oppress your ass, but is not a free country in any sense of the word that matters.
Any power you mention the government can actually use can also be abused, and quite a few of them are very necessary to keep civilization going. Government is just another tool we use, not a magical land where the simple phrase "Checks and balances" means everything is always milk and honey.
BTW, if you want an example of the Fascist hell-scape that results when you have no Checks and Balances look at the Brits. The Queen can be fired by majority vote of Parliament. All treaties can be amended by majority vote of Parliament. All Judges are subject to parliamentary oversight. The Prime Minister is picked by the House of Commons, and he can appoint as many new Lords as he wants to get his agenda passed. The entire British Constitution is simply a series of acts of Parliament that can be amended by majority vote.
Which means a Parliamentary majority that wanted to enslave Britain's Jews could do the job in three readings. More like six and a bunch of new promotions to the House of Lords. The fire-the-Queen Act would probably have to be separate.
So if the cops were in a shoot-out with somebody they could call in drone support?
And they never have the ability to shoot anyone who isn't actively killing people?
You'll note that the first statement is you agreeing with me. The second is simply false, because the authorities can shoot lots of people who aren't currently actively attacking anyone. You'll note that Federal troops spent approximately zero battles during the Civil War sitting around waiting for the rebels to shoot because they were not allowed to attack unless somebody was in great danger. It wasn't unknown for them to accidentally shoot innocent civilians. And no Federal Court insisted that the Army was now an evil tool of oppression, so it should be abolished, and the rebels should keep their slaves.
Now we've got many fewer enemies, and the process for finding them is much more complicated because they don't all wear the same shirt, but that just means that there's a lot of internal process the Executive branch has to go through before OKing the target.
My position here is a lot more limited then you're assuming. I've said jack-squat about Obama's actual decision to use drones to kill American citizens. I haven't told you anything about whether I agree with the decision to kill All Awlaki without trial. What I've said is that it isn't, by definition, illegal for the Feds to blow the shit out of somebody who is a threat to the United States. And that's simply true. Circumstances exist that allow the feds to do exactly that.
Right now you're presenting no data, but plentiful logic. This means you're arguing philosophy. This is because shit that actually happens proves you wrong.
Let's look at some of the most evil things that have happened in the US.
Slavery: Created by the states, enforced by sub-state-level governments. Under a strict interpretation of the Constitution the Emancipation Proclamation was illegal which means we could not have ended slavery if we respected checks and balances. Jack-booted Federal thugs literally freed the slaves.
Segregation: Created by states, local governments, and a massive conspiracy of ordinary Americans (google "Grosse Pointe System:" if you want a look at the dynamics of how this worked). As long as the Supreme Court respected the sovereignty of states, and obeyed the Southern-Democrat-dominated Congress's desire to not fight about it segregation continued. It was only when the Supremes gutted state power and Eisenhower literally sent in his Federal jack-booted thugs.
Conquest of the Indians: This was done by the Feds, and was actually a major reason we created the Constitution in the first place. Which means that respecting the Constitutional rights of minorities more would not have stopped it, because most of the reason the American people agreed to the Constitution was their desire to finally get their hands on Ohio.
Jim Crow: most of my fellow white people would not list this after listing Segregation, but I think it's important to do this for a simple reason: Segregation was nation-wide, but the terror-campaign that dropped the population of the CSA from 45% black to about 25% was unique to the region. Basically the Feds decided to respect Constitutional limits on their authority more, white vigilantes terrorized blacks, and even states that were majority black in 1876 quickly returned to white minority rule. The removal of Bill Sherman's jackbooted thugs was the reason this happened.
Japanese Internment: this is one for your side. But not as clear-cut as you think. It's not like the alternative was the State of California declaring a holiday to celebrate Japanese heritage.
So in terms of actual results, in the real world, strict respect for the letter of the Constitution and the limitations it imposes on the Federal government would have stopped one great evil (albeit while risking a greater evil), was irrelevant to a second (because the limitations on the Feds are specifically designed to not protect Native Americans), and actually created three more evils. OTOH disrespecting the Constitution, and in particular the limits it imposes on Federal officials directly ended three of the evils.
Somehow I doubt you'll be able to find a greater evil then slavery that was thwarted by strictly following the letter of the Constitution, and it's concept of a limited federal government.
HelI'd say that raising a multi-million-man Army is a power that would be extremely useful to an oppressor. The ability to crush the governments of states opposed to you by killing them would be very useful to an oppressor. Having the power to declare the single greatest source of wealth in every state that didn't vote for you is even better. Abe Lincoln did all three.
Your answer is wrong. It's a very uncommon form of wrong, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong.
No police officer is ever going to force you to answer their questions.
This is a straw man. I never said you had to answer the police officer's questions. That would be Unconstitutional. I said the officer'd make you answer the Census taker's questions.
And he will. He's not gonna torture you, but he will tell you that you have to answer the questions. If you refuse he will cite you for refusing to obey the lawful instructions of a Police Officer. This almost never happens, because 99% of people hiding from the census are too smart to call their local PD, but that other 1% gets an education real fast.
It's pretty instructive that the only response the databases-are-banned crowd can make to my argument is a straw man that's clearly false. Yeah a lot of the Federal databases revealed by Snowden are sketchy, but it doesn't follow from that point that all all Federal databases are banned.
Like many Americans, your definition of "oppress" is way too weak.
Nothing the NSA, the TSA, or any Federal agency has done in my lifetime (since 1981) is anything remotely resembling "oppression." It's either small beans (the entire Federal prison population is a fraction of the American total), or a lot of very worried-looking white people talking about implications of implications of could-happens. I'm not saying that we shouldn't stop doing the worst things we're doing. But I am saying we aren't the entire world. China is four times our population, and I'm pretty sure every pro-Democracy activist in the country would trade their government for ours even if all your worst nightmares about it were 100% true. If you waste the word "oppression" on a database that has clearly not been used to crush the opposition, because those bastards keep winning Congressional elections, what word is left to describe the Chinese?
As for the ability to stop others oppressing, your line works great in theory. In practice if a government doesn't have the ability to be a huge pain in the ass to innocent people it can't nail the guilty. Take the common demand that people be warned their emails are being read by the government. If everyone under surveillance gets told when they're being spied on, then private oppressors like the KKK, generic criminals, etc. all get warned.
In the specific case of the KKK the problem was that the feds never had jurisdiction over crimes Americans committed against each-other within the borders of their states, and the KKK was very careful to not be so evil it's local Governor would do his damn job. If there'd been a Constitutional rule allowing the federal bureaucracy to intervene without reference to the elected officials (who were all either pro-KKK or dependent on the votes of pols who were) one of the most evil things in US History would not have happened. OTOH if you reduce Federal power Eisenhower can't enforce brown vs. Board and we still have Jim Crow.
This is collecting data nonintrusively, so at what point would it become illegal?
As long as private companies or individuals are just taking pictures, it should remain legal. I don't believe the government, on the other hand, should be allowed to use public funds to broadly surveil ts citizens itself or by buying this kind of data. I realize, of course, this goes on all the time, but that doesn't make it right. These are my personal thoughts, so maybe I'm just crazy.
From a legal point-of-view it's not broad surveillance. They only actually surveil the license plates they pay for, and at $25 a pop nobody has the budget to do it massively. From a strict privacy rights point-of-view this is logically equivalent to a massive government database they only access occasionally, but the law isn't interested in the logic that flows from a concern with privacy rights, it's interested in the logic that flows from the Constitution. And by that logic privacy rights (aka: the Fourth Amendment) can't apply because the people doing the "search" are not government officials.
The problem with responding to government over-reach of new technology by banning them from using said technology is that it won't work. They will find a way around it, and their way around it will be worse then the problem.
In this case the solution would be to find some way to regulate Big Data on government servers, which would make it much less likely for them to pay anybody for data of this type.
I have no problem with a private individual or company doing this.
I have a big problem with the government, who has the ability to deprive me of my posessions, my freedom, and my life, being able to do this.
I wonder how else a private company can work with the government to get around restrictions placed on the government?
It's not a private company, per se, but private organizations have always been the backbone of oppression in the US. In 1880, right after Reconstruction ended, South Carolina was 60% black. Then the KKK appeared and by 1930 SC was majority white. They didn't actually kill their black minority so it was more ethnic cleansing then genocide, but still. That only worked because the government was unwilling to squish them like they deserved.
Up north segregation typically had nothing to do with the government. There was no official rule that only WASPs got to live in Grosse Pointe, but if you weren't a WASP the local realtors would not tell you that they had a home in Grosse Pointe to sell. Until the government decided to squish them the "Grosse Pointe System" operated quite effectively, and most of it's victims never even knew they'd been targeted.
So do not underestimate the power a private organization to oppress you. It does not care about your Constitutional rights. It does not care that your Senator is fighting mad on your behalf. It can't shoot you, but by the same token it doesn't have to file paperwork with a Judge before sending a guy out to go through your trash.
Posting anonymously as I already moderated. I think this is a distinction without a difference. Government and corporations are so deeply in bed I can't tell one end of the 2-backed monster from the other. Nuke it from orbit...
If corporations were truly all-powerful Keystone XL would not still be an issue. Instead of being a shrinking portion of the American workforce unions would be illegal. Etcetera, etcetera, and shit.
Reality is corporations are incredibly powerful, but nowhere near all-powerful, and if the government (included the Supreme Court) decided that Tuesday should be shoot-all-Fortune-500 Executives day Tim Cook would be screwed. If Tim Cook et al. decided Tuesday should be impeach Obama day the Senate would tell him to fuck off.
But all they're doing is observing and selling the data. They don't sell a gif of the plate to the cops.
They observe the plate with a camera, it records the data along with a date/time/location stamp, and that's what they sell.
In other words while it's true I can't sell a picture with a person in it without their permission, I could definitely take the picture, use various computerized algorithms to search for the people in it, and then sell the info that I took a picture of John Smith last Saturday at 3 PM whilst he was at the library.
Of course that's how bad things would happen in America.
We have intentionally created a Federal government that is too weak to oppress anyone. This means that it is too weak to stop our neighbors from oppressing each-other, which in turn means that the Next American Dictatorship will not be based on official government powers, but rather it will be based on the government deciding not to stop ordinary Americans from oppressing each-other. It's already happened once. The rise of Jim Crow was entirely due to excessive restrictions on the Federal government's power.
There's a reason all the dystopian Sci-Fi about oppressive governments is created in the UK, where a Parliamentary Majority has legal authority to do literly anything; whereas US-created dystopias are focused on a total collapse of the government.
Your premise is wrong. It's a very common form of wrong, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong.
The US Government has multiple dossiers on everyone. The Census bureau knows your ethnic background, where you were born, were you lived, what your occupation was, etc. There is no right to privacy from Census-takers, and if you call the police on one the officer will show up and force you to answer their questions. The IRS has even more data. Your wages, whether they're paid with a W2 (as an employee), or a 1099-MISC (independent contractor) are in their database. lots of your most personal financial details are in their database. In other words as long as the US Government can point to a clause of the Constitution, and say "life would be so much easier if we could make a massive, privacy-destroying, database about this subject," then it has the power to create the damn database. The Fourth Amendment means that the database has to be incredibly useful for it to be legal, but clearly such databases can exist because they do exist.
As for the rest of your post, there're quite a few court decisions saying that personally targeting people is not cool. But since nobody's done data dragnets in public p-laces before none of them apply to data dragnets from public places. Which means that until there're Supreme Court decisions on the issue the lower Courts have to rule that their First Amendment rights outweigh your right to privacy; particularly given that the right to privacy in the US Constitution isn't actually a right to privacy, it's a right to not give data to the Government. A repo man ain't the government.
Not in America. In America we have privacy protections so the state can't do this.
What's inevitable is that numerous private business will collect all kinds of data, and the government will buy the data. They don;t actually need RFID tags now that we have cell phones, those cell phones talk to WiFi networks, and every-damn-body (including my employer, Home Depot), has an internal WiiFi network.
Keep in mind that it doesn't take a lot to make this story true.
Say there's a really big mall that has hundreds cars in the lot on a typical Saturday. Somebody's probably behind on his car payments. If you have a database of cars that you can legally repo, a license plate reader, and 10 minutes you can probably find a car to repossess. OTOH idling in front of this one guy's house will only result in a repo if he's been stupid enough to park where you can see him. A repo-man repeats that process in 5-6 malls every weekend for a month and you've got a database that would be quite interesting to any number of people.
For example, say one of the malls includes a hotel. A wife hiring a PI to figure out whether her husband is actually going on business every weekend on business like he says would pay good money to find out whether his car is parked in the lot of the hotel he's got a receipt from.
Or take law enforcement. If the cops have a suspect whose alibi is he was at one of your malls, which he drove to in his car, then it would be really helpful for them to have access to your database.
Last I checked, The Gubment isn't using drones to send hellfire missiles into American Citizen's homes without Judicial Review.
Check again; Anwar al Awlaki was an American citizen who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen.
Oh, I get it - you mean they haven't drone-struck (striked?) any American citizen on American soil! Well, technically, that is correct, although I recall it being discussed during the manhunt of Christopher Dorner, and in fact the President and Attorney General have already discussed the legality of such an action - they agree that it would be legal to murder US citizens without trial, on American soil.
Which means it's only a matter of time before it happens. Government types aren't likely to give up a power once they've established it.
Two points:
1) It's not murder if it's legal, by definition, so you've inserted your conclusion into your argument.
2) If cops can kill a guy in a shoot-out, why wouldn't they have the ability to kill him with a sniper rifle? If they can do it with a rifle, why can't they do it with the mechanical aid of a scope? If they can use that mechanical aid, why can't they use the mechanical aid of a drone?
The key question here has nothing to do with drone technology, it's do the cops/Army/etc. ever have the ability to blow the shit out of some dude who is not actively trying to kill them. And they do. If they have an honest belief that you're an insane serial killer who will open up on the next person you see, they can take your ass out. If they turn out to be wrong your family will get a really nice settlement check, but that doesn't mean they all get arrested for murder.
We need to establish the understanding that there is a significant distinction between OBSERVING and RECORDING.
I think the best way to achieve that would be to A) increase awareness of the situation, and B) encourage people to use those same tactics against the people who are invading our privacy for personal profit - When you see some sleazeball cruising your parking lot with a camera, point one right back at him, and upload the images to a public shaming database.
Who said anything about using the data against you? It's like a credit reporting database. Sometimes it will be used against people, but sometimes it will be used for them. Yes it could screw you over, but if the PI (or the cop) checks the license plate database and finds out you've been going to work just like you said that's a good thing.
As for the difference between "observation" and "recording," that won't happen without a Constitutional Amendment.
I don't know about illegal, but it's definitely a huge pain in the ass.
Google StreetView isn't exactly a huge invasion of privacy, but they still had to jump through all kinds of legal hoops to get permission to photograph streets where ordinary people were going about their business.
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Again you're right in theory. But that's because you're assuming that everyone will always be good, and never be evil, and that everyone who can check the evil-doer will always have perfect information, be un-evil themself, etc.
In the real world a government that can thwart a private terrorist organization is always one lie away from thwarting your local girl scout troop. If it can arrest one bad guy it can arrest any good guy simply by lying on the paperwork that determines whether he's a bad guy.
And you still haven't mentioned why, if checks and balances are so useful, a country with precisely zero checks or balances (the Brits) is actually freer then us in a lot of ways.
I took a class on the Soviets once, and a little anecdote about the Eastern Bloc was quite illuminating.
The Soviet Union actually had three votes in the UN. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all had seats, and all were constituent Soviet Republics. Sometimes the Russians would change their vote at the last minute, and not everybody would get the memo in time. In the first few years of the UN the Bulgarians voted against Russia less often then Ukraine. Kruschev loosened things up a bit, which was one reason the Communist Party fired him.
The Russians wanted obedient little puppets, which meant they wanted no street demonstrations, which in turn meant that all Eastern Bloc leaders needed something very much like the Stasi or they'd be replaced.
Clearly fingerprints shall forevermore be banned as evidence in Court trials. We have a moral duty to free all prisoners convicted by fingerprint evidence. There is clearly no difference between gathering fingerprints to having 3% of the population employed as informers, and sending anyone who questions the great leader to a re-education camp.
I'm not saying what the NSA does is acceptable, or that it shouldn't be stopped. I am saying that if you seriously think this post will convince anybody to stop the damn NSA snooping you are a fucking moron. The logic simply doesn't follow. An Agency that employs a guy like Snowden isn't a very good tool of mass repression, so implying it is only makes you look crazy.
This appeals to the miniscule minority that honestly thinks government databases are evil. And it's clearly a tiny minority because I can name three Federal agencies that know more about me then the NSA, and quite a few state and local agencies are even worse.
First, in general, I am not mistaken. If the district attorney is complicit and refuses to prosecute, that only means it is a miscarriage of justice, not that it is any less inherently criminal.
I love arguing the Constitution with my fellow Americans.
They are truly convinced that the major story when the American government represses somebody isn't that the American government repressed somebody, it's that their post hoc rationalization "proving" a 225-year-old document banned this specific form of repression wasn't followed to the letter.
It never seems to occur to them that if one asshole Prosecutor can turn the entire system into a dictator's best friend, it follows that an elaborate and inefficient system of Checks and Balances is basically a really good way to generate pretentious BS.
Countries run by Prime Ministers protect freedom quite well with minimal checks and balances. Most of them have Constitutions that are difficult to change (not all: the UK Constitution could be replaced by simple majority vote in Parliament), and all have Court systems enforcing said Constitutions; but they do not have a bunch of elected institutions specifically designed to thwart each-other.
Second, in this particular case the guy was in fact actively attempting to kill people (according to the news article, at least): "Mounted cameras from three police vehicles, led by Officer Vance Plumhoff, show Rickard weaving in and out of traffic, then ramming a police car head-on. The Honda is later surrounded and as the suspect tries to back up, he sideswipes another cop car, and almost strikes one of the officers." Before he rammed the police car, shooting was not justified. After, it was (as long as the guy continued to drive recklessly... if he slowed down the chase, e.g. OJ-style, shooting would stop being justified).
You're vastly over-stating the case. He wasn't trying to kill people (first degree murder), he was trying to get away and didn't care if he hit them (involuntary manslaughter). His Girlfriend was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Al Awlaki was trying to convince people to engage in terror attacks in the US (conspiracy to commit a variety of crimes, including murder). All the collateral victims of the strike against him are the girlfriend.
The could argue the semantics of whether blowing up Al Awlaki was like shooting this dude with each-other for decades and never come to a sensible conclusion. Which is why the Courts won't step on Obama's toes and rule that he was wrong to blow the shit out of Al Awlaki.
Separation of Powers restricts all branches, which means that as long as the President can make a case that isn't obvious BS the Courts are not allowed to step on his toes. Congress could, by gutting funding for the CIA drone program and starting some nasty committee investigations, but they ain't gonna do that for Al Awlaki.
And yet again you simply assert that it is humanly possible to design such a system without giving any evidence that it is
To some degree, we already have it. If you're looking for perfection, you should look to your own imagination.
So you are not only asserting such a system is possible in theory, but are also asserting that it exists in practice?
It's fairly instructive that you didn't respond to any of the points I made about how our system has historically been abused, or the ease with which it could be abused in the future. The simple fact is you don't have an argument, you have faith in the rules. You have faith that no matter how evil the people we elect are, the rules will still be followed, not only in letter but also in spirit.
That's ridiculous BS. If we elect assholes they will find holes in the rules. They will stretch the rules. Which is pathetically easy because the Constitution fails to define any of it's terms, which means that it's very easy to shade definitions. All Checks and Balances does is ensure that a) we have to elect a lot of assholes bad shit happens, and b) it takes a lot of good guys to overcome the problems. There's a reason freeing the slaves took a Civil War and multiple Constitutional Amendments in the US, but it took one Act of Parliament.
So actual history apparently isn't good enough for you, because it happened in the past and now, we've like Amended that shit.
No, it's that you're equating the ability to stop oppression to the ability to oppress. A well-designed system rarely would allow such a thing without serious checks and balances, and your examples aren't examples of where it does. I have zero patience for long, pointless comments, so I'll cut it off here.
And yet again you simply assert that it is humanly possible to design such a system without giving any evidence that it is, in fact, possible to do so.
The problem you run into is in your basic logic. A government that cannot do things cannot stop private oppression. A government that can do things can (by definition) do oppressive things because oppressive things are (by definition) things. Time is also a huge enemy for your side. Every year your system runs is a year for bad guys to discover oversights that allow them to oppress people. In the US it would actually be trivial to create a reign of terror with only control of the White House: private militias don't have to follow any law enforcement amendment, Prosecutor Discretion means that Prosecutors are actually allowed to decide not to prosecute the guy who just necklaced the local opposition party chair on national TV, and the President appoints all Federal Prosecutors. Which means that if he decides it's a Federal crime that needs to be "investigated" the locals can't intervene, and our murder gets off until a new President appoints a new Prosecutor.
Police never have the AUTHORITY to shoot anyone who isn't actively attempting to kill people. That's the important issue here: authority, not "ability." Without authority, the use of force is criminal.
You're mistaken. Arkansas cops recently opened up on a guy who was driving away from them, allegedly because because they soberly considered the situation and decided that the odds of him killing somebody were high, but probably because some rookie panicked and the vets decided riddling the dude was the popular thing to do; yet none of them has been charged with a crime. It's likely none will ever be charged with a crime. The wrongful death lawsuit from the driver's family is almost certainly gonna get thrown out by the Supremes.
The victim wasn't actively trying to kill anybody, he was actively trying to get the fuck away and in the process he was likely to kill somebody. His girlfriend/passenger was also totally innocent of intending to kill anybody. And due to the magic of prosecutorial discretion, even if the Supremes change their minds and rule the deaths were not justified nobody will ever go to jail for the crimes.
Are you really too stupid to know the difference between police and the military?
Keep in mind that the military actually have fewer powers to use force on civilians then the police do. The posse comitatus act that allowed the KKK to drastically reduce the south's black population in the late 19th bans them from almost all law enforcement duties. But that act only applies within the 50 states.
As for powers to kill, they're quite similar. If you're in the military and you're not in a war-zone you don't get to shoot. Period. It doesn't really matter whether you hit your target, if you're on a base in Germany and you open fire on the local Imam you're going to Leavenworth. If you're in a war-zone you have to be able to prove you had some good reason to believe every shot you made wasn't heading towards some innocent person. It's generally easier to satisfy the brass that you had reason in the war-zone, because they wouldn't be giving you the extra pay if they didn't expect somebody to shoot at you, and they don't have the resources to investigate every single shell fired, but that doesn;t mean the legal theory is any different.
The government also has to abide by the Geneva Conventions. Either the target is an enemy soldier and the Geneva Conventions apply, or he is not a soldier and US criminal law (including the 5th Amendment) applies. There is no other category. Obama (and GW Bush before him) might have claimed there was, but both of them are war criminals.
Dude,a treaty? Seriously?
Without an enforcement mechanism a treaty is a press release. This is because treaties are agreements between sovereign states, and sovereign states are allowed to do anything they want. That's the definition of sovereign. For example, they can re-define words. If Obama decrees Al Awlaki is an enemy combatant, because American English the name "Al Awlaki" has always been a synonym for "enemy combatant," it doesn't matter that that's ridiculous BS. Under international law, as Head of State of a Sovereign nation, he can do that, and the only people who can argue the point are other
This is because shit that actually happens proves you wrong.
Nothing that you listed proves me wrong. We have constitutional amendments for a reason, and I believe the constitution should be followed. Again, none of your examples show that ability to help people = direct ability to oppress innocents.
So actual history apparently isn't good enough for you, because it happened in the past and now, we've like Amended that shit.
So I'll give you a scenario. Let's say you have a government, and (like all government) you give it the ability to arrest people and hold them for a time without charge if said government has reason to think they're plotting to do some bad shit. So you hire cops. Some guy tells the cops that another guy is doing the exact bad shit you banned. Now the cops have to investigate him, and if they think he's actually doing the bad shit they have the power to detain him. That is a power to oppress, because all Obama has to do is find a junkie who will lie about Mitt Romney and the cops have to arrest him.
If you make the power to detain a little bit stronger Mitt Romney gets more oppressed. If you make it weaker he gets less opressed. Which means you have to limit it, but if you limit it too much your government can't actually hold criminals long enough to convict them and de facto you don't have a government. You have Mexico, which is a free country in the sense that government won;t oppress your ass, but is not a free country in any sense of the word that matters.
Any power you mention the government can actually use can also be abused, and quite a few of them are very necessary to keep civilization going. Government is just another tool we use, not a magical land where the simple phrase "Checks and balances" means everything is always milk and honey.
BTW, if you want an example of the Fascist hell-scape that results when you have no Checks and Balances look at the Brits. The Queen can be fired by majority vote of Parliament. All treaties can be amended by majority vote of Parliament. All Judges are subject to parliamentary oversight. The Prime Minister is picked by the House of Commons, and he can appoint as many new Lords as he wants to get his agenda passed. The entire British Constitution is simply a series of acts of Parliament that can be amended by majority vote.
Which means a Parliamentary majority that wanted to enslave Britain's Jews could do the job in three readings. More like six and a bunch of new promotions to the House of Lords. The fire-the-Queen Act would probably have to be separate.
And yet it doesn't happen.
So if the cops were in a shoot-out with somebody they could call in drone support?
And they never have the ability to shoot anyone who isn't actively killing people?
You'll note that the first statement is you agreeing with me. The second is simply false, because the authorities can shoot lots of people who aren't currently actively attacking anyone. You'll note that Federal troops spent approximately zero battles during the Civil War sitting around waiting for the rebels to shoot because they were not allowed to attack unless somebody was in great danger. It wasn't unknown for them to accidentally shoot innocent civilians. And no Federal Court insisted that the Army was now an evil tool of oppression, so it should be abolished, and the rebels should keep their slaves.
Now we've got many fewer enemies, and the process for finding them is much more complicated because they don't all wear the same shirt, but that just means that there's a lot of internal process the Executive branch has to go through before OKing the target.
My position here is a lot more limited then you're assuming. I've said jack-squat about Obama's actual decision to use drones to kill American citizens. I haven't told you anything about whether I agree with the decision to kill All Awlaki without trial. What I've said is that it isn't, by definition, illegal for the Feds to blow the shit out of somebody who is a threat to the United States. And that's simply true. Circumstances exist that allow the feds to do exactly that.
Right now you're presenting no data, but plentiful logic. This means you're arguing philosophy. This is because shit that actually happens proves you wrong.
Let's look at some of the most evil things that have happened in the US.
Slavery: Created by the states, enforced by sub-state-level governments. Under a strict interpretation of the Constitution the Emancipation Proclamation was illegal which means we could not have ended slavery if we respected checks and balances. Jack-booted Federal thugs literally freed the slaves.
Segregation: Created by states, local governments, and a massive conspiracy of ordinary Americans (google "Grosse Pointe System:" if you want a look at the dynamics of how this worked). As long as the Supreme Court respected the sovereignty of states, and obeyed the Southern-Democrat-dominated Congress's desire to not fight about it segregation continued. It was only when the Supremes gutted state power and Eisenhower literally sent in his Federal jack-booted thugs.
Conquest of the Indians: This was done by the Feds, and was actually a major reason we created the Constitution in the first place. Which means that respecting the Constitutional rights of minorities more would not have stopped it, because most of the reason the American people agreed to the Constitution was their desire to finally get their hands on Ohio.
Jim Crow: most of my fellow white people would not list this after listing Segregation, but I think it's important to do this for a simple reason: Segregation was nation-wide, but the terror-campaign that dropped the population of the CSA from 45% black to about 25% was unique to the region. Basically the Feds decided to respect Constitutional limits on their authority more, white vigilantes terrorized blacks, and even states that were majority black in 1876 quickly returned to white minority rule. The removal of Bill Sherman's jackbooted thugs was the reason this happened.
Japanese Internment: this is one for your side. But not as clear-cut as you think. It's not like the alternative was the State of California declaring a holiday to celebrate Japanese heritage.
So in terms of actual results, in the real world, strict respect for the letter of the Constitution and the limitations it imposes on the Federal government would have stopped one great evil (albeit while risking a greater evil), was irrelevant to a second (because the limitations on the Feds are specifically designed to not protect Native Americans), and actually created three more evils. OTOH disrespecting the Constitution, and in particular the limits it imposes on Federal officials directly ended three of the evils.
Somehow I doubt you'll be able to find a greater evil then slavery that was thwarted by strictly following the letter of the Constitution, and it's concept of a limited federal government.
HelI'd say that raising a multi-million-man Army is a power that would be extremely useful to an oppressor. The ability to crush the governments of states opposed to you by killing them would be very useful to an oppressor. Having the power to declare the single greatest source of wealth in every state that didn't vote for you is even better. Abe Lincoln did all three.
Your answer is wrong. It's a very uncommon form of wrong, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong.
No police officer is ever going to force you to answer their questions.
This is a straw man. I never said you had to answer the police officer's questions. That would be Unconstitutional. I said the officer'd make you answer the Census taker's questions.
And he will. He's not gonna torture you, but he will tell you that you have to answer the questions. If you refuse he will cite you for refusing to obey the lawful instructions of a Police Officer. This almost never happens, because 99% of people hiding from the census are too smart to call their local PD, but that other 1% gets an education real fast.
It's pretty instructive that the only response the databases-are-banned crowd can make to my argument is a straw man that's clearly false. Yeah a lot of the Federal databases revealed by Snowden are sketchy, but it doesn't follow from that point that all all Federal databases are banned.
Like many Americans, your definition of "oppress" is way too weak.
Nothing the NSA, the TSA, or any Federal agency has done in my lifetime (since 1981) is anything remotely resembling "oppression." It's either small beans (the entire Federal prison population is a fraction of the American total), or a lot of very worried-looking white people talking about implications of implications of could-happens. I'm not saying that we shouldn't stop doing the worst things we're doing. But I am saying we aren't the entire world. China is four times our population, and I'm pretty sure every pro-Democracy activist in the country would trade their government for ours even if all your worst nightmares about it were 100% true. If you waste the word "oppression" on a database that has clearly not been used to crush the opposition, because those bastards keep winning Congressional elections, what word is left to describe the Chinese?
As for the ability to stop others oppressing, your line works great in theory. In practice if a government doesn't have the ability to be a huge pain in the ass to innocent people it can't nail the guilty. Take the common demand that people be warned their emails are being read by the government. If everyone under surveillance gets told when they're being spied on, then private oppressors like the KKK, generic criminals, etc. all get warned.
In the specific case of the KKK the problem was that the feds never had jurisdiction over crimes Americans committed against each-other within the borders of their states, and the KKK was very careful to not be so evil it's local Governor would do his damn job. If there'd been a Constitutional rule allowing the federal bureaucracy to intervene without reference to the elected officials (who were all either pro-KKK or dependent on the votes of pols who were) one of the most evil things in US History would not have happened. OTOH if you reduce Federal power Eisenhower can't enforce brown vs. Board and we still have Jim Crow.
This is collecting data nonintrusively, so at what point would it become illegal?
As long as private companies or individuals are just taking pictures, it should remain legal. I don't believe the government, on the other hand, should be allowed to use public funds to broadly surveil ts citizens itself or by buying this kind of data. I realize, of course, this goes on all the time, but that doesn't make it right. These are my personal thoughts, so maybe I'm just crazy.
From a legal point-of-view it's not broad surveillance. They only actually surveil the license plates they pay for, and at $25 a pop nobody has the budget to do it massively. From a strict privacy rights point-of-view this is logically equivalent to a massive government database they only access occasionally, but the law isn't interested in the logic that flows from a concern with privacy rights, it's interested in the logic that flows from the Constitution. And by that logic privacy rights (aka: the Fourth Amendment) can't apply because the people doing the "search" are not government officials.
The problem with responding to government over-reach of new technology by banning them from using said technology is that it won't work. They will find a way around it, and their way around it will be worse then the problem.
In this case the solution would be to find some way to regulate Big Data on government servers, which would make it much less likely for them to pay anybody for data of this type.
I have no problem with a private individual or company doing this.
I have a big problem with the government, who has the ability to deprive me of my posessions, my freedom, and my life, being able to do this.
I wonder how else a private company can work with the government to get around restrictions placed on the government?
It's not a private company, per se, but private organizations have always been the backbone of oppression in the US. In 1880, right after Reconstruction ended, South Carolina was 60% black. Then the KKK appeared and by 1930 SC was majority white. They didn't actually kill their black minority so it was more ethnic cleansing then genocide, but still. That only worked because the government was unwilling to squish them like they deserved.
Up north segregation typically had nothing to do with the government. There was no official rule that only WASPs got to live in Grosse Pointe, but if you weren't a WASP the local realtors would not tell you that they had a home in Grosse Pointe to sell. Until the government decided to squish them the "Grosse Pointe System" operated quite effectively, and most of it's victims never even knew they'd been targeted.
So do not underestimate the power a private organization to oppress you. It does not care about your Constitutional rights. It does not care that your Senator is fighting mad on your behalf. It can't shoot you, but by the same token it doesn't have to file paperwork with a Judge before sending a guy out to go through your trash.
Posting anonymously as I already moderated. I think this is a distinction without a difference. Government and corporations are so deeply in bed I can't tell one end of the 2-backed monster from the other. Nuke it from orbit...
If corporations were truly all-powerful Keystone XL would not still be an issue. Instead of being a shrinking portion of the American workforce unions would be illegal. Etcetera, etcetera, and shit.
Reality is corporations are incredibly powerful, but nowhere near all-powerful, and if the government (included the Supreme Court) decided that Tuesday should be shoot-all-Fortune-500 Executives day Tim Cook would be screwed. If Tim Cook et al. decided Tuesday should be impeach Obama day the Senate would tell him to fuck off.
I would much prefer the government. At least it has to pretend to respect the Fourth Amendment, and care when I order my Senator to yell at it.
If repo-men gave a shit what I think they'd be in a different field.
But all they're doing is observing and selling the data. They don't sell a gif of the plate to the cops.
They observe the plate with a camera, it records the data along with a date/time/location stamp, and that's what they sell.
In other words while it's true I can't sell a picture with a person in it without their permission, I could definitely take the picture, use various computerized algorithms to search for the people in it, and then sell the info that I took a picture of John Smith last Saturday at 3 PM whilst he was at the library.
Of course that's how bad things would happen in America.
We have intentionally created a Federal government that is too weak to oppress anyone. This means that it is too weak to stop our neighbors from oppressing each-other, which in turn means that the Next American Dictatorship will not be based on official government powers, but rather it will be based on the government deciding not to stop ordinary Americans from oppressing each-other. It's already happened once. The rise of Jim Crow was entirely due to excessive restrictions on the Federal government's power.
There's a reason all the dystopian Sci-Fi about oppressive governments is created in the UK, where a Parliamentary Majority has legal authority to do literly anything; whereas US-created dystopias are focused on a total collapse of the government.
Your premise is wrong. It's a very common form of wrong, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong.
The US Government has multiple dossiers on everyone. The Census bureau knows your ethnic background, where you were born, were you lived, what your occupation was, etc. There is no right to privacy from Census-takers, and if you call the police on one the officer will show up and force you to answer their questions. The IRS has even more data. Your wages, whether they're paid with a W2 (as an employee), or a 1099-MISC (independent contractor) are in their database. lots of your most personal financial details are in their database. In other words as long as the US Government can point to a clause of the Constitution, and say "life would be so much easier if we could make a massive, privacy-destroying, database about this subject," then it has the power to create the damn database. The Fourth Amendment means that the database has to be incredibly useful for it to be legal, but clearly such databases can exist because they do exist.
As for the rest of your post, there're quite a few court decisions saying that personally targeting people is not cool. But since nobody's done data dragnets in public p-laces before none of them apply to data dragnets from public places. Which means that until there're Supreme Court decisions on the issue the lower Courts have to rule that their First Amendment rights outweigh your right to privacy; particularly given that the right to privacy in the US Constitution isn't actually a right to privacy, it's a right to not give data to the Government. A repo man ain't the government.
Not in America. In America we have privacy protections so the state can't do this.
What's inevitable is that numerous private business will collect all kinds of data, and the government will buy the data. They don;t actually need RFID tags now that we have cell phones, those cell phones talk to WiFi networks, and every-damn-body (including my employer, Home Depot), has an internal WiiFi network.
Keep in mind that it doesn't take a lot to make this story true.
Say there's a really big mall that has hundreds cars in the lot on a typical Saturday. Somebody's probably behind on his car payments. If you have a database of cars that you can legally repo, a license plate reader, and 10 minutes you can probably find a car to repossess. OTOH idling in front of this one guy's house will only result in a repo if he's been stupid enough to park where you can see him. A repo-man repeats that process in 5-6 malls every weekend for a month and you've got a database that would be quite interesting to any number of people.
For example, say one of the malls includes a hotel. A wife hiring a PI to figure out whether her husband is actually going on business every weekend on business like he says would pay good money to find out whether his car is parked in the lot of the hotel he's got a receipt from.
Or take law enforcement. If the cops have a suspect whose alibi is he was at one of your malls, which he drove to in his car, then it would be really helpful for them to have access to your database.
Last I checked, The Gubment isn't using drones to send hellfire missiles into American Citizen's homes without Judicial Review.
Check again; Anwar al Awlaki was an American citizen who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen.
Oh, I get it - you mean they haven't drone-struck (striked?) any American citizen on American soil! Well, technically, that is correct, although I recall it being discussed during the manhunt of Christopher Dorner, and in fact the President and Attorney General have already discussed the legality of such an action - they agree that it would be legal to murder US citizens without trial, on American soil.
Which means it's only a matter of time before it happens. Government types aren't likely to give up a power once they've established it.
Two points:
1) It's not murder if it's legal, by definition, so you've inserted your conclusion into your argument.
2) If cops can kill a guy in a shoot-out, why wouldn't they have the ability to kill him with a sniper rifle? If they can do it with a rifle, why can't they do it with the mechanical aid of a scope? If they can use that mechanical aid, why can't they use the mechanical aid of a drone?
The key question here has nothing to do with drone technology, it's do the cops/Army/etc. ever have the ability to blow the shit out of some dude who is not actively trying to kill them. And they do. If they have an honest belief that you're an insane serial killer who will open up on the next person you see, they can take your ass out. If they turn out to be wrong your family will get a really nice settlement check, but that doesn't mean they all get arrested for murder.
Goddammit, this shit needs to stop NOW.
We need to establish the understanding that there is a significant distinction between OBSERVING and RECORDING.
I think the best way to achieve that would be to A) increase awareness of the situation, and B) encourage people to use those same tactics against the people who are invading our privacy for personal profit - When you see some sleazeball cruising your parking lot with a camera, point one right back at him, and upload the images to a public shaming database.
And how will public shame work on repo men?
Who said anything about using the data against you? It's like a credit reporting database. Sometimes it will be used against people, but sometimes it will be used for them. Yes it could screw you over, but if the PI (or the cop) checks the license plate database and finds out you've been going to work just like you said that's a good thing.
As for the difference between "observation" and "recording," that won't happen without a Constitutional Amendment.
I don't know about illegal, but it's definitely a huge pain in the ass.
Google StreetView isn't exactly a huge invasion of privacy, but they still had to jump through all kinds of legal hoops to get permission to photograph streets where ordinary people were going about their business.