Why stop there? I'd be willing to pay more taxes so that the government could install surveillance cameras in every room of every citizen's home.
Do you really think they'd do this in everyone's? No doubt that those which a certain Mr Twain implied might be America's criminal class would live in camera free homes...
This is my problem with national databases - given enough data, innocent parties can look guilty.
Including due to "innocent" mistakes in the database. Let alone the likes of identity theft being involved.
I.e. contrary to popular belief, DNA and fingerprints are *not* necessarilly unique
In many cases what is being looked at are fragments of fingerprints and DNA.
looking at the fingerprints of a small number of people who are already suspected of a crime is one thing, but given a database of *everyone's* finger prints I worry that innocent people will be dragged through the courts (and possibly convicted) purely because the database showed a match.
That said, sometimes I can't really remember why I care if someone is gathering information on me. Sure, if a company or government monitors my browsing habits or watches where I drive, they can make ads targeted or develop a psychological profile, but what's the real downside? Why should I care if they know what I buy or where I drive? Sure, if I were running for office, it might help with a smear campaign, but other than that, what does it matter? And that's really the only example that comes to mind sometimes, Hoover threatening to release tapes of MLK having sex. But at that point, they're focusing on you as a public figure and breaking the law to gather particularly embarrassing information. For other stuff for the average Joe, what's the problem?
Whilst members of government might only care about "public figures" ordinary criminal types tend to be a lot less picky.
Every criminal is going to know how to jam it. And a smart criminal will figure out how to change it, and screw with the codes. That'd make it so easy to frame anyone you want.
Or to use the system to help with crimes. e.g. tracking police cars, blackmailing people for beng places they shouldn't, making sure that someone delivering a ransom dosn't stop off at a police station, etc. Being able to tract people is something highly useful to criminals. It's also a virtual impossibility to keep criminals out of such a system.
1) The odometer
Pay a road use tax that is based on odometer readings when you get your car's yearly inspection or registration renewal.
Remember that a lot of work has gone into making tamper resistant odometers. If this check is done as part of a vehicle inspection there are likely to be signs if the odometer has been tampered with.
There - problem solved in a fashion that is more than "good enough" with minimal cost overhead and minimal loss of privacy.
The less technically complex the system the less ways in which it can go wrong. The GPS approach would require not only a GPS reciever but also a mechanism to store both where the car had been as well as the infrastructure to securely download this data. There's plenty which can go wrong 9and be made to go wrong) with GPS reception, in car data storage and downloading of data from a car.
The initial impetus for this was alternate fuel vehicles. An electric car you plug in at home now pays no road taxes like a car at the pump. The same goes for propane or natural gas vehicles you fill at home.
How many people have sources of propane or methane on their own land? Even if your house was built on a landfill, would there be enough methane leakage to be useful?
The only reason I can think that anybody would consider using GPS in favor of simply taxing fuel is that they want to LOWER the taxes on gas, thus prices at the pump. You lower gas prices, and you're GUARANTEED to get re-elected.
How long after the election do you expect these taxes to stay lowered though? Even if they do it's unlikely that the total level of tax will have gone down.
and the folks who recharge at home- always-- like the diesel owners who use home heating fuel in their cars?
If they get caught they are likely to have to pay both an estimate of the tax they have evaded plus a fine. The latter probably being partly used to fund a bounty to encourage tip offs.
They have tools for figuring out what roads need expansion and how to route traffic. You've probably seen them - they're these little black wires Or sealed rubber tubes attached to a box chained to a random road sign. They'll stay there for a couple days and then be gone.
Those count how many cars roll over them. They're not 100% accurate, but they don't need to be - you're looking for a ballpark figure anyway.
If the sensors are hooked up to something more sophisticated than just a counter it's possible to gather approximate data on speed and traffic density according to time.
I'm going to quote an old post from the "DMCA Abuse Widespread" article:
Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying . They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.
Or there may be worst possible abuses than have been guessed. It's also intersting how infrequently such concerns appear to be voiced by legislators, when critical examination of proposed legislation is should be part of the job description. An even better example would be Tony Blair claiming that laws for "Prevention of Terrorism" would never be used for supression of political speach a short time before such laws are used to remove a member of a political party from that party's annual conference.
Actually, there they want to control what you think too (limited freedom of speech IIRC disguised as other laws)
Which is probably why the first part of the first ammendment to the US Constitution is written the way it is. So as to void a catagory of laws according to their effect, as opposed to "intent" or even title.
What many people don't realize is that books like George Orwelle's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World" are slight rip-offs from Yevgeny Zamyatin 1920's "We" who was a communist but was disillusioned and had a falling out with the leaders (Lenin) and in turn was punished. Like the other two books, this one had a futuristic setting and in this general genre of books, many people assumed it was a generic warning about the future and what it could turn into when in reality (that book) it was a contemporary look at (Russian) society with criticism not very subtly veiled with the futuristic plot
Similarly "Animal Farm" is a thinly disguised history of the Russian revolution and what followed. This time presented as fantasy. Doing these kind of things (as well as using humour and satire) is a way in which authors, poets and (more recently) screen writers have presented political issues which are either highly controversial or where not holding the "correct" viewpoint is dangerous.
If there is some sort of plan to turn Americans into a passive, watched population, it's working. People actively want to be spied upon. It makes them feel "safer."
Safer in what way? Not only is there often no proof that those doing the spying are trustworthy there are even situations where there is preexisting evidence that those doing the spying are untrustworthy.
Did it occur to you, that a regulated market is not a free market,
A n unregulated (or even "deregulated") market may not be a free market. Depending on the exact nature of the regulation having regulation may make a market freeer than it would otherwise be.
and a free market may well have monopolies
A monoploy (involving a single company or a cartel) tends to be mutually exclusive with a free market. Since the existance of a "dominant player" increases the "barrier of entry" into that market.
Nevermind that well over 90% of all economists, both in academia and in the business world, agree that free trade is good for trading nations and that price controls (already enjoying support in a post to this very topic) are a proven failure.
That'll be why we have so many barriers to free trade and so called "free trade agreements" which are nothing of the sort:) Since public utilites tend to be "natural monopolies" it's rather hard to have any kind of "free market" in the first places.
The TELCOs are playing fast and loose with the concept of a free market. Most TELCOs (and cable/dsl outfits) are effectively mono/oligopolies in that they recieve exclusive contracts from the local governing bodies.
A wired telephone service is, as with other public utilities, a natural monopoly. In order to even be in a position to effectivly compete a company would have to spend vast sums of money before they had any customers. Even for wireless telephony the cost of entry can be large.
The current state of 'deregulation' is at best a half-effort which allows entrenched businesses to maintain the high entry-barriers into their field.
It can also result in lots of middlemen and resellers (sometimes one company operating under many "brands").
Sure, Sweden is "a pretty small country" (a whooping 53 countries are larger. Sweden is also a country with very low population density (154 countries are more densly populated.
Low population density is probably more of a problem when it comes to providing good cellular coverage. As an added problem parts of Sweden are within the Arctic circle, so base stations (together their communication and power links) need to be able to cope with harsh weather conditions.
Genesis doesn't cover toe number, reversed toes, or tree perching.
Not to start an arguement or anything, but there is a written record of the creation and none of evolution,
These passages are a very condensed summary (i.e. missing a lot of details) of what happened. The passage says nothing at all about the how things were done
so I accept intelligent design theory on at least as much evidence AND faith as evolutionist do.
"Intelligent design" is a rehash of some old text which has already been rehashed and reedited several times. Whereas evolution is a scientific theory. You might as well compare apples with rocks.
Apparently you've never heard of jury nulliification before.
Probably because many "legal professionals" don't want it too well known that it can be possible for ordinary people to effectivly veto a law they feel is either unjust or is being used unjustly. Nor would law enforcement or legislators, since such an outcome is effectivly telling these people tht they arn't doing their jobs properly.
Have you been selected to jury duty? I remember being screened for a jury in a trial where one of the lawyers asked the jury whether they would pass a guilty verdict for battery if a defendent had touched the toe of someone that had asked them not to touch it. Everyone, but me, said they would. Everyone, but me, said they would. Felony conviction for touching someone's toe. I think you grossly overestimate the free thinking capabilities of your fellow citizens.
Was asking such a question appropriate in the first place? Presumably this is was a criminal case where the standard is ment to be "innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt", which should require rather more than one person's unsubstantiated word. Anyway about the only good reason to exclude a person from a jury is if they know or are closely related to anyone involved in the trial. Possibly also if they have made previous public pronouncements that indicate bias towards assuming the defendant is guilty.
I've never understood why it costs "$xxx,xxx" dollars for legal fees. If they are honestly that much, why not defend yourself? Are lawyers really all that smart? If you already have a college education and can think for yourself, why not defend yourself?
At least part of the problem is "legal professionals" who dislike litigants in person. They probably can't cope with someone giving an engineer's (as opposed to a lawyer's) interpretation of a statute...
Several years ago there was an interview with Bill Gates where he admitted that bug fixes are very low on their priority. He said that people will buy new features but that they will not buy bug fixes.
If this were the whole truth Microsoft wouldn't try to activly kill off their old products.
It's not the command that is superior, so much as the underlying security model that allows a user to elevate their privileges temporarily to run any application, from installing to major setting changes. The Windows "RunAs" guffaws at installing applications(that require and admin account), using "Administrator" in the "RunAs" window, while logged in as an unprivileged user.
The underlying security model within Windows probably will enable you to do all sorts of useful things. It's more that the people who write Windows applications (as well as some who work on the UI) don't appear to know what a security model is.
My understanding of the situation is that Windows (since NT) incoporates an effective, user-level security system, that's simply not enabled out of the box.
The reason being that a non trivial number of applications break when it is enabled. In addition there is Microsoft's desire to blur the line between "user" and "administrator".
I mean, if I knew exactly what I was doing, one of the first things I'd do is make whole sections of the Registry read-only.
You really would need to know what you were doing. Quite a few things will get very upset if they can't write where they want to.
That's why UNIX is very comparmentalized and each component isn't tightly integrated with each and every other component on the system. This means when you are "retro-fitting" a subsystem of UNIX you aren't changing the ENTIRE OS, just that one piece, which is significantly easier then trying to patch a security hole in a massive pile of integrated code, like MS Windows is.
The former is known as "structured programming", the latter as "sphagetti code". Twenty odd years ago there was virtually universal consensus that the former was a good way to write programs and the latter was a very bad way to write programs. One problem identified even then was that better hardware often ment poorer code. e.g. comparing the ZX80 (4K ROM) with that of the ZX Spectrum (16K ROM), the latter didn't do anything like four times what the former did, as well as the ZX80 (and ZX81) ROM needed code to make the CPU generate the display whereas the ZX Spectrum had dedicated hardware to do this.
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Why stop there? I'd be willing to pay more taxes so that the government could install surveillance cameras in every room of every citizen's home.
Do you really think they'd do this in everyone's?
No doubt that those which a certain Mr Twain implied might be America's criminal class would live in camera free homes...
This is my problem with national databases - given enough data, innocent parties can look guilty.
Including due to "innocent" mistakes in the database. Let alone the likes of identity theft being involved.
I.e. contrary to popular belief, DNA and fingerprints are *not* necessarilly unique
In many cases what is being looked at are fragments of fingerprints and DNA.
looking at the fingerprints of a small number of people who are already suspected of a crime is one thing, but given a database of *everyone's* finger prints I worry that innocent people will be dragged through the courts (and possibly convicted) purely because the database showed a match.
IIRC this has already happened.
That said, sometimes I can't really remember why I care if someone is gathering information on me. Sure, if a company or government monitors my browsing habits or watches where I drive, they can make ads targeted or develop a psychological profile, but what's the real downside? Why should I care if they know what I buy or where I drive? Sure, if I were running for office, it might help with a smear campaign, but other than that, what does it matter? And that's really the only example that comes to mind sometimes, Hoover threatening to release tapes of MLK having sex. But at that point, they're focusing on you as a public figure and breaking the law to gather particularly embarrassing information. For other stuff for the average Joe, what's the problem?
Whilst members of government might only care about "public figures" ordinary criminal types tend to be a lot less picky.
How do they propose to install one of these devices in any of my vehicles??
Most likely by only allowing vehicles so equipped to operate on the public roads. Unless you are claiming to have "stealth cars"...
Every criminal is going to know how to jam it. And a smart criminal will figure out how to change it, and screw with the codes. That'd make it so easy to frame anyone you want.
Or to use the system to help with crimes. e.g. tracking police cars, blackmailing people for beng places they shouldn't, making sure that someone delivering a ransom dosn't stop off at a police station, etc.
Being able to tract people is something highly useful to criminals. It's also a virtual impossibility to keep criminals out of such a system.
1) The odometer
Pay a road use tax that is based on odometer readings when you get your car's yearly inspection or registration renewal.
Remember that a lot of work has gone into making tamper resistant odometers. If this check is done as part of a vehicle inspection there are likely to be signs if the odometer has been tampered with.
There - problem solved in a fashion that is more than "good enough" with minimal cost overhead and minimal loss of privacy.
The less technically complex the system the less ways in which it can go wrong.
The GPS approach would require not only a GPS reciever but also a mechanism to store both where the car had been as well as the infrastructure to securely download this data. There's plenty which can go wrong 9and be made to go wrong) with GPS reception, in car data storage and downloading of data from a car.
The initial impetus for this was alternate fuel vehicles. An electric car you plug in at home now pays no road taxes like a car at the pump. The same goes for propane or natural gas vehicles you fill at home.
How many people have sources of propane or methane on their own land? Even if your house was built on a landfill, would there be enough methane leakage to be useful?
The only reason I can think that anybody would consider using GPS in favor of simply taxing fuel is that they want to LOWER the taxes on gas, thus prices at the pump. You lower gas prices, and you're GUARANTEED to get re-elected.
How long after the election do you expect these taxes to stay lowered though? Even if they do it's unlikely that the total level of tax will have gone down.
and the folks who recharge at home- always-- like the diesel owners who use home heating fuel in their cars?
If they get caught they are likely to have to pay both an estimate of the tax they have evaded plus a fine. The latter probably being partly used to fund a bounty to encourage tip offs.
They have tools for figuring out what roads need expansion and how to route traffic. You've probably seen them - they're these little black wires
Or sealed rubber tubes
attached to a box chained to a random road sign. They'll stay there for a couple days and then be gone.
Those count how many cars roll over them. They're not 100% accurate, but they don't need to be - you're looking for a ballpark figure anyway.
If the sensors are hooked up to something more sophisticated than just a counter it's possible to gather approximate data on speed and traffic density according to time.
I'm going to quote an old post from the "DMCA Abuse Widespread" article:
Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying . They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.
Or there may be worst possible abuses than have been guessed. It's also intersting how infrequently such concerns appear to be voiced by legislators, when critical examination of proposed legislation is should be part of the job description.
An even better example would be Tony Blair claiming that laws for "Prevention of Terrorism" would never be used for supression of political speach a short time before such laws are used to remove a member of a political party from that party's annual conference.
Actually, there they want to control what you think too (limited freedom of speech IIRC disguised as other laws)
Which is probably why the first part of the first ammendment to the US Constitution is written the way it is. So as to void a catagory of laws according to their effect, as opposed to "intent" or even title.
What many people don't realize is that books like George Orwelle's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World" are slight rip-offs from Yevgeny Zamyatin 1920's "We" who was a communist but was disillusioned and had a falling out with the leaders (Lenin) and in turn was punished. Like the other two books, this one had a futuristic setting and in this general genre of books, many people assumed it was a generic warning about the future and what it could turn into when in reality (that book) it was a contemporary look at (Russian) society with criticism not very subtly veiled with the futuristic plot
Similarly "Animal Farm" is a thinly disguised history of the Russian revolution and what followed. This time presented as fantasy.
Doing these kind of things (as well as using humour and satire) is a way in which authors, poets and (more recently) screen writers have presented political issues which are either highly controversial or where not holding the "correct" viewpoint is dangerous.
If there is some sort of plan to turn Americans into a passive, watched population, it's working. People actively want to be spied upon. It makes them feel "safer."
Safer in what way? Not only is there often no proof that those doing the spying are trustworthy there are even situations where there is preexisting evidence that those doing the spying are untrustworthy.
Did it occur to you, that a regulated market is not a free market,
A n unregulated (or even "deregulated") market may not be a free market. Depending on the exact nature of the regulation having regulation may make a market freeer than it would otherwise be.
and a free market may well have monopolies
A monoploy (involving a single company or a cartel) tends to be mutually exclusive with a free market. Since the existance of a "dominant player" increases the "barrier of entry" into that market.
Nevermind that well over 90% of all economists, both in academia and in the business world, agree that free trade is good for trading nations and that price controls (already enjoying support in a post to this very topic) are a proven failure.
:)
That'll be why we have so many barriers to free trade and so called "free trade agreements" which are nothing of the sort
Since public utilites tend to be "natural monopolies" it's rather hard to have any kind of "free market" in the first places.
The TELCOs are playing fast and loose with the concept of a free market. Most TELCOs (and cable/dsl outfits) are effectively mono/oligopolies in that they recieve exclusive contracts from the local governing bodies.
A wired telephone service is, as with other public utilities, a natural monopoly. In order to even be in a position to effectivly compete a company would have to spend vast sums of money before they had any customers. Even for wireless telephony the cost of entry can be large.
The current state of 'deregulation' is at best a half-effort which allows entrenched businesses to maintain the high entry-barriers into their field.
It can also result in lots of middlemen and resellers (sometimes one company operating under many "brands").
Sure, Sweden is "a pretty small country" (a whooping 53 countries are larger. Sweden is also a country with very low population density (154 countries are more densly populated.
Low population density is probably more of a problem when it comes to providing good cellular coverage. As an added problem parts of Sweden are within the Arctic circle, so base stations (together their communication and power links) need to be able to cope with harsh weather conditions.
Genesis doesn't cover toe number, reversed toes, or tree perching.
Not to start an arguement or anything, but there is a written record of the creation and none of evolution,
These passages are a very condensed summary (i.e. missing a lot of details) of what happened.
The passage says nothing at all about the how things were done
so I accept intelligent design theory on at least as much evidence AND faith as evolutionist do.
"Intelligent design" is a rehash of some old text which has already been rehashed and reedited several times. Whereas evolution is a scientific theory.
You might as well compare apples with rocks.
Apparently you've never heard of jury nulliification before.
Probably because many "legal professionals" don't want it too well known that it can be possible for ordinary people to effectivly veto a law they feel is either unjust or is being used unjustly. Nor would law enforcement or legislators, since such an outcome is effectivly telling these people tht they arn't doing their jobs properly.
Have you been selected to jury duty? I remember being screened for a jury in a trial where one of the lawyers asked the jury whether they would pass a guilty verdict for battery if a defendent had touched the toe of someone that had asked them not to touch it. Everyone, but me, said they would. Everyone, but me, said they would. Felony conviction for touching someone's toe. I think you grossly overestimate the free thinking capabilities of your fellow citizens.
Was asking such a question appropriate in the first place? Presumably this is was a criminal case where the standard is ment to be "innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt", which should require rather more than one person's unsubstantiated word.
Anyway about the only good reason to exclude a person from a jury is if they know or are closely related to anyone involved in the trial. Possibly also if they have made previous public pronouncements that indicate bias towards assuming the defendant is guilty.
I've never understood why it costs "$xxx,xxx" dollars for legal fees. If they are honestly that much, why not defend yourself? Are lawyers really all that smart? If you already have a college education and can think for yourself, why not defend yourself?
At least part of the problem is "legal professionals" who dislike litigants in person. They probably can't cope with someone giving an engineer's (as opposed to a lawyer's) interpretation of a statute...
Several years ago there was an interview with Bill Gates where he admitted that bug fixes are very low on their priority. He said that people will buy new features but that they will not buy bug fixes.
If this were the whole truth Microsoft wouldn't try to activly kill off their old products.
It's not the command that is superior, so much as the underlying security model that allows a user to elevate their privileges temporarily to run any application, from installing to major setting changes. The Windows "RunAs" guffaws at installing applications(that require and admin account), using "Administrator" in the "RunAs" window, while logged in as an unprivileged user.
The underlying security model within Windows probably will enable you to do all sorts of useful things. It's more that the people who write Windows applications (as well as some who work on the UI) don't appear to know what a security model is.
My understanding of the situation is that Windows (since NT) incoporates an effective, user-level security system, that's simply not enabled out of the box.
The reason being that a non trivial number of applications break when it is enabled. In addition there is Microsoft's desire to blur the line between "user" and "administrator".
I mean, if I knew exactly what I was doing, one of the first things I'd do is make whole sections of the Registry read-only.
You really would need to know what you were doing. Quite a few things will get very upset if they can't write where they want to.
That's why UNIX is very comparmentalized and each component isn't tightly integrated with each and every other component on the system. This means when you are "retro-fitting" a subsystem of UNIX you aren't changing the ENTIRE OS, just that one piece, which is significantly easier then trying to patch a security hole in a massive pile of integrated code, like MS Windows is.
The former is known as "structured programming", the latter as "sphagetti code". Twenty odd years ago there was virtually universal consensus that the former was a good way to write programs and the latter was a very bad way to write programs. One problem identified even then was that better hardware often ment poorer code. e.g. comparing the ZX80 (4K ROM) with that of the ZX Spectrum (16K ROM), the latter didn't do anything like four times what the former did, as well as the ZX80 (and ZX81) ROM needed code to make the CPU generate the display whereas the ZX Spectrum had dedicated hardware to do this.