With all of the problems of e-voting, and the lesser problems of paper ballot voting, I think it has become obvious that what we need is secure tallying, not secure voting. We're pretty good at getting people to properly mark up a ballot, hanging chads notwithstanding. Counting them up seems to be the source of problems. Whether is poll workers stuffing boxes or throwing them in the river, or electronic machines silently changing scores, counting is the issue.
Voting boils down to this: we want each legitimate voter to be able to change the tally of each issue or office by exactly one vote. My solution is to make each voter responsible for counting the tally and incrementing this by one.
I haven't worked out all the details, but stay with me in this bit of 'political science fiction':
Imagine that you walk into a polling station. You already have your PGP voting string that belongs to you and you alone. It was mailed to you by the board of elections. Another voter has just finished voting, and she hands a PGP encrypted string of the tally back to a poll worker. The poll worker checks the strings, and they are still legitimate. She hands the strings to you. This is where the crypto-mathematical hoo-doo comes in: using your PGP voting string, you can only affect each office race or issue by exactly one yes/no vote, and still be able to hand a valid tally string back to the poll worker. If you try to add two votes, it corrupts the string. If you try to subtract votes, it corrupts the string. You vote appropriately, and the poll worker checks the hash or something, and sees that the strings is valid. At the end of the night, all of the tally strings are decrypted, added up, and winners are declared.
I am not a mathematician; I probably will never be able to figure out how to make these strings. But I don't see any reason it can't be done. It probably won't work exactly as I described, but I am just trying to spark the imagination of minds more powerful than mine.
Other people have mentioned systems where you get a receipt that you can use later to verify your vote. The problem with that is you *cannot* that your verified vote is affecting the tally without identifying your specific vote in the official tally. An optical scan might tell you that your ballot is for Candidate Jones and yes on Issue #15, but you don't know whether your ballot is in the official tally. If you looked at the tally, you will probably find several ballots that are exactly the same as yours -- yes on Jones and issue #15 -- but you don't know if any one of them is yours. A machine might count 40 ballots that are identical to yours, but only decide to keep 15. Those 40 votes might think their votes were counted if they bother to check, but they are all looking at the same 15 ballots, each thinking that theirs is in there.
Sure, we've all had the roommate who can't pay rent or bills on time, but always manages to find money for a sack of weed. But the people I'm talking about who are in debt or bankrupt are people who were doing everything right, living within their means, who had a sudden emergency, such as a firing, lay-off, or health situation, who have nothing to rely on.
Check out this article on how a job loss. Read this one on how sudden illnesses are bankrupting Americans. I understand that half of the bankruptcies occurring in the US are due to medical bills. There are some 40-50 million working Americans who have no health insurance.
These scapegoats such as welfare queens and people buying PSPs over paying rent do exist, but they are in the small minority. I'm not swallowing the bullshit anymore. Corporate greed is destroying the middle class. Corporations are reporting record profits, the economy is growing, and the stock market is doing well. Why isn't this rising tide lifting all boats? It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that it's because the people who decide where the money goes aren't sharing it with the rest of us.
I know the libertarian ideal is to keep downsizing your life until you don't have any debt. Move from a house to a condo, to an apartment, to a trailer home, to a cabin in the woods, to a mud hut. Hey, if everybody keeps downsizing in response to being paid less and getting laid off from their jobs, we will all be living in tent cities. How about we instead demand our fair share from corporations.
Some people can't just downsize their life at the snap of a finger. If you have three kids, you can't just get rid of one. If you have a house, you can't immediately sell it for what it's worth. If you have a car you owe a lot of money on, you still need it to find a new job while you might be trying to sell it and line up a new car at the same time. If you have a sick child who runs up a bunch of medical bills that you can't afford, I'll bet the libertarian answer is that he was too sick for his parents to take care of, and he should have died. Well, after you've already treated him and run up the bills, you can't just kill him and ask for a refund for all of the treatments that were performed.
It's a question of what kind of country do we want to have. Do we want to pay some taxes to support single mothers and children, or hopeless alcoholics, like they do in Europe? Or do we want to have homeless families living in the streets, with ghettos, shanty towns, and poor villages like they do in South America? I think most libertarians are comfortable with ghettos and shanty towns. I'm not.
There are so many social programs that have built America, such as rural electrification, the GI bill, the national highway system. We are a nation of entrepreneurial self-starters, but to pretend that this alone built the nation and that social programs only make people lazy is in direct contradiction of the facts. Take the example of Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden. They have socialized health care, education, and retirement, yet the World Economic Forum says those countries have the most competitive economies in the world.
I thought technology, industry, and education were supposed to make our lives better. We might be the first generation of Americans to have a lesser standard of living than our parents. Why should this be? Our parents and granparents were the first generation to have 40-hour work weeks with overtime, a retirement, and health insurance, all provided by unions. Before then, people worked 60 to 80 hour weeks in factories and on farms. When they were injured or became unhealthy, they were simply fired. No retirement. Some were even slaves! Are our parents and grandparents lazier than their predecessors? No, they
You know, after reading, I guess I half-agree with you. I'll probably come around after a while...;)
You are right. The current crop of awareness style programs, be they computer programs or whatever, are not capable of real-time total awareness.
I don't like people getting used to the idea that this is okay for the government to do. I want to say that this libertarian fearmongering is okay in order to keep these programs from operating, but now that I am conscious of my own hypocracy, I can't agree to it. We as individuals and as a country must be guided by our greater nature rather than fear, anger, and hatred.
It just makes me slightly more cynical about human nature and the people in charge. Certainly some proponents of programs like TIA are fascists, the kind of crazy people in leadership positions like in Dr. Strangelove, totally out of touch with reality and think that these programs will control the masses for their own good. But others must be aware that the technology isn't up to snuff, and just let them ride and let the public *think* that these programs actually *can* help fight terrorists, or even track everybody in the US. They will let fear do it's work, and people will be self-corrective in their behavior.
Sigh. Greed, thirst for power, incompetence, and apathy everywhere.
Now I understand why Skeletor's evil henchmen were incompetent boobs. Those show creators were giving us valuable lessons for adulthood.;)
"And as a reminder for those of you who got your hopes up in November of 2006 -- you might want to look at who was President in 1994. Hint: His last name wasn't "Bush"." What exactly are you saying? His last name wasn't 'Democrat' either, but that's who we voted for in '06.
Oh wait. Do you mean to say that it was Clinton the Democrat who passed all these horrible, evil laws back in 1994? So that means that these '06 Democrats aren't any different from Bush?
But wait a minute! The president doesn't make laws! He just signs them. Hm, who was in control of congress back in 1994, making evil Bill Clinton sign all these horrible, horrible laws? Oh yeah, it was Newt Gingrich, and his Contract with America Republicans.
"Yes, and if we had a dictatorship it wouldn't matter what the f*** we think about cameras because they would have them if they wanted them...."
I'm worried about the in-between time, when you don't have a dictator, but you have someone who is serious about becoming one and has a chance to become one. Becoming a dictator doesn't happen overnight. It's a long, slow process of amassing power. If he were to gain some control of these cameras at some, it would be a major power gain for him.
"How are cameras any different than police patrolling the streets? The answer is, they are not."
You are quite wrong.
Imagine that a government without cameras everywhere. If that government wanted to track someone, they would have to send a police officer to follow that person. The person being followed might become aware that somebody was following him.
Now imagine a government that had cameras everywhere, watching everything and everybody in public. Suppose they wanted to start tracking a person using these cameras. How and when would that person become aware that he specifically were being watched through the cameras? For all he knows, the cameras are just staring at the public like they've always done.
That's just one example of how cameras are completely different from police patrols. If you thought it for just a moment, you would easily come up with more.
I guess I understand your point now, and now I simply disagree with you.
The problem with cameras as a double-edged sword is that the officials are still in charge of the cameras and storing the tapes. Cameras have a way of turning off at convenient times, and files containing tapes can get 'lost'. For cameras to truly be a double-edged sword, we need the cameras to be readily accessible to the public, and have multiple distributed public archives. I think that may already be happening with public webcams. I think what would really do it is Sousveillance.
Coups and dictators are supported by individuals who believe that the public need to be controlled and managed by strong leaders. Every step that a dictator makes towards total control is legitimate.
When mass disappearances happen, those taking part will already think that the opposition needs to disappear. There will be some excuse, like the opposition had a plan to overthrow the government, the opposition was supporting terrorists, this opposition member is a rapist, etc.
With digital cameras and the internet, you don't even need a lot of people to monitor the opposition. You might just need a room of 10 guys to monitor various cameras in various cities remotely. We're not talking about a security guard sitting in front of a board of television screens.
Just look at programs like Total Information Awareness, which were launched shortly after 9/11. The idea was to take every electronic bit of data on everybody and compile it into a master database. All of your public records, your bank records, your shopping records, your credit card records -- everything. Combine that with real-time GPS tracking and voice monitoring via your cell phone, with visuals provided by complete camera coverage. You are dealing with someone who has a serious information advantage over you.
"First, I fail to see how this different from the situation as it currently exists"
I remember just a few years ago, there were no Department of Homeland Security cameras. Heck, there wasn't even any Department of Homeland Security! The only place there were cameras were overlooking the cashier counter at a gas station or staring down the aisles of a department store. Now we have *government* cameras watching public places. This is new.
"Second, these are cameras in public locations, not cameras that follow you into your home and place of work"
Would you be okay with cameras watching your every step in public, from the door of your house to the door of your workplace?
"Third, once you've corrupted the police and the military, the cameras aren't going to be much help, especially when they capture your goons kidnapping people on camera."
If you already control the people who control the cameras, those cameras aren't going to be recording your goons. Or, those tapes would never see the light of day. Once the dictator has rounded up the opposition, it's game over. There will be almost no one standing up to demand release of the tapes of goons grabbing people off of the street. The few who do will also disappear.
The Benjamin Franklin quote doesn't fit exactly (this is not temporary martial law, but a permanent increase in police powers), but the basic idea is the same.
Imagine for a moment that a man rose to power in England, and he wanted to become an absolute dictator. Only problem is, there is an unorganized group of people who are opposed to him and his agenda. The include business people, members of the public, activists, and people in government. Now this dictator-wannabe has created a group of lackeys and henchmen, and some of them have infiltrated the police and the military. They track each and every person opposed to the dictator. Then, one day, when the signal is given, they send out thugs in vans and round each and every person up. They know where each person was because they were watching them on the camera. The next day, the guy installs himself dictator and encounters no opposition.
Also, a rogue cop could monitor a neighbor or ex-wife or something like that.
"Anecdotally, we have the PS3 shopper who fretted about missing their rent payment to get a PS3. Statistically, we have the national negative savings rate. That's enough to convince me."
The plural of 'anecdote' is not data. Yes, there are people that can handle money and always screw it up.
The fact that we have a negative savings rate tells me that people aren't getting paid enough to handle their daily living expenses. Everyone I know is responsible -- going to school, going to work, raising kids -- yet broke or getting deeper into debt. So, all the people I know, versus an nth-hand story about a guy who bought a PS3 and couldn't pay rent.
I'm not convinced that people alive today are especially spendthrifty. To say that people today are broke and going into debt because they are buying large screen TVs is too convenient an excuse for corporations who have been busting unions and outsourcing jobs for the past 25 years. The number one employer in the US used to be GM, which provided high wages, health care, and retirement. Now, it's Walmart, which pays at or near minimum wage, and provides no benefits. All of the statistics I have heard show that the average worker in the US is getting a smaller share of the pie than they were 25 years ago.
I'm in my late 20s. Both of my parents are health care workers and they have a decent retirement. However, a lot of my friend's parents lost most, if not all, of their money in the tech crash of the late 90s. Now, those friends of mine are paying student loans, making entry-level wages, with no health insurance or retirement benefits, and now they are worried about having to support their parents also.
The only way are grandparents were able to make it out of the Depression were because of social programs like social security, the WPA, medicare, and medicaid. 50 years before the Depression we had slavery. After that, we had sharecroppers and mine workers who went in to debt working for their employers. We had child laborers working 80 hour weeks. People formed unions and were beaten up and killed. My grandpa tells me stories of the Ohio National Guard firing on striking workers camped outside the factories in Toledo, Ohio. School kids had fired slingshots at the factory buildings on their way home from school, breaking windows, and the Guard thought that the strikers were firing. So they returned fire and killed some of the strikers.
My grandpa is one of the most bigoted, conservative people you will ever meet. But he is strongly pro-union - Hh practically spits when he says the word 'scab' when telling a story - because he is well aware that companies are out to F* us in the A*. They would have slaves and serfs if they were able.
I totally agree with you about what you said about job skills, valuing yourself, and putting your own interests first.
However, while the economy as a whole is improving, only a small percentage are seeing a benefit. The middle class is shrinking and the jobs that are being created are low-paying jobs without benefits, and they are replacing high-paying union jobs with benefits. Bankruptcies are at an all-time high. It's not just people buying flat-screen TVs and 16" rims, but families paying for cars to get to work, housing, and their children's school.
When the middle class shrinks, most people go into poverty, while a few become wealthy. I fear the US might look like most South American countries in 50 years, with a dozen or so families owning most of the country while most everyone else lives in near poverty.
I know there are problems with unions, and as a young person, a lot of my friends who have had union jobs have complained that it allows slackers to slack. But, I view them as a necessary evil, like government, as a check and balance against corporate power. Business people had slaves and serfs 150 years ago; there's nothing special about today that would stop them from instituting slavery again if it were possible. Perhaps one solution to have competition between unions in a workplace.
I had a manager when I worked at a gas station who was verbally abusive. It wasn't a matter of volume; it was the tone. It was like he was hocking venom at you or flicking daggers.
"I can't believe this shit..." Made you feel like you were a three-year-old. I was 18 at the time and I didn't know how to mentally disengage from him. I was the best employee ( the other long-term employees were adults with no education and just didn't care at all ). I did a good job; he told me I was his best employee. I wanted to do good, but when I screwed up, however minor, he would berate me like he did the others that worked there. I just took it like a bitch; while the other folks would get in heated arguments. I felt bad about myself. I had all kinds of stress responses -- headaches, muscle aches, etc. I developed GIRD (gastro-intestinal reflux disease) and the doctor prescribed me Nexium -- at 18 years old. So much for western medicine. The real answer was to leave the mentally and emotionally unhealthy environment. Which I did.
I think the reason that there is so much anti-depressant use these days is because, as our economy slowly swirls the drain, we have no mental health care industry to take care of people dealing with the fallout of not having enough resources to provide for themselves and their families. Having more opportunities to talk about our feelings would be good, but I think the real answer is more power to the individual in the workplace.
In pursuing my anthropology degree in college, we watched a video of a native healer in Uganda or somewhere. His patient was having general sickness such as tiredness, upset stomach, etc. The healer guy went into his trance and danced around wildly. The healer diagnosed the problem being with the man's father-in-law or something like that, and within minutes, the father-in-law was in the room, and they were having it out -- emotionally airing their grievances, arguing, and coming to a new agreement, all mediated by this crazy medicine man. The whole village was gathered around, watching, and I have no doubt that they would help enforce the new agreement.
It would be great if I could have sat down with my then-manager and explained what he was doing wrong. If he could learn to manage by also being nice. But no, my doctor had no authority to call him into the office, I had no authority as a kid to question how "The Real World" works, and, being the best manager in the district, the oil company had no incentive in getting him to change his ways. He continued emotionally abusing people, perpetuating burn-out and turnover. So the abusive, destructive environment continued.
In the US, do whatever BS management tells you or get fired. The rest of the department has been outsourced, so you have to do the jobs of 3 people. With unions on the wane, it is just a lowly individual against a vast corporation. The working class had their jobs outsourced to the 3rd world, and now it is happening to white collar jobs. All the while the media tells us that we can mitigate our unhappiness with new cars, alcohol, and bling. Terrorists attack us on our own soil, we are entering an endless war against a nebulous enemy called "Terror" and Bush says the best thing we can do is go shopping.
I realize a lot of slashdotters are well-educated and many of them have decent jobs. It seems to me that this is a child-like view of "Things are going well for me; if anyone else is having a problem, they are just not working hard enough." Well, the $#i+ seems to be hitting the fan with outsourcing and now the white-collar middle class is beginning to feel the effects of limitless corporate power. If left unchecked it will lead to virtual slavery and serfdom.
I think what happens is that there are librarians who are in charge of handling requests for documents or information of any type -- whether it's from the government or the public, through FOIA requests. They are in charge of determining whether they organization or individual has a right to see the documents they are requesting.
So, what happens now is that those librarians take into account the criteria of the FOIA act in deciding whether or not to release the documents.
And, of course, the FOIA give individuals a leg to stand on in court when the government refuses to release documents.
I'm simplifying quite a bit, and I know I'm not entirely accurate. There is not a single, unified store of government documents, nor a single clearinghouse for the release of documents. We have a fractured government, and each agency has it's own archives, procedures, etc.
Why would I trust the traditional media to tell me accurately about MS' new OS, when it has so brazenly carried water for MS for the past decade and a half? Reporters don't even understand the computers they have in front of them (nor should they really), how can they critically examine claims from MS' marketing team?
What I am looking for is actual slashdot-reading, critically-minded, computer-science-major geeks to make the case why Vista will live up to its marketing. So far I haven't heard it.
"For it to be able to handle not only hundreds of languages but hundreds of dialects and accents for each language really boggles the mind. If MS pulls this off with a success I'll be amazed."
Prepare to be underwhelmed.
Seriously, have you ever heard of such a level of voice recognition in any technology anywhere? Has anyone they done this with any speech recognition ever?
If not, why do you think MS would be capable of doing it, and be able to provide it in a consumer-level OS?
How have so many geeks fallen for MS' marketing-fu? I thought we were inoculated.
For what won't be the last time, Vista is simply an XP clone with eye-candy and DRM so you can't install any pirated software.
Won't a "Super" flu only be "Super" in the sense that it resists the recently developed treatments and vaccines? In other words, a super flu really doesn't pose any more danger than the regular flu did before we had a vaccine for the regular flu. We are living with the super flu now.
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With all of the problems of e-voting, and the lesser problems of paper ballot voting, I think it has become obvious that what we need is secure tallying, not secure voting. We're pretty good at getting people to properly mark up a ballot, hanging chads notwithstanding. Counting them up seems to be the source of problems. Whether is poll workers stuffing boxes or throwing them in the river, or electronic machines silently changing scores, counting is the issue.
Voting boils down to this: we want each legitimate voter to be able to change the tally of each issue or office by exactly one vote. My solution is to make each voter responsible for counting the tally and incrementing this by one.
I haven't worked out all the details, but stay with me in this bit of 'political science fiction':
Imagine that you walk into a polling station. You already have your PGP voting string that belongs to you and you alone. It was mailed to you by the board of elections. Another voter has just finished voting, and she hands a PGP encrypted string of the tally back to a poll worker. The poll worker checks the strings, and they are still legitimate. She hands the strings to you. This is where the crypto-mathematical hoo-doo comes in: using your PGP voting string, you can only affect each office race or issue by exactly one yes/no vote, and still be able to hand a valid tally string back to the poll worker. If you try to add two votes, it corrupts the string. If you try to subtract votes, it corrupts the string. You vote appropriately, and the poll worker checks the hash or something, and sees that the strings is valid. At the end of the night, all of the tally strings are decrypted, added up, and winners are declared.
I am not a mathematician; I probably will never be able to figure out how to make these strings. But I don't see any reason it can't be done. It probably won't work exactly as I described, but I am just trying to spark the imagination of minds more powerful than mine.
Other people have mentioned systems where you get a receipt that you can use later to verify your vote. The problem with that is you *cannot* that your verified vote is affecting the tally without identifying your specific vote in the official tally. An optical scan might tell you that your ballot is for Candidate Jones and yes on Issue #15, but you don't know whether your ballot is in the official tally. If you looked at the tally, you will probably find several ballots that are exactly the same as yours -- yes on Jones and issue #15 -- but you don't know if any one of them is yours. A machine might count 40 ballots that are identical to yours, but only decide to keep 15. Those 40 votes might think their votes were counted if they bother to check, but they are all looking at the same 15 ballots, each thinking that theirs is in there.
Sure, we've all had the roommate who can't pay rent or bills on time, but always manages to find money for a sack of weed. But the people I'm talking about who are in debt or bankrupt are people who were doing everything right, living within their means, who had a sudden emergency, such as a firing, lay-off, or health situation, who have nothing to rely on.
Check out this article on how a job loss. Read this one on how sudden illnesses are bankrupting Americans. I understand that half of the bankruptcies occurring in the US are due to medical bills. There are some 40-50 million working Americans who have no health insurance.
These scapegoats such as welfare queens and people buying PSPs over paying rent do exist, but they are in the small minority. I'm not swallowing the bullshit anymore. Corporate greed is destroying the middle class. Corporations are reporting record profits, the economy is growing, and the stock market is doing well. Why isn't this rising tide lifting all boats? It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that it's because the people who decide where the money goes aren't sharing it with the rest of us.
I know the libertarian ideal is to keep downsizing your life until you don't have any debt. Move from a house to a condo, to an apartment, to a trailer home, to a cabin in the woods, to a mud hut. Hey, if everybody keeps downsizing in response to being paid less and getting laid off from their jobs, we will all be living in tent cities. How about we instead demand our fair share from corporations.
Some people can't just downsize their life at the snap of a finger. If you have three kids, you can't just get rid of one. If you have a house, you can't immediately sell it for what it's worth. If you have a car you owe a lot of money on, you still need it to find a new job while you might be trying to sell it and line up a new car at the same time. If you have a sick child who runs up a bunch of medical bills that you can't afford, I'll bet the libertarian answer is that he was too sick for his parents to take care of, and he should have died. Well, after you've already treated him and run up the bills, you can't just kill him and ask for a refund for all of the treatments that were performed.
It's a question of what kind of country do we want to have. Do we want to pay some taxes to support single mothers and children, or hopeless alcoholics, like they do in Europe? Or do we want to have homeless families living in the streets, with ghettos, shanty towns, and poor villages like they do in South America? I think most libertarians are comfortable with ghettos and shanty towns. I'm not.
There are so many social programs that have built America, such as rural electrification, the GI bill, the national highway system. We are a nation of entrepreneurial self-starters, but to pretend that this alone built the nation and that social programs only make people lazy is in direct contradiction of the facts. Take the example of Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden. They have socialized health care, education, and retirement, yet the World Economic Forum says those countries have the most competitive economies in the world.
I thought technology, industry, and education were supposed to make our lives better. We might be the first generation of Americans to have a lesser standard of living than our parents. Why should this be? Our parents and granparents were the first generation to have 40-hour work weeks with overtime, a retirement, and health insurance, all provided by unions. Before then, people worked 60 to 80 hour weeks in factories and on farms. When they were injured or became unhealthy, they were simply fired. No retirement. Some were even slaves! Are our parents and grandparents lazier than their predecessors? No, they
You know, after reading, I guess I half-agree with you. I'll probably come around after a while... ;)
;)
You are right. The current crop of awareness style programs, be they computer programs or whatever, are not capable of real-time total awareness.
I don't like people getting used to the idea that this is okay for the government to do. I want to say that this libertarian fearmongering is okay in order to keep these programs from operating, but now that I am conscious of my own hypocracy, I can't agree to it. We as individuals and as a country must be guided by our greater nature rather than fear, anger, and hatred.
It just makes me slightly more cynical about human nature and the people in charge. Certainly some proponents of programs like TIA are fascists, the kind of crazy people in leadership positions like in Dr. Strangelove, totally out of touch with reality and think that these programs will control the masses for their own good. But others must be aware that the technology isn't up to snuff, and just let them ride and let the public *think* that these programs actually *can* help fight terrorists, or even track everybody in the US. They will let fear do it's work, and people will be self-corrective in their behavior.
Sigh. Greed, thirst for power, incompetence, and apathy everywhere.
Now I understand why Skeletor's evil henchmen were incompetent boobs. Those show creators were giving us valuable lessons for adulthood.
Argh! You got me with your logic and historical fact!
"And as a reminder for those of you who got your hopes up in November of 2006 -- you might want to look at who was President in 1994. Hint: His last name wasn't "Bush"."
What exactly are you saying? His last name wasn't 'Democrat' either, but that's who we voted for in '06.
Oh wait. Do you mean to say that it was Clinton the Democrat who passed all these horrible, evil laws back in 1994? So that means that these '06 Democrats aren't any different from Bush?
But wait a minute! The president doesn't make laws! He just signs them. Hm, who was in control of congress back in 1994, making evil Bill Clinton sign all these horrible, horrible laws? Oh yeah, it was Newt Gingrich, and his Contract with America Republicans.
"Yes, and if we had a dictatorship it wouldn't matter what the f*** we think about cameras because they would have them if they wanted them...."
I'm worried about the in-between time, when you don't have a dictator, but you have someone who is serious about becoming one and has a chance to become one. Becoming a dictator doesn't happen overnight. It's a long, slow process of amassing power. If he were to gain some control of these cameras at some, it would be a major power gain for him.
"How are cameras any different than police patrolling the streets? The answer is, they are not."
You are quite wrong.
Imagine that a government without cameras everywhere. If that government wanted to track someone, they would have to send a police officer to follow that person. The person being followed might become aware that somebody was following him.
Now imagine a government that had cameras everywhere, watching everything and everybody in public. Suppose they wanted to start tracking a person using these cameras. How and when would that person become aware that he specifically were being watched through the cameras? For all he knows, the cameras are just staring at the public like they've always done.
That's just one example of how cameras are completely different from police patrols. If you thought it for just a moment, you would easily come up with more.
I guess I understand your point now, and now I simply disagree with you.
The problem with cameras as a double-edged sword is that the officials are still in charge of the cameras and storing the tapes. Cameras have a way of turning off at convenient times, and files containing tapes can get 'lost'. For cameras to truly be a double-edged sword, we need the cameras to be readily accessible to the public, and have multiple distributed public archives. I think that may already be happening with public webcams. I think what would really do it is Sousveillance.
Coups and dictators are supported by individuals who believe that the public need to be controlled and managed by strong leaders. Every step that a dictator makes towards total control is legitimate. When mass disappearances happen, those taking part will already think that the opposition needs to disappear. There will be some excuse, like the opposition had a plan to overthrow the government, the opposition was supporting terrorists, this opposition member is a rapist, etc.
With digital cameras and the internet, you don't even need a lot of people to monitor the opposition. You might just need a room of 10 guys to monitor various cameras in various cities remotely. We're not talking about a security guard sitting in front of a board of television screens.
Just look at programs like Total Information Awareness, which were launched shortly after 9/11. The idea was to take every electronic bit of data on everybody and compile it into a master database. All of your public records, your bank records, your shopping records, your credit card records -- everything. Combine that with real-time GPS tracking and voice monitoring via your cell phone, with visuals provided by complete camera coverage. You are dealing with someone who has a serious information advantage over you.
"First, I fail to see how this different from the situation as it currently exists"
I remember just a few years ago, there were no Department of Homeland Security cameras. Heck, there wasn't even any Department of Homeland Security! The only place there were cameras were overlooking the cashier counter at a gas station or staring down the aisles of a department store. Now we have *government* cameras watching public places. This is new.
"Second, these are cameras in public locations, not cameras that follow you into your home and place of work"
Would you be okay with cameras watching your every step in public, from the door of your house to the door of your workplace?
"Third, once you've corrupted the police and the military, the cameras aren't going to be much help, especially when they capture your goons kidnapping people on camera."
If you already control the people who control the cameras, those cameras aren't going to be recording your goons. Or, those tapes would never see the light of day. Once the dictator has rounded up the opposition, it's game over. There will be almost no one standing up to demand release of the tapes of goons grabbing people off of the street. The few who do will also disappear.
Could you start playing tit-for-tat with groups along with individuals?
The Benjamin Franklin quote doesn't fit exactly (this is not temporary martial law, but a permanent increase in police powers), but the basic idea is the same.
Imagine for a moment that a man rose to power in England, and he wanted to become an absolute dictator. Only problem is, there is an unorganized group of people who are opposed to him and his agenda. The include business people, members of the public, activists, and people in government. Now this dictator-wannabe has created a group of lackeys and henchmen, and some of them have infiltrated the police and the military. They track each and every person opposed to the dictator. Then, one day, when the signal is given, they send out thugs in vans and round each and every person up. They know where each person was because they were watching them on the camera. The next day, the guy installs himself dictator and encounters no opposition.
Also, a rogue cop could monitor a neighbor or ex-wife or something like that.
"Anecdotally, we have the PS3 shopper who fretted about missing their rent payment to get a PS3. Statistically, we have the national negative savings rate. That's enough to convince me."
The plural of 'anecdote' is not data. Yes, there are people that can handle money and always screw it up.
The fact that we have a negative savings rate tells me that people aren't getting paid enough to handle their daily living expenses. Everyone I know is responsible -- going to school, going to work, raising kids -- yet broke or getting deeper into debt. So, all the people I know, versus an nth-hand story about a guy who bought a PS3 and couldn't pay rent.
I'm not convinced that people alive today are especially spendthrifty. To say that people today are broke and going into debt because they are buying large screen TVs is too convenient an excuse for corporations who have been busting unions and outsourcing jobs for the past 25 years. The number one employer in the US used to be GM, which provided high wages, health care, and retirement. Now, it's Walmart, which pays at or near minimum wage, and provides no benefits. All of the statistics I have heard show that the average worker in the US is getting a smaller share of the pie than they were 25 years ago.
I'm in my late 20s. Both of my parents are health care workers and they have a decent retirement. However, a lot of my friend's parents lost most, if not all, of their money in the tech crash of the late 90s. Now, those friends of mine are paying student loans, making entry-level wages, with no health insurance or retirement benefits, and now they are worried about having to support their parents also.
The only way are grandparents were able to make it out of the Depression were because of social programs like social security, the WPA, medicare, and medicaid. 50 years before the Depression we had slavery. After that, we had sharecroppers and mine workers who went in to debt working for their employers. We had child laborers working 80 hour weeks. People formed unions and were beaten up and killed. My grandpa tells me stories of the Ohio National Guard firing on striking workers camped outside the factories in Toledo, Ohio. School kids had fired slingshots at the factory buildings on their way home from school, breaking windows, and the Guard thought that the strikers were firing. So they returned fire and killed some of the strikers.
My grandpa is one of the most bigoted, conservative people you will ever meet. But he is strongly pro-union - Hh practically spits when he says the word 'scab' when telling a story - because he is well aware that companies are out to F* us in the A*. They would have slaves and serfs if they were able.
No, the connection it what Bush asked us to do in response to the 9/11 attacks: Go shopping.
I think Bush deserves a bashing for that.
I totally agree with you about what you said about job skills, valuing yourself, and putting your own interests first.
However, while the economy as a whole is improving, only a small percentage are seeing a benefit. The middle class is shrinking and the jobs that are being created are low-paying jobs without benefits, and they are replacing high-paying union jobs with benefits. Bankruptcies are at an all-time high. It's not just people buying flat-screen TVs and 16" rims, but families paying for cars to get to work, housing, and their children's school.
When the middle class shrinks, most people go into poverty, while a few become wealthy. I fear the US might look like most South American countries in 50 years, with a dozen or so families owning most of the country while most everyone else lives in near poverty.
I know there are problems with unions, and as a young person, a lot of my friends who have had union jobs have complained that it allows slackers to slack. But, I view them as a necessary evil, like government, as a check and balance against corporate power. Business people had slaves and serfs 150 years ago; there's nothing special about today that would stop them from instituting slavery again if it were possible. Perhaps one solution to have competition between unions in a workplace.
I had a manager when I worked at a gas station who was verbally abusive. It wasn't a matter of volume; it was the tone. It was like he was hocking venom at you or flicking daggers.
"I can't believe this shit..." Made you feel like you were a three-year-old. I was 18 at the time and I didn't know how to mentally disengage from him. I was the best employee ( the other long-term employees were adults with no education and just didn't care at all ). I did a good job; he told me I was his best employee. I wanted to do good, but when I screwed up, however minor, he would berate me like he did the others that worked there. I just took it like a bitch; while the other folks would get in heated arguments. I felt bad about myself. I had all kinds of stress responses -- headaches, muscle aches, etc. I developed GIRD (gastro-intestinal reflux disease) and the doctor prescribed me Nexium -- at 18 years old. So much for western medicine. The real answer was to leave the mentally and emotionally unhealthy environment. Which I did.
I think the reason that there is so much anti-depressant use these days is because, as our economy slowly swirls the drain, we have no mental health care industry to take care of people dealing with the fallout of not having enough resources to provide for themselves and their families. Having more opportunities to talk about our feelings would be good, but I think the real answer is more power to the individual in the workplace.
In pursuing my anthropology degree in college, we watched a video of a native healer in Uganda or somewhere. His patient was having general sickness such as tiredness, upset stomach, etc. The healer guy went into his trance and danced around wildly. The healer diagnosed the problem being with the man's father-in-law or something like that, and within minutes, the father-in-law was in the room, and they were having it out -- emotionally airing their grievances, arguing, and coming to a new agreement, all mediated by this crazy medicine man. The whole village was gathered around, watching, and I have no doubt that they would help enforce the new agreement.
It would be great if I could have sat down with my then-manager and explained what he was doing wrong. If he could learn to manage by also being nice. But no, my doctor had no authority to call him into the office, I had no authority as a kid to question how "The Real World" works, and, being the best manager in the district, the oil company had no incentive in getting him to change his ways. He continued emotionally abusing people, perpetuating burn-out and turnover. So the abusive, destructive environment continued.
In the US, do whatever BS management tells you or get fired. The rest of the department has been outsourced, so you have to do the jobs of 3 people. With unions on the wane, it is just a lowly individual against a vast corporation. The working class had their jobs outsourced to the 3rd world, and now it is happening to white collar jobs. All the while the media tells us that we can mitigate our unhappiness with new cars, alcohol, and bling. Terrorists attack us on our own soil, we are entering an endless war against a nebulous enemy called "Terror" and Bush says the best thing we can do is go shopping.
I realize a lot of slashdotters are well-educated and many of them have decent jobs. It seems to me that this is a child-like view of "Things are going well for me; if anyone else is having a problem, they are just not working hard enough." Well, the $#i+ seems to be hitting the fan with outsourcing and now the white-collar middle class is beginning to feel the effects of limitless corporate power. If left unchecked it will lead to virtual slavery and serfdom.
There is nothing shameful about learning.
I think what happens is that there are librarians who are in charge of handling requests for documents or information of any type -- whether it's from the government or the public, through FOIA requests. They are in charge of determining whether they organization or individual has a right to see the documents they are requesting.
So, what happens now is that those librarians take into account the criteria of the FOIA act in deciding whether or not to release the documents.
And, of course, the FOIA give individuals a leg to stand on in court when the government refuses to release documents.
I'm simplifying quite a bit, and I know I'm not entirely accurate. There is not a single, unified store of government documents, nor a single clearinghouse for the release of documents. We have a fractured government, and each agency has it's own archives, procedures, etc.
I've read them, and they all say one thing: Vista will not live up to its promises. So I take it we are in agreement.
I'm calling your bluff. Just link to one review, thanks.
Why would I trust the traditional media to tell me accurately about MS' new OS, when it has so brazenly carried water for MS for the past decade and a half? Reporters don't even understand the computers they have in front of them (nor should they really), how can they critically examine claims from MS' marketing team?
What I am looking for is actual slashdot-reading, critically-minded, computer-science-major geeks to make the case why Vista will live up to its marketing. So far I haven't heard it.
What features does it have apart from the UI? In other words, what's under the hood?
"For it to be able to handle not only hundreds of languages but hundreds of dialects and accents for each language really boggles the mind. If MS pulls this off with a success I'll be amazed. "
Prepare to be underwhelmed.
Seriously, have you ever heard of such a level of voice recognition in any technology anywhere? Has anyone they done this with any speech recognition ever?
If not, why do you think MS would be capable of doing it, and be able to provide it in a consumer-level OS?
How have so many geeks fallen for MS' marketing-fu? I thought we were inoculated.
For what won't be the last time, Vista is simply an XP clone with eye-candy and DRM so you can't install any pirated software.
Yea! How about adding technology to cars that actually helps somebody *drive*, such as a HUD, navigation assistance, radar/sonar, etc.
Won't a "Super" flu only be "Super" in the sense that it resists the recently developed treatments and vaccines? In other words, a super flu really doesn't pose any more danger than the regular flu did before we had a vaccine for the regular flu. We are living with the super flu now.
"The USSC has already established..."
FYI, it's usually abbreviated SCOTUS, as in SCotUS.