Most of the people that receive a flyer from an officer will never do anything to secure their network anyway, with or without the advice from the cops,(my guess is maybe one out of fifty will secure their access point), either because thay don't care to or don't know how to.
It's a fair bet that the money spent on the equipment and the time to train the officers to use it is a far greater amount than would have been spent on simply bulk-mailing the flyer to EVERYONE in the area. Those who will have heeded the flyer handed to them by the cop will probably do so if notified by mail. Those who dont, most likely would not have anyway.
As presently constructed, this "program" looks like simply another avenue for the area's government to expand its scope, number of personnel, budget, and, by extension, power. If anyone believes that this will simply be a function integrated into an officer's daily routine, to be attended to when not busy with other tasks, they are grievously mistaken. The end result will be another series of positions into which to place even more power-hungry public-trough feeders at the expense of the citizenry.
This is a classic example of the overreaching of governmental entities into areas that are not, and should never be, their domain. Government should exist only to provide those functions that are too large, either structurally or socially (structure:think right-of-way issues, bridges, dams, highways; social: think prisons, military defense) for private citizens to undertake, or as an arbiter of the rules that help ensure a semi-orderly society (courts and laws). Unless we truly wish to completely give away our liberty (what little we still have left), we must insist that government do only those things that we as private citizens cannot (not will not) do. It is not a government function to provide telephone service, garbage service, internet service, medical service and the like. The money that government spends has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is your and my pockets. Government does not create anything, either material goods or wealth. What it spends must come from those of us who actually produce, thereby reducing our return on our efforts, and redistributing our money to their hordes of trough-feeders, both employees and entitlement program recipients.
The police exist to deal with those who perpetrate criminal acts. Our relinquishing to them the power to interfere and prosecute civil wrongs, (or torts -- for which we as citizens, not the police, have the civil court system), results in each of us being more vulnerable to the possible (probable?) abuses by those in whom we have invested said power. It is a misuse of both public funding and public trust for the police department in question to waste time and money pursuing an activity that does not even constitute a crime. There is no more legal requirement to lock down a wireless device than there is to lock the door of your car, lock the door of your home, tie your shoes, or attend to any number of other common-sense details of modern life. If the police were to keep up this approach, we would soon each have a personal police "nanny" constantly by our side, warning us about every little thing that we might make ourselves vulnerable to, either by commission or omission, and these "officers", on the public payroll would be doing nothing to find or apprehend actual criminal perpetrators. I suspect that if we took away the electronic "toys" that accompany this program, and their associated budget, there would be no appetite to have the cops simply go out and canvass the neighborhoods, asking residents if they had a wireless device, and then handing the flyer to those who answer "yes".
Their only involvement should begin if someone actually commits a criminal act in violating the private property (either physical or electronic) of an otherwise private citizen.
STFU already about the Mac Mini!
Probably most, if not all of us hardware-knowledgable types here on Slashdot have, at one time or another put a laptop drive into a desktop structure. I did well before the Mac Mini was even a hint of an idea in Steve Jobs' limited, (can you say "one-button mouse"?), imagination.
All you pathetic Mac proseletyzers remind me of the whole "you have to approve of everything I do" gay attitude. As with them, I do not care what you do, just stop waving it in my face and demanding my approval. I don't care about your choice in computers -- it's YOUR CHOICE, and none of my business. Go about your business, and keep your business to yourselves (computer OR sexual choices).
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Most of the people that receive a flyer from an officer will never do anything to secure their network anyway, with or without the advice from the cops,(my guess is maybe one out of fifty will secure their access point), either because thay don't care to or don't know how to.
It's a fair bet that the money spent on the equipment and the time to train the officers to use it is a far greater amount than would have been spent on simply bulk-mailing the flyer to EVERYONE in the area. Those who will have heeded the flyer handed to them by the cop will probably do so if notified by mail. Those who dont, most likely would not have anyway.
As presently constructed, this "program" looks like simply another avenue for the area's government to expand its scope, number of personnel, budget, and, by extension, power. If anyone believes that this will simply be a function integrated into an officer's daily routine, to be attended to when not busy with other tasks, they are grievously mistaken. The end result will be another series of positions into which to place even more power-hungry public-trough feeders at the expense of the citizenry.
This is a classic example of the overreaching of governmental entities into areas that are not, and should never be, their domain. Government should exist only to provide those functions that are too large, either structurally or socially (structure:think right-of-way issues, bridges, dams, highways; social: think prisons, military defense) for private citizens to undertake, or as an arbiter of the rules that help ensure a semi-orderly society (courts and laws). Unless we truly wish to completely give away our liberty (what little we still have left), we must insist that government do only those things that we as private citizens cannot (not will not) do. It is not a government function to provide telephone service, garbage service, internet service, medical service and the like. The money that government spends has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is your and my pockets. Government does not create anything, either material goods or wealth. What it spends must come from those of us who actually produce, thereby reducing our return on our efforts, and redistributing our money to their hordes of trough-feeders, both employees and entitlement program recipients.
The police exist to deal with those who perpetrate criminal acts. Our relinquishing to them the power to interfere and prosecute civil wrongs, (or torts -- for which we as citizens, not the police, have the civil court system), results in each of us being more vulnerable to the possible (probable?) abuses by those in whom we have invested said power. It is a misuse of both public funding and public trust for the police department in question to waste time and money pursuing an activity that does not even constitute a crime. There is no more legal requirement to lock down a wireless device than there is to lock the door of your car, lock the door of your home, tie your shoes, or attend to any number of other common-sense details of modern life. If the police were to keep up this approach, we would soon each have a personal police "nanny" constantly by our side, warning us about every little thing that we might make ourselves vulnerable to, either by commission or omission, and these "officers", on the public payroll would be doing nothing to find or apprehend actual criminal perpetrators. I suspect that if we took away the electronic "toys" that accompany this program, and their associated budget, there would be no appetite to have the cops simply go out and canvass the neighborhoods, asking residents if they had a wireless device, and then handing the flyer to those who answer "yes".
Their only involvement should begin if someone actually commits a criminal act in violating the private property (either physical or electronic) of an otherwise private citizen.
STFU already about the Mac Mini! Probably most, if not all of us hardware-knowledgable types here on Slashdot have, at one time or another put a laptop drive into a desktop structure. I did well before the Mac Mini was even a hint of an idea in Steve Jobs' limited, (can you say "one-button mouse"?), imagination. All you pathetic Mac proseletyzers remind me of the whole "you have to approve of everything I do" gay attitude. As with them, I do not care what you do, just stop waving it in my face and demanding my approval. I don't care about your choice in computers -- it's YOUR CHOICE, and none of my business. Go about your business, and keep your business to yourselves (computer OR sexual choices).