We are all guilty

Posted by $ jlc 10 years ago to Government
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At least in LA County. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/lo...
At least the police admit that this level of detail leads to invasion of privacy.

Jan


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  • Posted by ThomasSC 10 years ago
    Our founders considered certain rights of critical importance in preventing totalitarian regimes. These rights were considered so absolutely critical to a free society that they were termed unalienable by the founders, meaning that no government entity federal or state could regulate or remove them from the citizens. Constitutionally only the citizens themselves, not congress, can take these rights away through a constitutional convention repealing it. For that reason for 218 years a convicted murderer could walk out of prison after his sentence was up and purchase a gun legally, that's how seriously we took the protection of our unalienable rights.

    In the last 20 years we've passed federal laws stripping citizens permanently of their second amendment rights, allowing people to be pulled over and searched on our highways without cause, allowing the tracking and recording of our phone calls and emails, regulating and taxing political speech, allowing law enforcement to confiscate property without issuing charges or convicting of crime, mandating that private business service people they have no desire to service and allowing private property to be taken under imminent domain for private entities. That's how seriously we take our unalienable rights today...we allow the government which constitutionally is mandated to protect those rights to deny them instead.

    Both political parties support some or all of these infringements on our precious unalienable rights. Our unalienable rights are all that separate us from every other nation in the world, they don't exist anywhere else on this planet. If we lose them there is no real difference between us and Cuba, Bolivia or England, we will no longer have a Bill of Rights, we have a bill of privileges which can be taken and given at the whim of government.

    If you trade your unalienable rights for illusions of safety and fairness you'll end up with nothing but illusions. At the very least we should go through the constitutionally mandated means of removing unalienable rights if Americans seriously believe those rights should be privileges rather than rights. If we allow simple legislative manipulations determining ad hoc which are unalienable and which are not then they're all alienable by definition and the constitution is a useless piece of parchment not even valuable enough for display except as a historic relic.
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  • Posted by khalling 10 years ago
    Two areas we have been extremely willing to cede our liberties in the name of health and safety have been cars and drugs. We have given up so much. Let's just start with licenses. Originally, you didn' t have to even have one to drive. Now they are a de facto national ID. Now we can set up roadblocks and attempt to intimidate you into letting us search. Now we can track you wherever you travel...

    It 's the same with drugs. We willingly give up liberties so we all can be safe. Now we are tracked by the legal drugs we take and submit to invasive over reach in the name of the war on drugs. When we look at incidents of botched fed raids they almost always were instigated on suspicion of illegal drugs.
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  • Posted by squareone 10 years ago
    State and federal government with its collectivist mentality will in the near future issue a blanket search warrant for all privately - owned firearms using fancy semantics to justify this act.
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  • Posted by $ stargeezer 10 years ago
    This WHY you will never be pulled over and be asked for your papers, like a certain mid European nation did shortly before we flattened most of the country. THEY already KNOW where you are from, who you are and by applying most computer prediction analysis, they will have a very good idea where you are going.

    Welcome to the lefts version of "Police State America".
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  • Posted by RobertFl 10 years ago
    Do those rights extend to operating a motor vehicle on the public streets?
    Once you get pulled over your rights are different, you do not have those rights driving down the road with your car.
    If we are to say that license plates are off limits, then why should a radar detector be legal to determine if you're speeding?
    Why have traffic cops looking out for those that run red lights, or slide through a stop sign?
    Take the license plate off the table - how about vehicle descriptions? Looking for a 2012 white Toyota sedan... Cops will be eyeballing every car that passes them - is this any different?
    Enforce the law, but don't watch me violate it?
    The police shouldn't be looking out stolen vehicles?
    I get it, gov't abuses it's authority, and this is a slippery slope, but, we're the ones asking for it. Hell, we're demanding it. Can't have your cake and eat to.
    Your right to privacy stops at your front door, and your person.
    If you think that should apply to you driving down the street, then get rid of the police. Be a land without laws.
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    • Posted by $ winterwind 10 years ago
      I have a couple of, hmmm, well 1 issue and a question [maybe 2].
      Unless the law is drastically changed very recently, you are "on" your private property in your vehicle. That is why those who run the workshops on non-compliant stops tell you not to exit your vehicle.

      Then you've got a whole pile of stuff, all related.
      license plates? we don't need them or want them. All my friends have "WIJG" bumper stickers.
      red lights? If the public is "trusted" to make intelligent decisions at 2 AM [by which the lights here have long switched to flashing red, which means "stop, proceed if safe", or to yellow, which means "please slow and proceed with caution"] where is the little switch in my head that makes me a safe driver even without changing lights AFTER the magic time.
      you might want to analyze why people slide thru stop signs, asking the same question: why we do [that's YOU and ME, right now] need them?

      and that's where I stop understanding. The police shouldn't be out looking for stolen vehicles? Lo-Jack is cheaper and has a better success record.

      We're asking for abuse of authority? Last time I looked around my house, I wasn't. How does "...your cake..." apply.

      and finally, you make my third favorite logic error: make an "outrageous" statement and walk away. It's like Flick and the flagpole: I triple-dog-dare-ya to have a country without laws.
      and then what happens?
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    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 10 years ago
      I tend to agree. No one ever needed a warrant to observe you, your horse, your buggy or your car in public. A list of stolen car licenses, etc is no different than a "wanted" poster. The only thing happening here is using computers and cameras to gather and store and compare data that is publicly available. This is quite unlike the NSA and many other infringements where non-public data is captured. This is actually a Government agency being efficient doing what a police officer with a great memory would like to try to do himself.
      Complaining about the wrong things takes strength from the arguments for the right ones.
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      • Posted by $ 10 years ago
        Robert - While you intended to be sarcastic, I am actually thinking about the points you raised. I do no think that your privacy ends at your front door, though I think that we are going into a world that has more-or-less continuous monitoring (eg cellphones -> Google glass). As long as this is done by a series of private parties, I think this is something that we will just live with. I do not think that 'because it is done this way now' is a relevant argument. A cop watching the traffic and ticketing people is a lot different than a camera permanently tracking you - which is something that would let someone predict your movements. I think that this rule has to be taken in context with the moral bankruptcy that the government (eg NSA) has shown with respect to personal privacy. Would it were that power could be trusted to a government without fear that it would be used idiosyncratically. A desire to limit the power of the police is not a toggle switch that then means 'get rid of them'.

        Thoritsu - I agree with what you say, but I think I would draw a line at a different point. Thinking about what you said, I come to a tentative conclusion that I would not mind if the automated systems scanned all passing license plates for recognition of a stolen vehicle or a getaway car. What I object to is the storing of non-illegal activities for a prolonged amount of time. I do expect this information to be datamined for further use.

        Jan
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        • Posted by $ Thoritsu 10 years ago
          Interesting Jan. It is a thought provoking new area. The scope of what is possible with public data is beyond what anyone imagined, and I agree it is concerning. Interesting line you draw...storing non-illegal activity data...
          Of course there are a lot of places this is done, for example simple record keeping (birth certs. deed, tax data, etc). The subject data is more innocuous, but agreed concerning. Another interesting point is that companies do this with some consent from customers (the simplest being you choose to buy from them); however, I feel less concerned about the companies than the Government doing this.
          I'm not really a conspiracy-type, but with what Obama would do with the data (e.g. IRS pursuit of Tea Party contributors), perhaps I should become more of a conspiracy-type.
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  • Posted by SolitudeIsBliss 10 years ago
    I guess the phrase "Probable Cause" has no meaning anymore.
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    • Posted by $ blarman 10 years ago
      They want to alter things so that anything constitutes probable cause and that officers themselves are empowered to issue their own warrants. That is the definition of a police state.
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      • Posted by $ stargeezer 10 years ago
        For a long time police have practiced a form of "probable cause" that has as it's doctrine, that if you are in your automobile, they have probable cause to stop you, question you, search your vehicle if they desire and to confirm that your license and insurance papers are in order. It's called a roadside safety check.

        They are mostly checking to see if you are driving impaired and that you "papers" are in order. They claim that by just driving down the street, you are assumed to have given your consent for the stop. Their probable cause was your going about your business in a lawful manner.

        I cannot express just how evil I find these. I'm not a drinker at all, my registration and insurance are in order, but if I happen to drive down a street when they are waving cars over, I must submit to this violation of my rights and I have no recourse except to follow their direction. Some have driven through these road blocks and been arrested for failure to submit, endangering police officers, and many more charges.
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        • Posted by $ 10 years ago
          Stargeezer, I agree with you, but I also would like to add that I think that the tests for blood alcohol are against the 5th amendment - I think that you should not be stopped for 'no cause' (ie a roadside check) and then your body forced to testify against 'you'. I almost lost two jobs by refusing to perform any legal blood alcohols...but good graveyard shift techs are hard to come by and I kept on working at the respective labs. (NB I had no problem doing medically necessary blood alcohols.)

          I do point out that part of the reason we have had to go in this direction is that we have handicapped our police force and removed their ability to make judgement calls. If a car is roaming all across the lanes at 2AM, the police apparently cannot get a conviction for hazardous driving unless they can prove a positive alcohol level. So by the Law having more respect for the police, we drivers might be less harassed and our rights more secure.

          Jan
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          • Posted by $ stargeezer 10 years ago
            Yep. I also should have pointed out that these roadblocks are not set up by the officers on the street just for the fun of it. They receive orders from an elected city official at some level, who orders the police chief to get the job done while he's home getting a good nights sleep. We do need to lay the shame for this where it belongs - left wing stateists.
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