Just days before the 11th anniversary of sept 11th attacks, we have this greart use of taxpayer money which pushes america to becoming a police state. dont get me started on the other bs like homeland security, drones inside our borders etc. I blame the cowardly liberals who let obama get away with with this by not even talking about this stuff in his speeches... also any fake conservatives who do this in the name of national secutity. Ron paul got it right but no one gives him air time. Thank you dems and reps for making orwell's vision come true. Big brother will be proud.
Great, another way our privacy can be tooken away developing. Watch time there will be face scanners on every street, we wont be able to go in a store without going through a scan. All because of "9/11" and for our "safety" right?
Honestly, our notions of privacy are mostly an illusion. Our internet searches and activity is recorded and monitored - available for law enforcement, and other personal data is stored in numerously places that hackers are able to get at. We already are constantly recorded by security cameras and even other private citizens. So I think we first have to define what "privacy" is in terms of what really matters. Personally I think the cameras are more intrusive than this software. It all depends on how it is used afterall. If it is use to track everyone than yeah, it's a big problem. But if the FBI is using it just to find most wanted criminals I can accept that as long as there are laws preventing it's abuse. I am more concerned about our internet activity being kept private than this to be quite honest. Plus most of us are far more trackable than this through our cell phones. Have a cell phone turned on? Than the NSA can find you fairly easily. Think about this - what's worse. The gov't being able to find you whenever they want, or the gov't know all the details of your life. The first is uncomfortable, the 2nd is scary. And This doesn't add much if at all to the 2nd....and that's what scary - they already can find out a ton more about you. If this scares you, than you have no idea how much your current notion of privacy in today's world is already gone.
True and I don't think I've heard anyone disagreeing with that assessment before. But the problem usually lies not with criminals or innocents, but with suspected innocents. So let's say for example I'm an FBI agent. Is there anything to stop me from doing a "harmless" look up of my ex gf? Who would ever know? How? While there are normally warrants required for accessing this type of information, the reality is that such systems intentionally do not include user-monitoring capability - i.e. not granting access without authorization, knowing who accessed, why they accessed, how long, etc. This is why it's usually the case that warrants only come into play when the evidence needs to be admissable - and in that case, a warrant-less check will precede a warrant request and then the information will be acquired a second time. This is the real danger, the ability to use this information to circumvent your right to privacy. Otherwise, no one has a problem with material evidence being presented and obtaining a warrant for monitoring a person - this stand-alone process is a fair and important tool in law enforcement. Another example is in the case of an authority figure following someone else for long periods of time in order to find anything to pin them with. If you watch anyone long enough, they will do something worthy of scrutiny at some point. So free access to this info in a sense constitutes the ability to legalize an illegal pursuit. A very dangerous thing. It is precisely these details which are relevant, but it seems the public leans towards discussing whether this technology is overall good/bad - a silly argument considering the problem can be isolated to a specific part of the technology. With internet details, it's all voluntary if we care. You don't have to get on the internet. You don't have to provide your details. But with remote supervision technology, you never have the opportunity to make a decision or challenge the premise.
Ladies and Gentlemen of America. Change, is upon us. We, citizens of the Western world, were given a chance to show what our purity could do. What our kindness of heart could do. In addition to financial flexibility we were given moral and personal freedoms of unfathomable quantities. We came up with progressive thought processes and faux feminist ideals. And where has it led the common man? To dystopia. To an ever widening income gap between the bison at the top of the pyramid, and the millions of ants just a few feet below. I may not feel it, sitting in my ivory tower of Chocolate coated strawberries and women of the most lighthearted, sensual nature, but I see it. I read about it. I know it's where the future lies for the everyday man. Resistance, is futile. Accept that you were given access to the cookie jar, abused it, and now have to pay for your actions. You are not paying as a form of punishment, but as a way to better the overall human condition. On a subconscious level the strings were being pulled long before America became a police state. Marketing. Plastic culture. Aluminium counter culture. Stainless steel subcultures. All part of wanting to belong to something. To someone. Somewhere. Paths were thrown in front of you, sometimes winding and twisting, and you followed with your head held high because you thought you had carved it out on your own. But I assure you, it had been done by millions and millions before. And yes, this power does not belong in the hands of just anyone - democrat, republican or new age. Because absolute power in the hands of a bureaucracy will always be corrupted by the petty thought processes of other every day men, just holding on to carve out a living. But when an ethereal being comes along who exemplifies the pinnacle of the human condition, it is time to question what you THOUGHT you knew. At this time in your life, you are too deeply rooted in your perceived subconscious, in your perception of what is right and wrong, to accept living in a glass jar. But I assure you my fellow humans, it is for the best that you release yourself and accept assimilation. For you know not what you are capable of alone. It is only through the strength of big brother that your potential will be realized, your safety guaranteed, and peace of mind restored in a nation rife with sloth, decadence, misery, fading morals and isolation. Thought it may be hard to accept, it is the truth. And like most harsh realities that hit close to home, the truth hurts. You cannot do it alone. Give me your hand and follow, as I lead. Do not worry about my qualifications, my prerequisites and the thought of letting your ego go. Nothing you currently know or plan on finding out is important to something other than your immediate survival. Total surrender, is the path to righteousness. God would not have created this earth if he was never ... to walk amongst you. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fOWArqOWaHo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Remind me again what's the difference between this and well, a store possessing a security camera which can identify you there? I'm frankly not seeing the big deal with this, especially if it's used in public like the article seems to indicate.
This automates the process of actually identifying you and putting you in some database that's tracking all your movements. Sure its possible to do this, on a limited base, by manually using security cameras, but no one would expend the energy to do that unless that had a reason to suspect you of something. That wouldn't apply for most of us. It is scary what this can lead to. That said, I do think the technology is kind of cool.
Do you think my webcam secretly watches me as I watch p*rn? I feel the government is in my bedroom, and unless it's Palin, I'm not interested.
Not really reacting to this news specifically, but just something I've been thinking about. Sometime I just don't get why you guys value "privacy" so much to such an extreme point, like so sensitive about cameras installed in public places. I am sure most of you feel wholeheartedly for victims of child abduction and trafficking, some maybe willing to die to save an innocent child. But when it comes to adding more video surveillance cameras in public spaces, your turn your head due to concerns of collateral damages to your privacy. Just an investigative news story (Chinese) I watched over the weekend. A teenage girl's body was dumped on a street. The police first found a suspicious car which stopped nearby the previous midnight. Too dark to identify anything, they traced the car to a toll station where they could see the license plate. Turned out the plate was stolen from others, the police watched thousands of hours of surveillance camera recordings to eventually found the car based on some missing paint on the front bumper and arrested the murderer eventually. The poor deaf girl was forced to steal by other criminals and was beaten to death after trying to get away. Without all those videos, the justice would never (at least near impossible) be served as the 16 year old girl was abducted from thousands miles away. The policemen wouldn't even be able to identify who she is. And this case is not the only one. I've seen many like a hit-and-run car (killed a little girl on the way back from school) traced thousands of miles across the country. As far as you concerns about privacy, the biggest scandal I am aware of, in a "police state" like China, is a leaked photo of a guy fondling a young lady's breast in a car on a highway. With license plate and faces, their identities were quickly traced out (even though no names were published by official media but it's rampant on Internet). I fully agree that this is not legal and whoever leaked should be punished. But comparing to the saved child/arrested murderers, the shame brought to that guy and his family is insignificant. Not mentioning that the passenger is not his wife.
