also makes you wonder if any of this would happen if the usage and post trial application of the death penalty were higher. less of a bargaining chip.
-SCOTUS majority
Fascism is coming, and we're the slowly boiling frogs.
EDIT: We could call it "CopAware" :-)
There are a handful of open-source models for license plate detection, I forget exactly which model outperformed the rest, but it was an excellent watch and help me really understand just how inefficient these commercial systems are and how easy they can be to defeat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ
Any data we make available as an open system will also be available to bad actors.
Instead, let's just be indiscriminate and document everyone's cars and make that raw data available.
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Why everyone? That's easy: It allows organizational roles to be divided up, and dividing these roles promotes operational safety.
Having 4 roles seems like it might be the right number right now (but I haven't had my coffee yet):
Role 1. The camera operators. This is role sees the highest direct risk because these cameras will be associated with real homes and other buildings that the operators control. It is also the most important group because it requires the highest number of participants, and none of this can happen without a large number of them. By recording everyone, they gain some operational safety through plausible deniability. "Yeah, I've got some cameras that see cars on the road and send what they see to a cloud service. So what? I'm allowed to pay attention to the cars in my neighborhood. I'm even allowed to get help with doing that. Everyone else with a fancy doorbell or a Chinese web cam is doing the same thing; I'm not doing anything weirder than what anyone else is doing."
Role 2. The data-mungers. This back-end role collects the data of where cars have been seen. It's also an indiscriminate task; it just collects and sorts data by license plate number. This is less-risky both because it is unfocused and it can happen anywhere on the globe. "Yeah, so these blokes send me a stream of alphanumeric numbers, timestamps, and locations, and I just organize that data for other people to use."
Role 3. The filtermakers. Another back-end role, this one just keeps track of which plates are associated with which government people. This is riskier: It is tightly focused and its role is obvious and undeniable. "I keep a list of license plates numbers and names for others to use. Lots of organizations do that; so what?"
Role 4. The mapmakers. This role operates the presentation layer. It ingests someone else's collected data, filters and labels it based on someone else's filters and labels, and puts it all on a beautiful map for public consumption. This isn't necessarily structurally the most important role, but it's the most public-facing role and likely to be demonized in media. This role will get heat. "Yeah, you're right. Mapping the locations of people in public in the US is exactly the point of what I'm doing; see the FAQ on the website. Anyway, the weather is beautiful here today in Belize; maybe y'all should get to work on your public surveillance legislation."
I wish people wouldn't say that, it's not the case.
First, pushback requires equivalent effort. If 10,000 towns are uncooperative because 10,000 mayors resist this, the amount of political power to overcome this is incredibly large. The mayors can delay or cancel projects with uncooperative or malicious vendors. They can slow down approvals. This administration and the powers that want this espionage power understand this, which is why they target downstream races, school boards, and sheriff positions.
Second, a state senator is much, much more powerful than you give them credit. There are usually much fewer of them than members of the US House or Senate, so they individually more voting power. They can substantially influence state politics, and it is magnified with majorities and committees.
Third, resources are pooled and parties coordinate, so starving them of influence, which is root of all their funding, is key to voting undemocratic parties out of office.
Don't believe what you read about politics online. It is made for modern, shallow consumption. Little races matter.
You can make a large difference by participating directly, too. You don't even have to make a scene about it in your platform. Just run, be boring, win, and talk with your votes.
The school district also refuses to consider immigration status as a prerequisite to enrollment in the school system.
This is a huge deal since any state or local school district could decide to do the exact opposite.
This makes nearly every minor inaccessible to immigration enforcement officers during business hours.
We have lots of software developers being laid off. An elected position serves as resume filler, too. You'd be shocked what a difference you can make when you try a little.
It’s a lot harder for the federal government to go around placing all these tools around the country than it is for them to simply vacuum up what is already there.
If anybody wants to see the power of controlling local government and its upstream impact, look no further than mom’s for liberty and their assault on school boards nationwide.
Having achieved total coverage of the observable domestic cyber realm, the next objective is a physical layer.
Anyone arguing against it is a terrorist sympathizer or has criminal intent. This is for the safety of the homeland, after all.
You have more civil rights as a pedestrian than you do in a licensed motor vehicle.
Travelling further, without a car, then requires use of public transportation and by using public transportation depending where you are you have implied consent to being searched "for safety".
Acknowledging civil asset forfeiture is a problem in some jurisdictions, private automobiles still provide a greater expectation of privacy than public modes of transport.
Existing on public transit is not an automatic agreement to be searched as you describe.
Here’s an attorney website that describes your general rights:
https://azharillc.com/blog/youre-riding-the-l-train-can-cops...
There are many more things that are illegal for you to be doing as a driver of a car versus existing in public on public transportation. Many of these things can trigger searching your possessions being legal compared to being a person on public transit.
You’re also required to present your drivers license and fully identify yourself if you are stopped for minor traffic infractions like a tail light being out.
As a pedestrian, in most states you do not have to present ID to an officer on the street.
For example, it’s generally not probable cause to search on public transit if an officer smells alcohol, while in a vehicle it’s basically an automatic search of your whole car. You would also have the issue of what a court or jury thinks of the reasonableness of the search based on the context. If you’re quietly minding your own business on the train and you smell like alcohol is a judge or jury going to think the search was reasonable? Now compare that to a driver in a vehicle smelling like alcohol.
Furthermore, the whole concept of a DUI checkpoint where every person is stopped and questioned is at the very least impractical and often illegal for pedestrians.
Thank you for your service as the incorrect carbrain of the day.
Not me. We've become way too soft on vehicle crime which is often tied to other crimes. I'd love to see a lot more automated enforcement: speeding, red light running, shoulder riding, missing or fake tags, noise violations, car emissions, etc.
And so ….
We will live in a almost totally transparent world - our daily interactions, voice, text and visual are likely recorded by someone at some point - how bosses interact with their employees, how nurses talk to patients and cashiers to customers, how parents talk to children - all of this will be recorded
And that can be a Good Thing. Imagine your boss getting real time feedback on coaching style, or you getting pointers on how not to argue with your wife.
The challenge is fairly simple - if we lose all secrets, the privacy is just the politeness of our neighbours. And while we can and should have strong laws on this, we need a social chnage to make serving someone ads based on their observable behaviour about the same level of social acceptability as crapping on their doorstep and then pouring petrol on and lighting it.
But we could see a world where privacy is protected but epidemiologists can pick apart the most thorny problems, human beings will be raised to be the very best they can be, and society become more communal and robust.
It’s possible - tech is neutral
And those societies and countries that embrace it will probably have that boost everyone thinks is coming from AI
The people creating, funding, controlling, developing, deploying and using the tech are not neutral, and the technology is indistinguishable from those people. In light of that, I would argue your assertion, that the "tech is neutral", is nothing more than rhetoric and that in every meaningful way the tech lacks neutrality.
This sounds like a dystopia: either I'm receiving some machine-generated feedback that no one checked and may as well not apply at all or someone did check and my entire life is being judged by strangers. In either case, I imagine myself yelling at my SO because they cheated on me and getting a notification that my behavior was out of line.
To me this sounds eerily similar to that quote "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" in that it's not coming as positive a statement as intended.
Technology is largely not neutral and is instead a power-multiplier.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society>
<https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/fftransparent.html>
<https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/03/the_myth_of...>
This statement has the same level of wisdom as telling a judge "Hey man, it's just a plant" at your hearing for dealing cannabis in the US in the 90s. You may be right, but that's independent of the reason we're all here right now.
"Tech" requires an entire grotesque machine of money and monsters, and they are rarely neutral.
If you believed "tech is neutral" you'd advocate for all of this machinery to be heavily regulated, publicly run, publicly owned, and universally accessible, rather than advocating to hide it behind one of the most secretive institutions in the US being led on the leash by oligarchs.
So, you're either one of these oligarchs or brainwashed by one.
Ok. Yes tech requires a huge amount of infrastructure- yes. Just as car driving does, and how that infrastructure is laid out has a huge impact on the usability / direction of/ benefits of cars. But if I may, regulating tech so we all remain anonymous and untracked is just as bad as a corporate run world
Every time. Every ?!%@# time on HN. "Here's a story about police state overreach and unconstitutional privacy violation. And that's obviously very bad. Now let me tell you how the really important thing here is how much Google sucks."
What it tells me is that the commenter is unserious about actual civil liberties, because "the government's bayonets will always be pointed at the Other People", where Google is the enemy they can see today. Historically that always ends up with the bayonets winning.
/ I assumed this had long been the case
Does it mean you can't see a perfect reflection on a slightly rusted screw?
I feel safer already.
The freedoms they're after also seem to be along the lines of 'don't restrict my ability to scam folks of lesser intellect or education'.
The leopards are to only eat _their_ faces.
Frankly I don't see a way out from this. Since you must register and insure your vehicle and have a government license to drive it and it hauls two tons at 80mph, it seems like natural creep for the government to know where it is, and the tech to infer it without explicitly scanning plates is only getting better and better.
Maybe having just one euro/asian-style dense city with bike lanes in the US wouldn't be such a bad thing to try out?
What do you call Manhattan? It would count among the ~10 most dense cities proper in the world.
- 30% of it is historical district that is basically frozen.
- Wastes surface space with 300k curbside parking.
- 75% of streetscape goes to cars, apparently bike+bus is <1%.
- Still has the same silly zoning issues that plague other cities.
I could go on but I don't want this to explode into more of my YIMBY hobby horse.
The momentum in NYC has made strides lately which is cool to see. But I'd like a US city to experiment with something less car-/nimby-brained. Until then, it's more sensible to live abroad, which feels ridiculous in a country as big as the US.
