You say Police State, I say potato. Either way let's discuss surveillance and government overreach.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

I bet this argument would bear as much weight with a traffic cop as just saying "well, my speedometer was showing that I was going well below the speed limit!".

With the cop, sure. With a judge maybe not. You can't bring your speedometer data to court.

Yeah, I was talking about in court.

I do rather like the idea of a respected data source someone can bring to prove their innocence with 5th amendment protection. Car telemetry is a decent, not invasive way to do that. With some supporting data, you could use phone traces much the same way. "I was _here_, and actively using the phone in a manner that supports that it was with me. What did your witness say again?"

Kannon wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

I bet this argument would bear as much weight with a traffic cop as just saying "well, my speedometer was showing that I was going well below the speed limit!".

With the cop, sure. With a judge maybe not. You can't bring your speedometer data to court.

Yeah, I was talking about in court.

I do rather like the idea of a respected data source someone can bring to prove their innocence with 5th amendment protection. Car telemetry is a decent, not invasive way to do that. With some supporting data, you could use phone traces much the same way. "I was _here_, and actively using the phone in a manner that supports that it was with me. What did your witness say again?"

Anyone could have your cell phone, though? They could fake your voice. We'll have to install chips in people to get the level of assurance we need.

DSGamer wrote:

Anyone could have your cell phone, though? They could fake your voice. We'll have to install chips in people to get the level of assurance we need.

So what would _you_ do?

Outside of the assertion that the US is a police state, what would you do, if you were Benevolent Dictator, to un-f*ck it? How would you protect individual liberty and freedom, while maintaining the benefits of an interconnected world?

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

I bet this argument would bear as much weight with a traffic cop as just saying "well, my speedometer was showing that I was going well below the speed limit!".

Yeah, the cop would still write the ticket, but you'd have actual evidence on your side if you fought it in court.

As for keeping the info from a black box private, the article linked says

Although the text of legislation states that such data would remain the property of the owner of the vehicle, the government would have the power to access it in a number of circumstances, including by court order, if the owner consents to make it available, and pursuant to an investigation or inspection conducted by the Secretary of Transportation.

The FBI can already covertly place their own GPS tracker on your vehicle with a warrant, so that's not some new offense against privacy, it's just applying an existing offense to new technology. I would like to see it not be mandatory (maybe offer some financial incentive to have it) and Kannon's suggestion that the data be protected under the 5th amendment.

Kannon wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Anyone could have your cell phone, though? They could fake your voice. We'll have to install chips in people to get the level of assurance we need.

So what would _you_ do?

Outside of the assertion that the US is a police state, what would you do, if you were Benevolent Dictator, to un-f*ck it? How would you protect individual liberty and freedom, while maintaining the benefits of an interconnected world?

I would be very careful about the bolded statement above to start with. There's this assumption that the interconnected world is objectively good and that these are actually benefits. Having every moment of our lives documented for the sake of saving money and speeding up the justice system isn't an obvious trade-off to me. You're coming from a place that assumes that the benefits outweigh the inevitable abuse.

Stengah wrote:

I would like to see it not be mandatory (maybe offer some financial incentive to have it) and Kannon's suggestion that the data be protected under the 5th amendment.

We would have to recommit to the 4th amendment first. The current and previous administration have done more damage to the 4th amendment than any presidents in the history of the republic. The 5th amendment is virtually useless without strong 4th amendment protections.

In good news for personal liberties, the Connecticut Senate passed a bill that holds cops personally liable for arresting people for videotaping them. It still has to pass their House, but it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully knowledge that the city won't cover for them will make them less cavalier when it comes to the 1st amendment.

DSGamer wrote:
Kannon wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Anyone could have your cell phone, though? They could fake your voice. We'll have to install chips in people to get the level of assurance we need.

So what would _you_ do?

Outside of the assertion that the US is a police state, what would you do, if you were Benevolent Dictator, to un-f*ck it? How would you protect individual liberty and freedom, while maintaining the benefits of an interconnected world?

I would be very careful about the bolded statement above to start with. There's this assumption that the interconnected world is objectively good and that these are actually benefits. Having every moment of our lives documented for the sake of saving money and speeding up the justice system isn't an obvious trade-off to me. You're coming from a place that assumes that the benefits outweigh the inevitable abuse.

Solid benefits:

The Internet
Cell Phones
E-911 service
GPS and Not getting gorram lost as often
Bank accounts, debit cards, and direct deposit

Off the top of my head. So, yeah, I sort of am. Each of those involves a small trade off in trace-ability for massive benefits.

So, I'll ask again, how to we keep the benefits without forcing people into it, and keeping our standards for privacy and personal liberty high.

DSGamer wrote:
Kannon wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Anyone could have your cell phone, though? They could fake your voice. We'll have to install chips in people to get the level of assurance we need.

So what would _you_ do?

Outside of the assertion that the US is a police state, what would you do, if you were Benevolent Dictator, to un-f*ck it? How would you protect individual liberty and freedom, while maintaining the benefits of an interconnected world?

I would be very careful about the bolded statement above to start with. There's this assumption that the interconnected world is objectively good and that these are actually benefits. Having every moment of our lives documented for the sake of saving money and speeding up the justice system isn't an obvious trade-off to me. You're coming from a place that assumes that the benefits outweigh the inevitable abuse.

This is, I think a key point in the argument. From my perspective, the question is not whether or not digital tracking technology is a net gain or net loss for freedom or for good. The question is whether or not it is already a fait accompli. Our laws are based on a print information technology: rules providing for privacy, copyright, expression, and public gathering are all based on the affordances of physical media for communication. With the digitial shift, we have things that are possible that were never considered before. (example: copyright laws never imagined a world in which each listen or reading of a text required creating a new copy. Reasonable expectations of privacy never imagined CCTV cameras that record and remember everything).

Personally, I think we are beyond choosing whether or not we want to live in a surveillance society. We *are* living in a surveillance society and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle whether we want to or no. I don't think legislation can dictate what is technologically possible. What we can do is make sure that individuals are enabled to control their information flow and that data that is being captured is explicitly being captured and not secret. That way we can put our $100 dollar bills in a faraday pouch so that high-tech muggers can't remotely check who's wallet is worth stealing and whose is not. We can unplug our fast-pass boxes so they will only transmit our location and identification at tollbooths. The key is (I think) that we can't turn back the clock on technologically enabled surveillance, but we can turn on the lights and require notification when data is being collected and notification of to whom it is being released.

You can't bring your speedometer data to court.

If the data formats were standardized and open, yeah, you could. Right now, they are highly proprietary and the readers can be very, very hard to find.

Robear wrote:
You can't bring your speedometer data to court.

If the data formats were standardized and open, yeah, you could. Right now, they are highly proprietary and the readers can be very, very hard to find.

Is the data saved?

Oso wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
Kannon wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Anyone could have your cell phone, though? They could fake your voice. We'll have to install chips in people to get the level of assurance we need.

So what would _you_ do?

Outside of the assertion that the US is a police state, what would you do, if you were Benevolent Dictator, to un-f*ck it? How would you protect individual liberty and freedom, while maintaining the benefits of an interconnected world?

I would be very careful about the bolded statement above to start with. There's this assumption that the interconnected world is objectively good and that these are actually benefits. Having every moment of our lives documented for the sake of saving money and speeding up the justice system isn't an obvious trade-off to me. You're coming from a place that assumes that the benefits outweigh the inevitable abuse.

This is, I think a key point in the argument. From my perspective, the question is not whether or not digital tracking technology is a net gain or net loss for freedom or for good. The question is whether or not it is already a fait accompli. Our laws are based on a print information technology: rules providing for privacy, copyright, expression, and public gathering are all based on the affordances of physical media for communication. With the digitial shift, we have things that are possible that were never considered before. (example: copyright laws never imagined a world in which each listen or reading of a text required creating a new copy. Reasonable expectations of privacy never imagined CCTV cameras that record and remember everything).

Personally, I think we are beyond choosing whether or not we want to live in a surveillance society. We *are* living in a surveillance society and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle whether we want to or no. I don't think legislation can dictate what is technologically possible. What we can do is make sure that individuals are enabled to control their information flow and that data that is being captured is explicitly being captured and not secret. That way we can put our $100 dollar bills in a faraday pouch so that high-tech muggers can't remotely check who's wallet is worth stealing and whose is not. We can unplug our fast-pass boxes so they will only transmit our location and identification at tollbooths. The key is (I think) that we can't turn back the clock on technologically enabled surveillance, but we can turn on the lights and require notification when data is being collected and notification of to whom it is being released.

I don't necessarily disagree. I'm not a luddite. I'm a realist and I understand that we rely on much of the edifice of modern technology, even if it's not necessary or simply replaces paper. I just disagree that it's objectively good. Is it objectively good that I have constant connection to the Internet? I have to convince my wife to put her cell phone down, stop emailing co-workers and relax for the evening.

Is it objectively good that I have a GPS device, Yelp and other things to tell me where to go next and how to get there? Getting lost is one of the greatest things in life. I take a vacation at least twice a year to some place where I don't get cell phone coverage and can get around by map / talking to humans.

So I guess when someone suggests we take the surveillance state that's already presumed to exist I don't take it as fait accompli that we have to keep adding more and more surveillance. I believe it is possible to say "no" to added surveillance. The technology existing doesn't mean you have to use it or that using it is inherently "good" or "better".

So I guess when someone suggests we take the surveillance state that's already presumed to exist I don't take it as fait accompli that we have to keep adding more and more surveillance. I believe it is possible to say "no" to added surveillance. The technology existing doesn't mean you have to use it or that using it is inherently "good" or "better".

I agree with this, for the most part. Already though, one has to be pretty well informed in order to say "no" and opt out of tracking. One, for example, has to be willing to pay more for groceries to avoid using club cards and revealing data on how much beer, cigarettes, and fatty food one consumes. One has to be willing to pass on auto insurance discounts for driving around w/ a snitch chip in your car. One has to know how to use TOR nodes and to avoid "free" cloud services to avoid being tracked online.

It already requires quite a bit of education to maintain one's privacy at the level we could expect in the early 1990s. RFID toll passes and bus passes will make that even more difficult. I want to believe we can opt out, but the sheer magnitude of data points that are being gathered makes opting out a full time job. At what point does using a faraday cage wallet and cooking your new passport in a microwave go from tin-foil-hat country to reasonable behavior? (Personally, I use a metal wallet, but haven't killed the arphid in my passport.)

Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble has raised my awareness on passive consumer tracking. That scares me as much or more than active law-enforcement tracking. It is just anecdata, but there is a revealing story about a father who called up Target to complain that they were sending his daughter coupons for pregnancy supplies in the mail. It turns out that her sudden increase in purchases of vitamins and unscented lotion triggered a "she might be pregnant" data point. Daddy called to complain, but it turned out she *was* pregnant.

Combine purchase tracking, online tracking, and only slightly improved Bayesian probability algorithms and we're looking at a very real possibility of Minority Report style precogs.

Anyway, this is a long digression. What I reallly want to communicate is that I agree with you in spirit, but my fear is that technology is changing faster than our ability to understand what it all means. I think new face-recognition software in public places, location tracking through RFID chips embedded in currency and ID passes, and online data-mining will be in effect long before we understand enough to make a conscious choice whether or not we want these things. I think you are 100% spot on in noting that all change is not for the good. I'm just less optimistic about our ability to do anything about it.

(Now I'm depressed. I think I'll make a donation to the EFF and see if that makes me feel better.)

DSGamer wrote:

I don't necessarily disagree. I'm not a luddite. I'm a realist and I understand that we rely on much of the edifice of modern technology, even if it's not necessary or simply replaces paper. I just disagree that it's objectively good. Is it objectively good that I have constant connection to the Internet? I have to convince my wife to put her cell phone down, stop emailing co-workers and relax for the evening.

Is it objectively good that I have a GPS device, Yelp and other things to tell me where to go next and how to get there? Getting lost is one of the greatest things in life. I take a vacation at least twice a year to some place where I don't get cell phone coverage and can get around by map / talking to humans.

So I guess when someone suggests we take the surveillance state that's already presumed to exist I don't take it as fait accompli that we have to keep adding more and more surveillance. I believe it is possible to say "no" to added surveillance. The technology existing doesn't mean you have to use it or that using it is inherently "good" or "better".

I never said they were inherently good, though I can see how it came off that way. Getting lost is still something I routinely do, deliberately or otherwise, but when you need to be at an unfamiliar location at precisely X time, GPS is a damned handy thing to have. Especially in small towns, where they give directions by landmarks that mean bupkis to me.

I also don't think that adding, say, the ability for cars to be more intelligent than their drivers. (F*cking California drivers. Batsh*t you lot are!), provided it was done well, and with an eye to privacy, would be a bad thing.

However, do know that someone, somewhere, is going to want this, and it may end up drifting uncomfortably mainstream. So assisting in getting the privacy concerns addressed, even it's something you'd _never_ use, is always useful.

Is the data saved?

Remember the unintended acceleration cases a year or so back? Honda had been recording this data in a black box routinely, but it was in a proprietary format, and it came out that there were only one or two physical readers in the country, and one person who could decode the output. They held that *very* closely.

However, for most cars with electronic systems, records are kept on many stats, and you can go to an auto supply place, borrow a reader, plug it in, and check the resulting codes and data in a book provided by the manufacturer to get the status or even history of a component. So the tech is already in place and in use.

This is, I think a key point in the argument. From my perspective, the question is not whether or not digital tracking technology is a net gain or net loss for freedom or for good. The question is whether or not it is already a fait accompli. Our laws are based on a print information technology: rules providing for privacy, copyright, expression, and public gathering are all based on the affordances of physical media for communication. With the digitial shift, we have things that are possible that were never considered before. (example: copyright laws never imagined a world in which each listen or reading of a text required creating a new copy. Reasonable expectations of privacy never imagined CCTV cameras that record and remember everything).

Personally, I think we are beyond choosing whether or not we want to live in a surveillance society. We *are* living in a surveillance society and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle whether we want to or no. I don't think legislation can dictate what is technologically possible. What we can do is make sure that individuals are enabled to control their information flow and that data that is being captured is explicitly being captured and not secret. That way we can put our $100 dollar bills in a faraday pouch so that high-tech muggers can't remotely check who's wallet is worth stealing and whose is not. We can unplug our fast-pass boxes so they will only transmit our location and identification at tollbooths. The key is (I think) that we can't turn back the clock on technologically enabled surveillance, but we can turn on the lights and require notification when data is being collected and notification of to whom it is being released.

I agree strongly. This allows us to distinguish between a surveillance society with or without protections for the citizens, and thus between simple surveillance (for commercial and government uses both) with regulatory protections and oversight, and abusive surveillance (ie, without protections, or done covertly for political or social reasons, where the citizen has no recourse AND the government routinely uses that information to abuse citizens in real ways.) We have to recognize that technology will not stop advancing, and that the difference between a police state and a surveillance state is the *use* of the technology, not it's mere presence. Therefore, we need to control the *use* of surveillance. We can't prevent it from happening on the whole; this is what's left to us to affect.

And bear in mind, there will *always* be abuses. The issue is how many, how often, and for what purpose. We can't have a standard that says "one time is too many"; given human nature, that's meaningless and throws us all the way to the edges of the debate the first time someone gives in to temptation in a position of power. We have to judge based on the large trends, the large intents and capabilities, rather than the scary outliers.

This is a perfect example of why blogs are not good alternatives to responsible journalism. Not only is there a lack of evidence of such a strategy, there is dubious evidence that sexual assault by police officers are occurring at a higher rate.

Worse, proof of this being possible is unsubstantiated reports of it happening in Egypt and other countries.

What I do see is a ton of typical injuries that occur when entitled protesters fail to understand the nature of civil disobedience and resist arrest.

Ah, yes, Jayhawker blames the victims.

Malor wrote:

Ah, yes, Jayhawker blames the victims.

Ah, yes, Malor misses Jayhawker's point.

Jonman wrote:
Malor wrote:

Ah, yes, Jayhawker blames the victims.

Ah, yes, Malor misses Jayhawker's point.

I, too, missed that point then.

CheezePavilion wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Malor wrote:

Ah, yes, Jayhawker blames the victims.

Ah, yes, Malor misses Jayhawker's point.

I, too, missed that point then.

It's either blogs are a bad source of news or the police are completely justified in busting head or doing a little sexual assault once they think someone who's gone limp and is screaming "I'm not resisting" is doing something they can claim is resisting arrest.

Isn't the point that unfounded allegations fuel confirmation bias?

If these crimes are really happening, it is not too much to ask that evidence precede allegation?

I didn't see that Jayhawker said anything about it being the victim's fault. I just saw him question the veracity of unsourced allegations. If, in fact, police are using sexual assault to punish protesters, then this is a big deal. However, unsourced rumors appealing to a sensationalist audience are not, in face, evidence.

In a police state, we would expect to see sexual violence used to enforce authority. What I'm seeing here is that some people assume that we are living in a police state, so this must logically be taking place. Other people assume that we are not living in a police state, so this must logically not be taking place.

What I'm not seeing here is legitimate evidence upon which we can decide the matter without appealing to assumptions based on entrenched positions.

Oso wrote:

Isn't the point that unfounded allegations fuel confirmation bias?

If these crimes are really happening, it is not too much to ask that evidence precede allegation?

What evidence? That's why sexual assault is such an effective form of torture: the amount of damage you can inflict while leaving only emotional scars.

I didn't see that Jayhawker said anything about it being the victim's fault. I just saw him question the veracity of unsourced allegations. If, in fact, police are using sexual assault to punish protesters, then this is a big deal. However, unsourced rumors appealing to a sensationalist audience are not, in face, evidence.

In a police state, we would expect to see sexual violence used to enforce authority. What I'm seeing here is that some people assume that we are living in a police state,

I do not assume we live in a police state.

Oso wrote:

I didn't see that Jayhawker said anything about it being the victim's fault. I just saw him question the veracity of unsourced allegations. If, in fact, police are using sexual assault to punish protesters, then this is a big deal. However, unsourced rumors appealing to a sensationalist audience are not, in face, evidence.

Jayhawker wrote:

What I do see is a ton of typical injuries that occur when entitled protesters fail to understand the nature of civil disobedience and resist arrest.

I think Jayhawker's post would've been a great contribution minus that sentence.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Oso wrote:

I didn't see that Jayhawker said anything about it being the victim's fault. I just saw him question the veracity of unsourced allegations. If, in fact, police are using sexual assault to punish protesters, then this is a big deal. However, unsourced rumors appealing to a sensationalist audience are not, in face, evidence.

Jayhawker wrote:

What I do see is a ton of typical injuries that occur when entitled protesters fail to understand the nature of civil disobedience and resist arrest.

I think Jayhawker's post would've been a great contribution minus that sentence.

Yeah, I could see that. There is a serious gap between what police unions and the general public consider to be a reasonable level of force.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Oso wrote:

I didn't see that Jayhawker said anything about it being the victim's fault. I just saw him question the veracity of unsourced allegations. If, in fact, police are using sexual assault to punish protesters, then this is a big deal. However, unsourced rumors appealing to a sensationalist audience are not, in face, evidence.

Jayhawker wrote:

What I do see is a ton of typical injuries that occur when entitled protesters fail to understand the nature of civil disobedience and resist arrest.

I think Jayhawker's post would've been a great contribution minus that sentence.

I don't understand what is unsourced about these allegations. The story literally starts with a source, and then a picture of the wrist in a cast described in the story by that source. From the blog post:

I’m not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.

For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life. The threat of doing so operates as a very effective form of intimidation. One exception is Cecily McMillan, who was not only groped but suffered a broken rib and seizures during her arrest on March 17, and held incommunicado, denied constant requests to see her lawyer, for over 24 hours thereafter. Shortly after release from the hospital she appeared on Democracy Now! And showed part of a handprint, replete with scratch-marks, that police had left directly over her right breast. (She is currently pursuing civil charges against the police department)

The fact that you read that as a source of facts is distressing.

Jayhawker wrote:

The fact that you read that as a source of facts is distressing.

The fact that you immediately assume they were resisting arrest and it was normal course of action is also distressing.

Which brings us to your point that blog posts are not great sources.

The language in your quoted section makes the point clearly. There is *one* sourced allegation and many unsourced claims.

This is the point that is being made. When a blogger writes that "a lot of this is happening" without providing sources for the allegations, that is, by definition, an unsourced claim.

We have one person, one, who has been willing to step forward and be a source for an allegation.

Now, those of us who were not there cannot tell from this reporting what happened. This seems to be Jayhawkers point: a blogger who is not held accountable by any outside group for the quality or content of his reporting makes a broad claim about widespread sexual assualt by members of the NYPD.

In order for this to be reported by a professional journalist and then printed by a reputable publication, the reporter would need to have evidence and sources that could be checked. The blogger has no such requirements and can thus make up stuff.

I am, in no way, making any statement about what actually went on between the police and the protesters. I wasn't there and I have no evidence to base a conclusion on. What I am saying is that this "story" isn't a story until there are independently verifiable facts or sources to base it on.

What we have is one name and a bunch of heresay.

Of course, it may be true, but we don't have any tools to judge the veracity of it with outside of our preexisting assumptions. Thus: confirmation bias. People who believe that police routinely abuse their authority will probably believe that the police are abusing their authority. People who believe that the protestors are willing to say or do anything to appear like victims will probably believe that the protesters will say or do anything to make themselves appear like victims.

Outside of our pre-existing biases, the repeating of unsourced or single-sourced rumors does not give us any real evidence with which to answer the question at hand.

Jayhawker wrote:

The fact that you read that as a source of facts is distressing.

Why?