OT: LPR, Law Enforcement and Personal Freedom

[BellyFullOfWhiteDogCrap]

Most will not support this until some crazy terrorist act unfortunately happens then they'll change there tone smh.......i totally support these types of actions.

Then you live a fear driven existence. You and your family will never have 100% guaranteed safety. You shouldn't desire to live in a world like that. It would be a nightmare.

 

[mildone]

Terrorists goal is to terrorize. If we allow fear to cause us to change our way of life and/or compromise the individual freedoms our country was founded around, then the terrorists win.

Don't let the terrorists win.

 

[GoodOl'Rutgers]

Like torture.. that might work on occasion.. this is something we should simply say no to.

"Big Brother" in a nice healthy society seems benign to those who generally follow the rules of society. But do you really trust politicians with this? This is one of those technologies that help make a military overthrow of the government possible.. and practical.

If our society is on the decline, as soon as we face a serious crisis where people are having a hard time feeding themselves, such a revolution would seem desirable. This tech would make it easy to track opponents of such a move just as it is being sold to be used to track terrorists and criminals and amber alert vehicles.

Couple this with the NSA listening to your calls and looking for keywords and you have a case where a "voice" gets flagged.. the owner of the phone is tracked, its location is tracked, vehicles that have frequently been seen at that address are tracked back to their homes, etc etc etc. Pair all this data with all the grabs for our guns and you have an ideal situation for a takeover.

I know, I know.. sounds crazy... until it happens. Leftist takeover, rightist.. fascist, commie.. doesn't matter.. any of them can use all this tech to make it impossible to resist them.

 

[miket007]

But that's because you're fkn 007 ... and virtually undetectable by man or modern technology.

You get "it"...........

 

[Ole Cabbagehead]

Like torture.. that might work on occasion.. this is something we should simply say no to.

"Big Brother" in a nice healthy society seems benign to those who generally follow the rules of society. But do you really trust politicians with this? This is one of those technologies that help make a military overthrow of the government possible.. and practical.

If our society is on the decline, as soon as we face a serious crisis where people are having a hard time feeding themselves, such a revolution would seem desirable. This tech would make it easy to track opponents of such a move just as it is being sold to be used to track terrorists and criminals and amber alert vehicles.

Couple this with the NSA listening to your calls and looking for keywords and you have a case where a "voice" gets flagged.. the owner of the phone is tracked, its location is tracked, vehicles that have frequently been seen at that address are tracked back to their homes, etc etc etc. Pair all this data with all the grabs for our guns and you have an ideal situation for a takeover.

I know, I know.. sounds crazy... until it happens. Leftist takeover, rightist.. fascist, commie.. doesn't matter.. any of them can use all this tech to make it impossible to resist them.

I would give you ten likes for this if I could. People cannot seem to get it through their heads that everything is not going to be peaceful and balanced forever. We are seeing a wildly divisive presidential campaign this year, which includes numerous violent riots attempting to stop the leading candidate. How does society look if Trump gets elected? Politics in this nation are getting more, not less divisive.

We are not that far removed from Senator McCarthy. Imagine what that would have looked like with today's technology. Viet Nam riots, the black panthers, etc. Even the IRS recently targeting conservative groups.

What happens when you become the enemy? What happens when you have a target on your back because of your political beliefs? People think it will never happen. But it has happened in every civilization, everywhere, since the beginning of time. The USA will not be here forever, and our government will not be good for all of our citizens forever.

 

[GoodOl'Rutgers]

I would give you ten likes for this if I could. People cannot seem to get it through their heads that everything is not going to be peaceful and balanced forever. We are seeing a wildly divisive presidential campaign this year, which includes numerous violent riots attempting to stop the leading candidate. How does society look if Trump gets elected? Politics in this nation are getting more, not less divisive.

We are not that far removed from Senator McCarthy. Imagine what that would have looked like with today's technology. Viet Nam riots, the black panthers, etc. Even the IRS recently targeting conservative groups.

What happens when you become the enemy? What happens when you have a target on your back because of your political beliefs? People think it will never happen. But it has happened in every civilization, everywhere, since the beginning of time. The USA will not be here forever, and our government will not be good for all of our citizens forever.

Agreed. This is exactly the type of thing that should band Americans of all political persuasions together. It is about FREEDOM.. something this country is purportedly all about. The only ones that should be FOR this type of thing are those that yearn for the days when the government can control every facet of their lives.

And that is what has always fascinated me with the (Hollywood elite and their supporters) fascination with socialism. Yes they want more spent on arts instead of the military and they want to tax the wealthy to pay for it... but what they do not get is that when the government controls who has the opportunities to pursue the arts and it is paid for by tax dollars, that it is the political elite who will be granting these jobs to the connected and many of them and their children will end up being assigned to work in factories making whatever the government says needs to be made.

Is it possible that such a revolution happens here? HELL YES. Be grateful for this messed up form of government that we now have because every other form sux more.

 

[beaced]

How do you know they didn't abuse it? I'm guessing you don't actually know everything they've done and do with that data.

That's a great argument for carrying a gun.

 

[PSU_Nut]

Okay - so first of all, I posted this here and not on the CE board because I'm genuinely interested in what people think on this topic and I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that we can have a simple discussion on the pros & cons without the usual suspects interjecting their most learned and erudite proclamations regarding who sucks and who has ruined the country.

This is an article from the Washington Post this morning about some little fuss over a Philly PD vehicle equipped with an LPR system and sporting a "Google Maps" window sticker. The article suggests some chicanery involved in trying to "disguise" said vehicle as to conceal its actual purpose.

The article is a stretch and conspiracies are unlikely regarding this particular vehicle, because in this day and age the overwhelming majority of law enforcement vehicles are equipped with LPR systems.

For those who don't know, LPR stands for "License Plate Reader". It's a relatively simple system of specialized cameras which scan traffic and pick out license plates. It runs them through an OCR (Optical Character Reader) process to interpret the plate number and then compares the data against various "hot lists" - stolen cars, vehicles connected with crimes, wanted individuals, etc.

Sounds great, on the surface.

What most people don't know is that local & state law enforcement agencies are working closely with the federal government to aggregate and catalog this data so that it becomes possible to track vehicles in real time and to look back through time and show the movements of any given vehicle. In essence, this system has become yet another component of Big Brother.

I'm interested in lucid, intelligent feedback regarding how people feel about that.

People are overreacting so much to this. Do you realize how often your license plate is scanned? Your local grocery store has more information on you then what these are gatherings. My office is in the same complex as a state police barracks along with the state police buruea of technology. Their vehicles are all equipped with this technology and I went a months with an expired registration and not once even driving past the police barracks daily was my plate scanned. Think of all the other things that track your location. Phone, ez pass, shoping cards, credit cards, gps ect.

If anything this is making the public safer. The police were still running plates prior. Now they are able to do it while focusing on driving and not trying to type and drive at the same time.

Personally I more worried about the new radar that is being used. It will allow them to check speed of vehicles while they are driving of on coming traffic or traffic traveling in the same direction.

 

[BellyFullOfWhiteDogCrap]

Those of you on here still in favor of mass data collection should check out the latest episode of Vice on HBO (premiered 5/27). Then ask yourself, with all of this data collection, why wasn't the Boston Marathon bombing prevented? How about the Paris attack, or the Brussels airport bomb? If all of these guys were in the system; and they absolutely were; why weren't these horrific attacks prevented? Mass data collection is not making you safer.

 

[PhilaPhans]

First of all, props for keeping this discussion pretty civil.

Second, I'm surprised that there hasn't been that much focus in this thread yet about what rights or laws to privacy actually exist.

 

[RU4Real]

First of all, props for keeping this discussion pretty civil.

Second, I'm surprised that there hasn't been that much focus in this thread yet about what rights or laws to privacy actually exist.

There's always the point that gets made with regard to there being no specific "right to privacy". That said, the 4th Amendment is pretty broad in scope. Is it interpretable such that there should be no expectation of privacy outside of your home or your person? Sure. You could make that argument. But I think you could also make the (better) argument that law enforcement or the government cataloging your every movement is a violation of the 4th with respect to "person".

And yes, the thread has been very civil. I'm enjoying it.

 

[LotusAggressor]

Everything in Philadelphia sucks! Especially the Phillies, so this must suck too? o_O

On one hand, if you don't have anything to hide, why should you care why big brother is watching you? On the other hand, I can see the criminal lawyers trotting out all sorts of arguments against this type of "surveillance." I am somewhat indifferent because I have nothing to hide. I would become less indifferent if I found my name/car on a "list" because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time by coincidence. :grimace:

You should care. The point of this kind of surveillance isn't necessarily to catch criminals or terrorists. It's to control people, most of whom are law abiding citizens. If you exchange your liberty for security, you deserve neither.

 

[jerzey devil]