psybelle

Damn. Now it's content as well as "just metadata"...


This is clearly unconstitutional.


Grayson is wonderful, and he's not a lone voice in questioning the current practices. But I don't know if there's enough support behind him to actually roll back any of the excesses of the current surveillance binge... The NSA seems to have rubberstamp approval for just about anything it wants (read as absolute power) and has absolutely been corrupted by it; when non-violent dissenters (like #occupy) and vocal environmentalists are targeted, you know that the main concern is protecting the power base of the organization rather than the country as a whole.



Dissent is not a criminal act. Protest is not a criminal act. And expecting our elected officials to uphold their oaths to defend the Constitution and serve the people should not be naive idealism...

Sheriff wants a drone for surveillance: see the attachment to Item 22.


Part 7 (page 3) of the Attachment:
Funding in the amount of $31 ,646 will be allocated to the Alameda County Sheriffs Office to purchase an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), weighing less than 4lbs, equipped with live video downlink. The Unmanned Aerial System consists of an unmanned aircraft, the control system, a control link and other related support equipment. Unmanned Aerial Systems save money, enhance safety, save lives and can be utilized across a myriad of public safety disciplines to include the Homeland Security Arena. This system will provide real-time situational analysis for first responders to include search and rescue missions, tactical operations, disaster response, recovery and damage assessment, explosive ordnance response, wild land and structure fire response and response to Hazmat incidents. The UAS can enhance the safety of first responders and citizens alike and will enhance our ability to respond.

So. There's facial recognition software, voice recognition software, gait recognition software. There are facilities for archiving all this information, software for integrating it (follow the tags).

There's increased surveillance, both routine and on the ground. (link covering RNCCTV, REAL ID, undercover cops - very 1984)


And, as always, the "big three" of terrorists, organized crime, and pedophiles is trotted out as justification... I've come to the conclusion that they're right, sort of.

The quote of the day is, "Prisons are like universities, they're only profitable if you put butts in the seats.” Criminalizing the general populace, the surveillance, the militarization of municipal police forces - none of this would be happening if people weren't profiting from it.

Privatizing prisons, turning incarceration into a profitable business - this changes the narrative of social control, of being a good citizen, the very basis of what Law and Government do in ways that I just can't wrap my brain around. The narrative breaks in ways that induce severe cognitive dissonance; I literally cannot think about this. One clear thought, though, is that lobbying to make laws to incarcerate more people, deprive them of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" just to get rich - is deeply criminal. That is the organized crime that is driving the surveillance state.

Wil Wheaton is outraged.

So am I. The thing that caught me was the offhand quote from a police officer who wrote a set of use-of-force guidelines: "Bodies don't have handles on them." He was defending the use of pepper spray as a "compliance tool” to be used on subjects who do not resist, preferable to simply lifting protesters....


He's talking about people. Conscious, alert, non-violent people, people who happen to not be "compliant" ....

Bodies don't have handles on them.

Citizens don't have handles on them?

Taxpayers don't have handles on them?

Voters don't have handles on them??

If the citizenry that I thought the police were to protect and serve are merely bodies, then the photo (from Portland, I think) captioned "Protect and Serve" showing 20+ officers in riot gear arrayed outside a building displaying the Chase logo is utterly correct and property is more important than "bodies".