[HN Gopher] CBP is monitoring US drivers and detaining those wit...
___________________________________________________________________
CBP is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with suspicious
travel patterns
Author : jjwiseman
Score : 520 points
Date : 2025-11-20 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| themafia wrote:
| Drive a rental car with California plates through Arizona on
| eastward and you're likely to find this out first hand.
|
| They'll of course pretend that they just saw you commit a minor
| infraction and that's why you were pulled over.
| mothballed wrote:
| When i was building a house next to the border, I drove from
| the border north every week, but was astonishingly never
| flagged at the internal checkpoints (ive been brutalized by cbp
| at the actual border before under false drug smuggling
| accusations). I also have a lot of foreign, brown 'illegal'
| looking family (us citizens) whom I'd drive up/down the border
| regularly through CBP checkpoints as they helped us build.
|
| The fact i was never stopped makes me even more terrified of a
| panopticon. Is their surveillance that bad -- or that good?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| >the fact i was never stopped makes me even more terrified of
| a panopticon. Is their surveillance that bad -- or that good?
|
| "I'm terrified that this panopticon so bad that it doesn't
| see anything"
| cestith wrote:
| If it's so good that it sees everything, and they just
| haven't seen anything of interest enough to stop you yet
| isn't that scary?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| what
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Drove a new Hyundai with dealer plates from AZ to Minnesota and
| got pulled over by Bethany, MO city police on I-35 in northern
| MO with no probable cause other than window tint being too
| dark. They tore the car apart certain that I was muling drugs
| (removed seats, body panels, etc). Took 6 hours. Never found
| anything and left me with "we know you have committed a crime,
| we just cannot find it, but you will get caught". I had to put
| the car back together myself in the dark.
|
| Retired age men driving dealer plate cars eastbound onto I-80
| in Nebraska out of Colorado from I-76 get stopped ALL THE TIME
| as potential drug mules.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm confused. Are you saying they disassembled your car right
| there where you were pulled over? They had the tools on hand
| to do this? They didn't tow your car to a shop to have it
| searched? I've seen many many a car stop get searched by hand
| and/or with canine. Not once have I ever seen removal of
| seats/paneling/etc on the side of the road. So this is a bit
| much to take on first read without further questions
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Yes that is what I am saying. Most cops carry a multi tool
| at the minimum (with Phillips screwdriver). They also had a
| standard 10mm socket (carried by MANY cops and all that is
| required to dismantle much of any Hyundai).
|
| Using their multi tool, they removed the fender liners
| (wheel well liners) from all 4 wheels, the trunk side trim
| (luggage compartment side trim) from both sides - all of
| which just has plastic push-pin scrivets (retainer clips).
| They broke 5 of them.
|
| They folded down my back seats (after removing all my
| personal items out to the shoulder in the rain), then
| unbolted and removed the back seat.
|
| I do a LOT of interstate driving, and it is not at all
| uncommon to see this happen.
|
| This is not the only time I have been in situations where
| authority has been exceeded. My attitude is to generally be
| cooperative (without giving consent) as my experience has
| taught me that is the most painless way to go.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Did you ever ask for a supervisor/sergeant to be called?
| If they are in on it to then you're no worse off, but if
| they can come out and rein in an out of control patrol
| then so much the better.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| One of them WAS a sergeant. My hope was that a State
| Trooper would stop and reign things in a bit. Just lots
| of semis thundering by. Otherwise, it can get pretty
| quiet on rural interstates at night.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I was hassled once for driving without my head lights on
| at night - when they were in fact on - in NYC and one of
| the cops was a white shirt lieutenant. They were rude,
| insulting and were obviously trying to get a rise out of
| me. I kept cool along with my passenger and after some
| simple questioning and running my ID they let me go. It
| was obviously a fishing expedition but for what I can
| only guess.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Driving on I-70 or I-80/81 through Ohio definitely gets
| you noticed. There's a lot of meth in Ohio...
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Just adding some perspective from someone who has been
| inside the trunk of a _lot_ of cop cars over the
| years[1]:
|
| A good many cops (maybe not >50%, but a very significant
| percentage) carry a pretty decent ad-hoc toolkit in their
| vehicles. There's often a toolbox with screwdrivers,
| socketry, pliers, some wrenches, maybe a hammer and/or
| other basic handtools.
|
| It's pretty common for folks who know how to use tools to
| keep some on-hand, and cops are not an exception.
|
| [1]: Yeah, so... I should probably explain that part.
| Some of my work involves 2-way radios, and some of that
| 2-way radio business has lead to me putting radios and
| stuff into things like cop cars. I've emptied out
| hundreds of cop cars to get access to what I need, and
| have certainly climbed into the trunk of dozens of them
| to be where I need to be. (Someone has to do it, and
| sometimes that person is me.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Just adding some perspective from someone who has been
| inside the trunk of a lot of cop cars over the years
|
| this gave me a bit of a laugh as my initial read had me
| imagining you being shoved into the trunk vs having dug
| around to see the contents.
| philipbjorge wrote:
| Until it's happened to you, it sounds unbelievable
|
| Sorry about all the broken plastic on the trim -- That's
| also very familiar...
| cestith wrote:
| This is regular, typical behavior for some departments.
| Diederich wrote:
| They don't need a lot of tools to do such a deep 'search'
| of your car, they're not under any requirement or mandate
| to make it easy or even possible to repair.
|
| In my 40+ years of driving, I've seen such disassembled
| cars along the road a hand full of times.
| LocalH wrote:
| The cruelty is the point
| mzs wrote:
| This happened to me, in East Germany. I'm sorry it happens
| now in the Land of the Free.
| nxobject wrote:
| I've always wanted to ask people who lived in East Germany:
| what similarities and differences do you see with the
| modern American surveillance infrastructure?
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| The more this flyover-state mentality policing continues
| (obvious civil asset forfeiture fishing - dealers might be
| carrying cash from a previous sale, etc), the less people are
| going to drive through them, further depriving these states
| of a revenue source. Of course, this mentality could be voted
| out by the residents of these states, but I'm not optimistic.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| I hope mightily that you are correct and it is restricted
| to the flyover states. I fear that the reality is probably
| that in populated states the police are so preoccupied
| dealing with real crime they have little opportunity to
| take "preventative action". Being as empathic as I can, I
| would say that the cops in flyover states deal with a LOT
| of transport-related drug crimes (that's why they are
| called "flyover"), so I get their focus. I have just
| learned to exist below the radar as much as possible. I no
| longer drive dealer plated cars and have no vehicles
| registered in my name (so I never come up in ALPR systems).
| I try to be compliant in every way possible. But then again
| that's what real criminals do too.
| pureagave wrote:
| Every rental car I've rented in California seems to have
| Florida plates and every U-haul I've rented in the country has
| Arizona plates. I don't know that the issuing state matters.
| The Article content suggests the main issue is taking multiple
| short trips to the boarder not driving across a state.
| MisterTea wrote:
| They register the vehicles in states where it's cheaper. It
| used to be that a lot of people with trailers in New England
| registered them in Maine because you were(are?) not required
| to insure the trailer OR live in the same state to register.
| hypeatei wrote:
| The idea of a federal agent stopping you for a traffic
| infraction is insane on its face. That'd be very rare, if not
| unheard of, in normal times no? How would they charge you? Are
| there federal laws on the books for speeding or not wearing a
| seatbelt?
| themafia wrote:
| Look into "dual sworn" officers. Although I've seen a few
| investigations which show that the federal officers will just
| send a text message, on a private phone, to uniformed
| officers when they want them to "check something out."
| mothballed wrote:
| Even worse feds will use local cops as fodder to pull over
| actual murderous criminals on traffic infractions, not
| knowing what they are dealing with. They then let the local
| cops take the risk and come by with their meal team 6 squad
| afterwards.
|
| https://youtu.be/rH6bsr61vrw
| devilbunny wrote:
| The US Park Police can and do enforce basic traffic
| regulations in national parks - which includes some roads,
| like the Blue Ridge Parkway, that are "linear parks". In
| respect of the fact that these roads are often used by local
| traffic, they will generally permit things that would be
| legal under the law of the state you are in (e.g., concealed
| firearm carry, so long as it's in the car and not brought
| into a ranger station or other building on the federal
| property).
| outside1234 wrote:
| This makes me want to do this just to jam up the system
| asdff wrote:
| And in California you can drive with no plates at all and
| seemingly never have any issues.
| duxup wrote:
| This dragnet style data monitoring is illegal when it comes to
| phones, it probably should be illegal when it comes to cameras
| too.
| kgwxd wrote:
| We already know they're doing it with phones too, laws don't
| apply to them.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Nonsense, I have it on good authority that Privacy Is A Human
| Right or somesuch.
| nxobject wrote:
| ...to be charitable, I think OP is being facetious.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945960
| Schiendelman wrote:
| So how do we do that? Is some organization working on it with a
| plausible theory of change?
| duxup wrote:
| The phone rulings came from court cases. So sadly it has to
| reach a case, an in the meantime other folks are hurt with no
| recourse.
| mothballed wrote:
| License plates aren't compatible with the 4th amendment, and this
| only becomes more obvious with time.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Part of the problem is that you're simply _not allowed_ to sue
| the people who are misusing the technology to violate the level
| of privacy everyone actually does _expect_ in public.
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-...
| giantg2 wrote:
| No, the license plates are not the problem. It's the
| scanning/recording of them that is.
|
| License plates provide basically the same info as the title to
| the car or your house. They only supply addition information,
| such as location when they are recorded somewhere. With things
| like facial recognition, you don't need the plates to track
| movement (although it is easier).
|
| The real problem is public surveillance identifying/tracking
| individuals.
| walletdrainer wrote:
| The idea of having titles for cars seems fundamentally weird
| too. We manage fine in most of the rest of the world without
| any special government paperwork establishing the _owner_ of
| a vehicle.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's mostly redundant as the registration schemes in most
| other countries do the same thing.
| ruined wrote:
| it seems more feasible to get rid of the license plates than
| to control public or private imaging and analytics of the
| license plates.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It does seem easier, but very low vlaue. If we let the
| recoding continue we will still have facial recognition,
| gait recognition, OnStar tracking, etc.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I want to hear out your point more, but by that logic, neither
| is walking around without a mask, or using a transit pass, or
| paying for things with a credit card.
| mothballed wrote:
| LP are compelled search of your papers by police without RAS
| nor PC.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| You don't own a license plate. It's the state's property.
| mothballed wrote:
| Not in my state.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| A license plate seems as much of a "paper" as the house
| numbers on my mailbox.
| bitexploder wrote:
| People may not understand how deep this goes. With
| municipalities eagerly allowing companies like Flock to hoover
| up license plates and centrally aggregate this data there is a
| very strong argument this is true and amounts to 4A violations
| when considered in total.
|
| Add that many states have laws that are /more/ punishing if you
| intentionally obscure your plate than simply not having one,
| what other conclusion can be drawn? The state's arguments are
| thin. "Oh we need it to find criminals / vehicles of interest"
| oh sure, so you get to suck up all our data to protect a few
| toll roads and track a few supposed criminals. The balance of
| benefit to society is dubious at best IMO.
| themafia wrote:
| Steve Jobs famously used to get a new car every 6 months,
| because in California, you don't have to put plates on it for
| that amount of time. So he could essentially permanently
| drive around without an attached license plate.
|
| I think about this from time to time.
| fragmede wrote:
| That's illegal now, not that it affects him any more.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Well that's just based.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Paper plates are still required. The number on it may not
| be as large as the actual plate, but there is definitely a
| unique number on it that is absolutely registered to owner
| of the car.
|
| This sounds a lot like urban legend / internet lore
| ericbarrett wrote:
| California did not require numbered paper plates when
| Jobs did this. Car dealers would put paper plates
| advertising themselves on the car, but you could remove
| them. Your temporary registration was taped on the inside
| of the front windshield.
|
| I personally saw his SL500 with dealer plates a couple of
| times while visiting the Apple campus as a vendor. He'd
| park in the handicap spot too.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Yep, and just paid all the fines if / when he got them.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| Suspicious behavior is not a crime, and law enforcement is
| required to have a reasonable, articulable suspicion of a crime
| in order to detain people.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >and law enforcement is required to have a reasonable,
| articulable suspicion of a crime in order to detain people.
|
| They can just say you're not a citizen.
| engeljohnb wrote:
| It's the oldest trick in the fascist book. You can't be a
| tyrant when the people are used to the idea that citizens
| have inalienable rights, so you slowly chip away at who
| counts as a "citizen."
| randallsquared wrote:
| The legal system has been chipping away at the rights
| themselves (and otherwise expanding governmental power) for
| hundreds of years, predating fascism (and communism, too).
| This is just the tactic of the moment.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Unfortunately, law enforcement often isn't subject to US law in
| practice, only in theory. And even on those few occasions where
| they are held to account for crimes against the public, the
| settlement is paid out with the public's own money rather than
| the officer's.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Devil's advocate: If the officer is acting within the
| policy/training they are given by their employer (and that
| includes not being told to not do something) then it's the
| employer's fault, and we (the taxpayer/ultimate employer) are
| liable for that.
| donkyrf wrote:
| The devil doesn't need an advocate.
|
| And you are misrepresenting the situation of what is paid
| out.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Nope.
|
| As proved by the fact that you have no evidence.
| LocalH wrote:
| "I was just following orders"
| awesome_dude wrote:
| You are bound to obey the _legal_ orders /directions of
| your employer.
|
| If you deem them to be illegal - the onus is on you to
| prove that, in a court of law, whilst you are unemployed
| because the employer sacked you for disobeying their
| instructions/orders
|
| It's all cool to be on the internet saying things like
| that, but when it comes to reality, I DOUBT you would do
| anything other than acquiesce.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| For anyone that thinks otherwise - the POTUS is currently
| in a dispute with Senators about this
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/20/punishable-by-
| deat...
| cestith wrote:
| Officers are licensed professionals. Doctors carry
| insurance. Engineers carry insurance. Teachers carry legal
| insurance, too. Sometimes the employer is also financially
| liable for damages, but not solely. Yet the police tend to
| let a city or county pay the bill instead of the officer,
| the department, or the union even when the officer is well
| outside of training and policy.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| "Sometimes"
|
| "Tend to"
|
| Do you have any citeable evidence of this being an actual
| thing, or is it just vibes?
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Almost every small business carries insurance.
| lobf wrote:
| >Do you have any citeable evidence of this being an
| actual thing, or is it just vibes?
|
| Are you really unaware of city settlements for police
| misconduct?
|
| Let me turn the question around- can you name a single
| example of a police department, union, or office paying
| out a settlement? Has it ever happened?
| iso1631 wrote:
| If you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear
|
| (/s incase it isn't obvious)
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Please watch "Don't Talk to the Police"
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36371237)
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| > incase it isn't obvious
|
| You're right that it should be. And in a sane world it would
| be. Yet here we are anyway.
| ortusdux wrote:
| It's borderline impossible to drive from one location to
| another and not break a law. Some argue that this is by design.
| m00x wrote:
| How? I've never been arrested in my life because I follow
| laws, so I'm unfamiliar how you can just accidentally break a
| law. Is this an American thing?
| hexbin010 wrote:
| Never ever broken the speed limit?
|
| Idled your vehicle? (Illegal in the UK no idea about the
| US)
| ortusdux wrote:
| In my area I can get pulled over for exceeding the speed
| limit, or the more nebulous "impeding the flow of
| traffic" aka driving too slow. On average, most drivers
| speed on the highways here, so it ends up being illegal
| to go with the flow and illegal to _not_ go with the
| flow.
| ethin wrote:
| Where are you from? In the US, there are well over a
| thousand laws on the books. Might be more like 10000 with
| respect to criminal law alone. And that's at the federal
| level. Factor in all the various states and criminal codes
| for those states and the surface area becomes enormous.
|
| In my state alone, it is illegal to do things like:
|
| * Hold stud poker games by charitable groups more than
| twice a year
|
| * Keep an elk in a sandbox in your back yard
|
| * Serve both beer and pretzels at a bar or restaurant
| simultaneously
|
| * Swim naked in the Red River from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m
|
| * Wear a hat while dancing or at any event where a dance is
| happening
|
| * Lie down and fall asleep with your shoes on
|
| Yes, these are actual crimes in the state I'm in. If you
| think those are absurd, you should see some other states
| criminal codes; for example, in Alaska, it is illegal to
| appear drunk in a bar. No, really, I'm serious. So you
| literally can't live your life without breaking the law
| somehow. I'm pretty sure Legal Eagle has an entire video
| (or more than one) dedicated to downright stupid laws like
| these.
|
| In a just world, these laws wouldn't exist, but, well...
|
| Edit: just wanted to add that I can't seem to find actual
| legal citations for some of these but they may be county or
| city ordinances. Regardless, they are still stupid and
| still crimes from what I know.
| duxup wrote:
| "Computer said you did something wrong, explain yourself."
| codegeek wrote:
| Guilty until proven innocent.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I commute to a different state for work and when one of them
| legalized weed I once got pulled over and dog-searched for
| "driving exactly the speed limit." When they want to go fishing
| there is absolutely nothing that will stop them.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| But once in court, you would probably get that thrown out.
| The key problem is that we haven't instituted consequences
| for that sort of police behavior.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| If you go to court, pay a lawyer for the hours for it,
| instead of pleading down. In many cases you have already
| lost just based on the accusation.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| That's if you get to go to court. ICE makes mistakes and I
| doubt any of their detainees get due process.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| They did not ticket me so there is no day in court.
| Chatting you up, seeing everything visible through the
| windows, leaning in to smell your car, running your license
| for warrants are all "free" interactions with no oversight.
|
| The fun doesnt stop there, check out 'civil asset
| forfeiture' when you have a chance.
|
| Also, if you read TFA, it seemed like the owner of a truck
| and trailer had to spend $20k getting his stuff out of
| impound when his employee was wrongly arrested. Seems like
| an innocent judgement isnt everything we think it is.
| LordGrey wrote:
| I had an acquaintance who was a county constable. He once
| told me, "Let me watch you drive down the road, any road, for
| 30 seconds and I will be able to find a valid reason to pull
| you over." He implied that some part of their training was
| focused on exactly that.
|
| One data point, and a highly regional one at that, I know.
| halapro wrote:
| Outdated information. With the new 2.0 update, anyone with
| a car can pull you over for whatever reason.
| no_input wrote:
| The law is not on the citizens' side and never has been.
| Driving over the limit (even the smallest increment) is
| technically illegal. Driving under can be considered
| suspicious and warrant further surveillance (or more likely
| incite road rage from other drivers) in which you will
| likely make a mistake. Nobody follows every traffic law
| perfectly and in all likelyhood cannot. Every cop I have
| ever known has admitted to this fact and there are even
| more examples of former(or current) law enforcement
| officers going on record saying the same thing.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Law enforcement has enormous discretion for probable cause
| and can give straight up contradictory reasons for
| different cases, it is what officers are taught to do (i.e.
| something like driving too fast, driving too slow, driving
| too rigidly at the speed limit). This allows individual
| bias to overwhelm any attempt at equal enforcement. It's
| pretty well documented in both The New Jim Crow and Usual
| Cruelty, the Supreme Court has made it difficult to gather
| data in the last couple decades.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Any given american citizen is certainly breaking, at
| minimum, dozens of laws even while asleep in their own bed.
| If they want to pick you up and they are diligent enough
| they certainly can. They might be laughed out of court, but
| they also might not be.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| From the sound of the article, they flag the person for local
| police that then can almost always find a reason to pull
| someone over as a pretext.
| frank_nitti wrote:
| Police that I've spoken to will readily confirm this. They
| consider profiling, not _necessarily_ racial, an important
| part of patrolling. If they decide you look the part, they
| will find a way within several minutes /miles of watching.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Not true. Section 215 of Patriot Act expanded surveillance
| powers, information-sharing, and intelligence authorities,
| allowing the FBI to obtain "business records" relevant to
| counterterrorism, no probable cause required. This does not
| specifically authorize detention, but show me the "business
| records" of any enterprise that would not raise questions
| requiring 48-hour hold.
| avidiax wrote:
| > law enforcement is required to have a reasonable, articulable
| suspicion of a crime in order to detain people.
|
| In theory, yes.
|
| In practice, yes, with many caveats.
|
| LE doesn't have to articulate that reasonable suspicion at the
| time of the detention. They can come up with that suspicion
| years later when it comes to deciding in court whether the
| evidence from that traffic stop can be suppressed. This is
| assuming that the warrantless search even found anything, the
| suspect didn't accept a plea deal in lieu of going to trial,
| and the charges weren't dropped just before trial.
|
| A working system for this sort of thing would be more like:
|
| * The officer needs to record that reasonable suspicion at the
| time of the detention.
|
| * All of these reasonable suspicion detentions are recorded,
| along with outcomes. This becomes evidence for reasonability
| presented in court. An officer with a low hit rate suggests
| that the suspicion in generally unreasonable, and they are just
| fishing.
|
| * A 20 minute timer is started at the start of a traffic stop.
| If the officer can't articulate the reasonable suspicion at the
| 20 minute mark, detention is considered plainly illegal, and
| qualified immunity does not apply. This prevents keeping people
| on the roadside for a hour waiting for the dog to show up.
|
| * Similarly, the hit rate of the police dogs needs to be
| recorded, and low hit rate should make any evidence from them
| inadmissible.
|
| For any of this to happen, we would need to start giving
| standing to supposedly "unharmed" suspects that just had their
| vehicle torn apart and hours of their lives wasted without
| charge. Currently, the courts seem to think that a little wait
| at a traffic stop and an fruitless illegal search that is never
| seen in the courtroom is no damage at all.
| w10-1 wrote:
| > If the officer can't articulate the reasonable suspicion at
| the 20 minute mark
|
| Wouldn't the suspicion -- the observed fact and presumed
| implication -- need to be recorded before the traffic stop?
| codegeek wrote:
| Assuming they do the questioning in good faith. When they are
| ordered to "find something", you are already at a disadvantage
| as a regular person. I mostly have good interactions when
| stopped but had my share of bad faith actors and it will be a
| really bad day if you happen to come across those especially in
| current climate.
| dylan604 wrote:
| While suspicious behavior is not a crime, it is certainly going
| to be used as probable cause. How would you think it to be any
| other way? See something, say something is nothing but using
| suspicious behavior
| andy99 wrote:
| The problem with lots of laws, often poorly thought out or
| framed, is that anyone can be breaking them any time, allowing
| law enforcement to target people or groups they don't like with
| impunity. Drug laws are an obvious one, but so are traffic laws
| (with ever more rules about distracted driving etc, "drunk"
| driving ), things like loitering, all the stupid anti-free
| speech laws in places like the uk.
|
| People get whipped up to support laws but don't see that more
| is just worse, especially the petty ones, even if they
| notionally correct for some bad behaviour, because they allow
| selective enforcement.
| franciscator wrote:
| Use AI to keep your driving pattern non suspicious ...
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| How, exactly, do you propose to do that?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Ask the AI. It will tell you. :)
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Yeah and if you have your cell phone with you, license plates
| readers are irrelevant.
|
| Fun fact, the Austin bomber was caught because publically
| available user data used for advertising, as gathered by a
| bunch of 3d party apps, allowed a cross reference of cellphones
| in vicinity within certain time ranges, which narrowed the
| suspect pool to very few people from which they were able to
| start their investigation.
| sahaj wrote:
| But the criminals and illegals and the worst of the worst and the
| drugs. Think of the children that are being fed illegal drugs
| thru tubes put in by the trans-national trans gangs.
|
| /s
| bomewish wrote:
| Wouldn't it be trivial for serious criminals - like cartels etc -
| to just use different vehicles?
| Finnucane wrote:
| Sure, but policies that just generally terrorize people aren't
| primarily about actually catching criminals.
| nabla9 wrote:
| 65% of the US population, 200 million Americans, live within the
| 100-Mile "Constitution-Free Zone".
|
| Supreme Court has established that some established
| constitutional provisions do not apply at the U.S. border, and
| protections against governmental privacy incursions are
| significantly reduced.
|
| The border search exception applies within 100 miles (160 km) of
| the border of the United States, including borders with Mexico
| and Canada but also coastlines.
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| What is the rationale for 100 miles? Curious if anyone knows,
| or if its an arbitrary number a lawmaker decided?
| nabla9 wrote:
| The 1946 statute gave CBP the authority to stop and search
| all vehicles within a "reasonable distance". CBP defined the
| reasonable to be 100 miles and it stuck. It's just federal
| regulation interpreting the law and courts have blessed it.
| dboreham wrote:
| Supreme Court rulings it seems. This is the law:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357#
|
| But it only says "any reasonable distance". SCOTUS appears to
| have come up with the 100 mile limit in various cases over
| time.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is mostly a canard, kept alive by fundraising pages at
| ACLU, but contradicted directly by current pages on the ACLU's
| site. It feels useful on a message board to call out things
| like this, but it actually hurts people in the US, who deserve
| to know that they do not surrender their 4th Amendment rights
| simply by dint of living within 100 miles of Lake Erie.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45041697
|
| (There's a really good Penn State law review article on that
| thread).
| nabla9 wrote:
| > (really good Penn State law review article on that thread)
|
| Yes, and what it says is this:
|
| >The Supreme Court has decided that there is a reduced
| expectation of privacy at the border, holding that the
| government's interest in monitoring and controlling entrants
| outweighs the privacy interest of the individual. Thus,
| routine searches without a warrant, probable cause, or
| reasonable suspicion are considered inherently reasonable and
| automatically justified in that particular context.32 Fourth
| Amendment rights are therefore significantly circumscribed at
| the border, and CBP is given an expansive authority to
| randomly--and without suspicion--search, seize, and detain
| individuals and property at border crossings that law
| enforcement officers would not have in other circumstances.
|
| The constitution free, means that constitutional rights are
| reduced within the area.
| tptacek wrote:
| The whole article is about what _at the border_ actually
| means.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| I reread that old thread, and then skimmed the Penn State
| article (a bit quickly, I admit). I gotta say: I think
| you're overstating your case here. Certainly, the author
| of that article is skeptical about the 100-mile zone and
| makes plenty of good (and, IMO, obvious) points about why
| it is constitutionally suspect. But, to read your
| comments, you'd think that some important court somewhere
| has actually placed meaningful limits on immigration
| enforcement within that zone (outside the context of an
| actual border crossing). If so, I don't see where you're
| getting that. If that's actually in the article, could
| you tell us where?
|
| To be fair, though, I think it is also true that the ACLU
| is too eager to talk about the "Constitution-Free Zone"
| as though it is fact. I also agree that people should not
| simply _accept_ that the Constitution-Free Zone exists.
| It is definitely not that simple and what would otherwise
| be 4th Amendment violations should absolutely still be
| challenged even if they occur within the zone. There is
| still every opportunity for more good law on this.
| tptacek wrote:
| Without wanting to recapitulate this argument for the
| Nx1000th time if we don't have to I'll just say that the
| points I'm making are points ACLU itself now makes.
|
| https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
|
| Since the ACLU is largely the origin of this meme, I
| think that's pretty dispositive.
|
| Importantly: I am (for the Nx1000th time) not saying that
| federal law enforcement officers won't make abusive
| claims, or directly abuse the law; they certainly will.
| As I said in the previous thread, they managed to detain
| Senator Patrick Leahy _more than 100 miles from a border_
| , which, when you think about the implications of the
| 100-mile-zone, is kind of a feat!
| superkuh wrote:
| Okay, so you linked to https://www.aclu.org/know-your-
| rights/border-zone which contains this text:
|
| >The federal government defines a "reasonable distance"
| as 100 air miles from any external boundary of the U.S.
| So, combining this federal regulation and the federal law
| regarding warrantless vehicle searches, CBP claims
| authority to board a bus or train without a warrant
| anywhere within this 100-mile zone. Nearly two-thirds of
| the U.S. population, over 213 million people, reside
| within the region that CBP considers falling within the
| 100-mile border zone, according to the 2020 census. Most
| of the 10 largest cities in the U.S., such as New York
| City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, fall in this region. Some
| states, like Florida, lie entirely within this border
| band so their entire populations are impacted.
|
| Which, upon re-reading both of your comments in this
| thread makes me actually think there is no argument at
| all and everyone here and the ACLU agree: there is a no
| consitution zone, it has practical consequences, and it
| does extend out 100 miles from internal foreign borders.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| The executive branch _asserts_ that there is such a zone.
| But the truth is likely that many, if not all, 4th
| Amendment rights still apply in many situations within
| that zone. It 's situation dependent, so it's difficult
| to make a sweeping generalization. But some of the
| executive branch's most aggressive claims and tactics, at
| least, may well not hold up in court.
| tptacek wrote:
| I think one thing that happens in these discussions is
| that people lose sight of how big a deal an actual border
| search is. An actual border search (I've had the
| pleasure! And mine was on the mild end of things.) is
| much worse than a search incident to arrest.
|
| What I feel like people do here is map everyday abusive
| law enforcement behavior onto that border search
| exemption without realizing that what they're actually
| suggesting is that people should expect (and thus roll
| with) a "tear everything apart, search under clothes,
| maximally invasive" border search, which is what the
| Constitution authorizes at an actual border crossing.
| vel0city wrote:
| In the end people are being swept upt under what seems to be
| an obviously unconstitutional thing and yet the courts
| continue to shrug.
|
| I agree with the Penn State Law Review analysis in your link.
| Sadly that's not the reality of the world we live in. You're
| burying your head in the sand pointing to a document that
| suggest how things _should_ be compared to what has actually
| been happening. In the end, people _are_ being stopped and
| nothing is being done about it. Some paper put out by a law
| review isn 't ending the persucation that is happening no
| matter how hard you ignore it.
|
| Words on some paper mean nothing compared to the actual
| actions of man.
| djoldman wrote:
| Folks may be talking past each other on the "100 mile" issue.
|
| The dissonance arises from these contradictions:
|
| 1. Federal regulations specifically state "100 air miles"
| with respect to the US Border patrol: https://www.ecfr.gov/cu
| rrent/title-8/part-287/section-287.1#...
|
| 2. The US Border Patrol has lost court cases for things they
| have done within those 100 miles, essentially saying they
| shouldn't have done those things.
|
| An informal interpretation of this is that the US Federal
| Government and BP generally view the powers of the BP as more
| expansive than the judicial branch, possibly including the
| legislative.
| wbxp99 wrote:
| >While the U.S. Border Patrol primarily operates within 100
| miles of the border, it is legally allowed "to operate anywhere
| in the United States," the agency added.
| tptacek wrote:
| The Border Patrol probably _is_ allowed to operate anywhere
| within the United States, but being in the Border Patrol
| doesn 't (at least statutorily) give them any magic powers;
| in particular, you don't get "border search authority" by
| being a part of CBP, but rather by being any law enforcement
| officer confronting someone who you reasonably believe
| crossed the border recently.
| codethief wrote:
| ...and including international airports (and thus all major
| cities) if I'm informed correctly.
| jl6 wrote:
| "Constitution-Free Zone"
|
| Now _there's_ a trumped-up charge.
| np- wrote:
| Border Patrol is doing an operation in Charlotte, NC right now.
| That is well over 100 miles from any border or coast. So 100
| miles itself is fiction, they can just do whatever they want.
| Who's gonna stop them?
| closeparen wrote:
| International airports count.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| We need all these exceptions to the constitution to get a hard
| reset. SCOTUS has failed to uphold the constitution.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It is not an exception to the Constitution, it's a decision
| about what "unreasonable" in the Fourth Amendment means.
|
| Note that the default (but not universal) equirement to _get_
| a warrant for a search or seizure (and the imputation that
| for many warrantless instances of either, probable cause is
| still required) is _also_ such an interpretation; the text of
| the Amendment doesn't say either of those things, but they
| have been inferred by the Supreme Court to be generally the
| case from the juxtaposition of the reasonableness requirement
| for searches and seizures and the probable cause requirement
| for warrants.
|
| While the Bill of Rights (and protections in later
| amendments) is sometimes treated like a bit of divine
| revelation, much of it is intentionally (to kick the can down
| the road on resolving disputes at the time) imprecisely
| worded, heavily compromised, legislative enactment by
| imperfect legislators, with sentences that are disjoint and
| where any meaningful application requires reading connections
| into the the text that aren't explicit, as well as devising
| concrete operationalizations for vague terms like
| "unreasonable" or "due process".
| wslh wrote:
| In Saudi Arabia Uber reports all trips to the kingdom [1].
|
| [1] https://blog.careem.com/posts/local-regulatory-data-
| sharing-...
| ericbarrett wrote:
| One of the most striking things about this article were the
| photos of the disguised cameras, especially the ones dressed up
| as traffic cones and electrical boxes.
| dylan604 wrote:
| How is that striking? We've had nanny cams with cameras hidden
| in teddy bears and other items for a really long time now.
| That's like saying you're shocked cops go undercover and do not
| ID themselves as cops.
| MattDamonSpace wrote:
| I think most Americans would be struck by the revelation that
| the government has hidden cameras in traffic cones
| dylan604 wrote:
| Have most Americans never considered undercover operations?
| If you are investigating someone, you don't want them to
| know about it. Otherwise, you wouldn't be bothering with
| the undercover aspect. Now that the department has cool
| hidden cameras, of course they will be used for other
| purposes.
|
| It's not like I'm out there hunting down police abuses, but
| having hidden cameras is just something I would absolutely
| expect them to have. I did not know they specifically had
| cameras hidden as traffic cones, but I'm also not shocked
| they do. That's the shocking part to me is the shock of
| others instead of others also going "of course they do"
| hypeatei wrote:
| It's been fascinating watching the party of "small government"
| turn into one that supports ever expanding powers of a three
| letter agency whose job is _supposed to be_ patrolling the
| border. It 's like a new 9/11 Patriot act moment, except it's
| only one side supporting it this time.
| arealaccount wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by "turn into" it's always been that
| way
| hypeatei wrote:
| "turn into" is referring to the mask off nature of it all.
| Before, they might be a little embarrassed or pretend they
| still stand for those principles. But all I've seen are
| conservatives explaining why it might be technically allowed
| or straight up cheering it on.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No, they still insist, while building a stasi, that they
| are the party of small government.
|
| The people who voted for them and are still cheering them
| on are insisting that they voted for and are getting small
| government!
|
| They are divorced from _what words mean_
| codegeek wrote:
| There is nothing small Govt anymore. Both parties are the same
| when it comes to extending Govt's power (just for different
| reasons). It is just a talking point now.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| State's Rights (to own slaves) vs No State Rights (to shelter
| slaves) is probably the most infamous example, and it's from
| a while ago.
| pnw wrote:
| None of this is new. The article states that CBP got
| authorization to track license plates in 2017 and concerns
| about law enforcement use of ALPR date back to at least 2010.
| The ACLU sued the LAPD in 2013 on ALPR.
| spicyusername wrote:
| I mean, the last 20 years is only ~8% of the history of the
| U.S., so all things considered those changes are pretty
| "new".
| pnw wrote:
| Sure, but the OP was specifically referring to party
| politics and this is a bipartisan issue.
| peterashford wrote:
| "detaining those with suspicious travel patterns" is new
| nawgz wrote:
| > this is a bipartisan issue
|
| Where the instance upthread and your instance both
| occurred under the same president? lol
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The particular manner in which it is being used can be
| different even if the fact that _is_ being used by CBP is
| not.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >CBP got authorization to track license plates in 2017
|
| who was president in 2017?
| root_axis wrote:
| The part that's new is people being detained for "suspicious"
| traffic patterns.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| Is it? or is the new part that it's being reported? This
| "news" just looks like an investigation AP conducted on its
| own. Could they have conducted it years ago, and what would
| they have found then?
| estearum wrote:
| Historically CBP isn't patrolling the entire country, so
| yeah, at least the scale and reach is definitely new.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The party of small government is a slogan. It's the same party
| that expanded domestic FBI surveillance, expanded intelligence
| agencies and lots of other things. It's also the party that is
| intimately interested in what private citizens do in their
| bedroom (sodomy and condom laws) and what medical decisions
| doctors and patients can undertake.
| csours wrote:
| I really wish we had a (lower case) republican or conservative
| party in the US.
|
| I hope we survive this fear driven over-stimulated era of
| politics.
| riffic wrote:
| -
| xenophonf wrote:
| That's easy to say when you aren't the one under pressure.
| more_corn wrote:
| Or one of the 200M people in the blast radius.
| BetaDeltaAlpha wrote:
| That sounds like a recipe for chaos and famine akin to
| Russia in the early-mid 90's
| petsfed wrote:
| Or worse still, Russia in the early-mid 1920s.
|
| The Reds very nearly lost the civil war to the Whites,
| not because of any battlefield victory, or even a
| concerted propaganda effort. Instead, it was because for
| a lot of people, they'd take going back to the old rotten
| monarchist system that got them into this mess, if meant
| they could just stop starving to death while party
| operatives came and took all their food away.
| Animats wrote:
| > for a lot of people, they'd take going back to the old
| rotten monarchist system that got them into this mess, if
| meant they could just stop starving to death while party
| operatives came and took all their food away.
|
| That describes Russia under Putin. Putin considers his
| regime to be a continuation of Imperial Russia. He's
| brought back the Imperial Eagle, the Russian Orthodox
| Church as an arm of the state, considers himself to be
| the next Peter the Great, and says that his goal is to
| extend Russia to its traditional boundaries, out to at
| least the edge of Poland and the Baltics. Communism was a
| historical accident which has now been corrected.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| What do you know about Russia in 90's?
| dralley wrote:
| Accelerationism never works. There's a long, long list of
| complete and utter disasters and tremendous suffering
| inflicted by this moronic logic. Things get better by being
| made better, not by being made worse.
| Animats wrote:
| > Accelerationism
|
| In the AI sense, or in the Israel/Third Temple/apocalypse
| sense?
| bluescrn wrote:
| People fantasize about revolution, but the reality would
| mostly be huge amounts of suffering and death.
|
| And there's near-zero chance that the outcome would be the
| 'high-tech fully-automated luxury communism' that people
| dream of. There's many much-more-likely outcome that are
| worse than what exists now.
| creata wrote:
| > the reality would mostly be huge amounts of suffering
| and death.
|
| I think many of the people fantasizing about revolution
| are aware.
| csours wrote:
| I think the movie 'Civil War' by Alex Garland was too
| absurd to be understood by a lot of people - to me it was
| yelling "IT CAN HAPPEN HERE TOO"
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >I would rather prefer the boiler to explode
|
| Just to be clear, you really would prefer to live in
| crumbling infrastructure, with plenty of violence, martial
| law, and constant worry of whether you are going to get
| shot or not trying to get basic supplies?
|
| Because boiler exploding isn't romantic or cool like you
| think it is. Imagine the worst possible riot, except
| country wide.
| hamdingers wrote:
| We have a lower case conservative, pro-status-quo party. The
| Democrats.
|
| Even now all they can talk about is returning to normal
| (where normal describes the conditions that led to the
| current state).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They talk about increasing minimum salaries for exempt
| workers, paid sick and family leave, infrastructure
| funding, expanding access to healthcare, etc. How is that
| lower case conservative, or pro status quo?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Those are pretty standard policies of center-right /
| conservative parties in Europe.
|
| (Plus the fact that Dems _talk_ about some of these doesn
| 't mean they think they're going to _happen_.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Seems irrelevant to a discussion comparing US parties.
|
| >Plus the fact that Dems talk about some of these doesn't
| mean they think they're going to happen
|
| They literally got ACA passed by a hair, and were just
| shy of 2 Senate votes needed to enact all those policies
| I discussed in Biden's original BBB.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We're talking about a need for a party that no longer
| exists in the US. Why would we not look to similar
| examples out there in actual practice?
| lobf wrote:
| Can you name an example?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure; the UK's Tories, or Germany's CDU, or Australia's
| Liberal (lol) Party.
|
| Hell, the right-wing ran on _giving more money to the
| National Health Service_ as one of their Brexit
| arguments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_Leave_bus
| (Including Farage, at times! https://www.the-
| independent.com/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-r...)
| triceratops wrote:
| But that ended up being a lie. It almost feels like a
| pattern...
| almosthere wrote:
| That's definitely left wing in the United States.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's a big difference between "actually left wing" and
| "leftwards of 50% of a particular population".
|
| The US has very little actual big-L Left (ahem) left in
| it.
| hamdingers wrote:
| They notably do not talk about modifying the systems of
| governance that have prevented us from accomplishing
| those goals, which they have been "talking about" nearly
| the entire 40 years I've been alive. If I were to ignore
| their talk and judge purely based on action, it certainly
| seems like Democrats effect less change than Republicans.
|
| (to be clear about where I stand, when given a choice
| between a conservative party and a regressive party, I
| have always begrudgingly chosen the conservatives)
| jmye wrote:
| They directly increased access to healthcare and
| infrastructure funding in the last 15 years, and both
| were very obvious, big bills. Perhaps it would behoove
| you to actually pay attention, instead of memeing online
| about things you don't actually know anything about?
| cogman10 wrote:
| The how matters.
|
| Since Clinton Democrats have been neoliberal
| (conservative). The mechanism they've chosen for all of
| their programs has been public private partnerships.
| Infrastructure funding, for example, has been "they
| created a slush fund for private companies to bid on".
| Healthcare was "They created a slush fund to pay for
| private insurance".
|
| And I'll point out, that they also made healthcare more
| expensive with this slush fund approach. Medicare Part C
| was created by the Clinton administration which, you
| guessed it, created a giant slush fund for private
| insurance that ends up being more expensive than Medicare
| Part A/B.
|
| I agree, democrats did expand access to healthcare, but
| they did it in the most expensive and easily corruptible
| way possible. The approach was literally a carbon copy of
| the Heritage foundation plan that Romney implemented in
| Mass.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Do you know any progressives? Do you follow any politics
| outside the US? I'm going to guess not, because your
| frame of reference for what a genuinely progressive win
| would look like is woefully miscalibrated. I suggest you
| rectify that before accusing anyone else of ignorance.
|
| Yes, they have had some incremental policy wins and done
| tremendous good for millions of people (while also
| making, e.g. healthcare more expensive/profitable). No,
| the occasional incremental policy win does not a
| progressive party make.
| cogman10 wrote:
| You'll notice that, except for paid sick leave, all these
| things are simply "keep the lights on" policies. That is
| conservatism.
|
| You might be confusing conservatism with libertarianism.
| Up until about Reagan, all these policies were considered
| conservative.
|
| Progressive policies aren't just about tweaking existing
| policy, it's about building new social structures. We've
| not seen anything really close to that in the US since
| roughly LBJ.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| None of that is conservative or liberal or leftist its
| common sense that both parties should be able to agree
| on. There are policies that are logically the right thing
| to do.
| jfengel wrote:
| Infrastructure funding is a pro-business position. At
| this point, most of the infrastructure that the Democrats
| are seeking funding for is maintenance, the definition of
| "status quo".
|
| So is minimum wage, despite all of the screaming. Minimum
| wages ensure the existence of a working class. When the
| minimum wage drops below subsistence, there are civil
| disruptions that are bas for business.
|
| When the Democrats expanded health care, they did so
| using a plan devised by the Heritage Foundation. It works
| on free-market principles, of consumers purchasing
| insurance from private enterprise. It is also very pro-
| business, creating a larger class of potential employees
| who can be hired without employer-sponsored benefits.
|
| Many democrats would indeed like a government-run
| universal health care plan. But it's not a majority of
| the party, which is indeed (as the OP said) dominated by
| the center-right.
| tshaddox wrote:
| If implemented with a modicum of competence (which is
| admittedly not a foregone conclusion) and over a
| sufficiently long period (probably at least longer than
| one or two 4-year terms), all of those things would
| almost certainly have positive effects on the economy.
| drnick1 wrote:
| And then there is all the woke stuff, that is
| unfortunately what the Democrats have been associated
| with lately.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| "Woke" is more of a political weapon created by the right
| than any actual real concept.
|
| There's no consistent or fixed definition of woke. It's a
| blanket term applied to anything that MAGA dislikes at
| any given moment. Woke's only purpose is to manufacture
| outrage, and it didn't exist as a concept until MAGA made
| it one.
| vasco wrote:
| Bernie does, does anyone else? They were just in power
| and didn't do any of it.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| You should maybe read about all the things that died in
| the pocket filibuster.
| LarsKrimi wrote:
| The concept of a "Minimum wage" in itself is anti-worker.
| The state is not a workers friend. The union is.
| 9dev wrote:
| What a weird stance. A minimum wage guarantees all
| citizens can live a life in basic dignity. A worker is,
| even if part of a union, still a citizen of a state. A
| state is the sum of its constituents. There is, beyond
| the bipartisan war, room for compromise and mutual
| understanding for the benefit of all.
| LarsKrimi wrote:
| A minimum wage only guarantees that all citizens can race
| towards a collective bottom determined by some easily
| bribable elites.
|
| Companies do not have to do a conscious effort to
| determine the lowest amount they can go. "Everyone else
| pays that rate too"
| stackedinserter wrote:
| They are anti-gun "progressive" nuts, how can they be
| "conservative". Their "normal" was destruction, so people
| voted trump in just to stop this idiocy (by starting a new
| one)
| xdennis wrote:
| The far left always portrays the democrats as being too far
| left, even though both parties have moved to the left.
|
| In 2000, no country in the world accepted gay marriage, up
| until 2013 gay marriage was banned in California because
| the Californians elected to do so (it was overruled
| federally against the wishes of the Californians).
|
| In 2025, even a majority of Republicans (by some polls)
| support gay marriage. The far left always moves the goal
| posts. Once they legalized gay marriage, they considered it
| the norm instead of a wild idea that Republicans should
| fight to remove.
|
| That's why you see the rise of Christian nationalism. Many
| consider the average Republican to be too far left (similar
| to how leftists consider Democrats to be too far right).
|
| Personally, I'm for the Matrix opinion. In the Matrix, the
| future humans live in a simulated 1999 because it was
| considered the peak of human civilization. Socially, it
| was.
| tootie wrote:
| At this point, what would that party even be? Their only
| genuine appeal is to Christian fundamentalists who prioritize
| banning abortion and LGBTQ rights. There hasn't been a
| coherent domestic or foreign policy from them in decades.
| riffic wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wilhoit_(composer)
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Very similar feeling to watching the liberal/progressive party
| fangirl the FBI and the intel community
|
| edit: in reality the times have changed and so has the country
| and the parties. All of these pre-2008 stereotypes are stupid
| and not useful anymore.
| kelipso wrote:
| Seriously. Where were all these people when the Democrats
| overreached into every aspect of our lives?
|
| Apparently the only criticism is an accusation of hypocrisy
| for calling themselves the party of small government. Nothing
| wrong with the actions themselves apparently! Lol.
| hobs wrote:
| Plenty of people complained and wanted all government
| overreach to stop - this is an even more dire situation,
| propped up by people who directly lied and said they were
| not interested in this (which they obviously are, and they
| are liars.)
|
| Why are you complaining about people's concerns instead of
| the actual problems created by those in power?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The problem is that the "both sides are bad" people just
| uniformly vote Republican. Its the cope of understanding that
| your side is batshit insane, so you have to pretend that the
| current state of affairs doesn't actually matter, and the
| problem goes deeper in the goal of normalizing your party.
|
| The truth is, the only reason not to trust the intel
| community is because of some fringe bullshit you heard on Joe
| Rogan.
| jajuuka wrote:
| This is your cope to justify your side's righteousness.
| Many people recognize how awful both parties are and do not
| vote republican. Every socialist/leftist/communist falls
| into this category.
|
| Wait, are you saying mass surveillance is a good thing?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Bad reading comprehension. This isn't a "both sides are
| bad" thing. Both sides are different than they were from
| 1980 - 2008.
| bluGill wrote:
| I've been voting third party for a long time. When both
| sides are bad (in different ways) it is the only choice
| left. (The third party isn't all that great either, but
| they are better and hopefully they send a message that
| people care)
| catgirlinspace wrote:
| Isn't that basically just throwing away your vote though
| with it being a winner-takes-all system?
| bluGill wrote:
| No because the statistics are counted. People in the
| "smoke filled backrooms" pay attention to what third
| party messages are getting attention and in turn use that
| to inform how they change. Long term it isn't a bad
| strategy, but it does mean you have to accept whoever
| wins (though in rare cases a third party has won) for
| today. If one candidate isn't too bad I will vote for
| them.
|
| In my case I've decided on criteria is has not held this
| office for more than one term (that is I give you two
| terms no matter what office you are running for) because
| no matter how much I agree with you I don't want anyone
| to spend too long in government.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| When faced with reality over the past decades, and the
| historically good record that Democrats have had, versus
| historically bad record that Republicans have had, versus
| the unproven record that any 3d party had,
|
| and considering what was at stake in the 2024 election,
|
| you either voted for sanity (especially given that Kamala
| was the most milquetoast unoffensive candidate ever which
| would have been MILES better than what we have now), or
| you voted for insanity, because lack of vote for Dems
| means you were giving Trump a chance to win.
|
| Sorry, but that is how it is.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Yeah the emerging 'The Bullwark' wing of the democrat party.
| Never trumper republicans trying as hard as they can to move
| the right flank of the democrat party into the bush era
| republican gradient so that they can pretend that they didn't
| lose their own party.
| EnPissant wrote:
| Pretty sure Republicans always supported defending the border
| from drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
| peterashford wrote:
| Everyone supports that?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Gary, Indiana does not have a border with a foreign country
| so why do CBP need to monitor drivers there?
| EnPissant wrote:
| It's a logistics chokepoint for drugs coming across the
| southwest border into the Chicago area.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > It's a logistics chokepoint for drugs coming across the
| southwest border into the Chicago area
|
| The ?
|
| You mean to say you're supporting a checkpoint in Indiana
| to catch drugs that came from Mexico?
|
| Fix the checkpoint in Texas then if it's leaking drugs to
| Indiana ...
| EnPissant wrote:
| It's not a checkpoint, it's surveillance.
|
| Presumably CBP is not stupid and that surveillance is
| providing value they can not otherwise get only in Texas.
| lesuorac wrote:
| They've been at these programs for decades; if they were
| effective we wouldn't be in a drug epidemic At some point
| you have to cut your losses and accept that the only
| benefits were the politicians Flock donated to.
|
| I'm not saying you have to abolish CBP. I'm saying they
| should be protecting the border and this ain't it.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I guess we could build a wall or something.
| almosthere wrote:
| Airplanes exist
| bdangubic wrote:
| lol
| nxor wrote:
| It's funny until you personally are affected.
| bdangubic wrote:
| funnier to believe that _republicans always supported
| defending the border from drug trafficking and illegal
| immigration._ - much funnier :)
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Is that why Trump killed the CBP funding bill in the
| beginning of 2024?
| EnPissant wrote:
| Trump wasn't in office at that time. He urged Republicans
| to not pass it for various reasons which I will not
| enumerate here, and CBP was funded weeks later.
| gbear605 wrote:
| The reasons you don't want to enumerate here are "he
| wanted only Republicans to look good on the border by
| ensuring that nothing could get passed while a Democrat
| is president". He doesn't care about the border, he cares
| about authoritarianism and party politics.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >which I will not enumerate here
|
| Translated to "Even though I know that most republicans
| said they didn't want to go against someone who had a
| very good chance winning in 2024 for the fear that they
| would get their political career destroyed, because that
| is what Trump explicitly said to them, I will vaguely
| allude to some fringe statements about things that haven
| never been proven true in regards to other aspects of the
| bill as the reason Republicans didn't vote for it,
| because in no way shape or form will I ever admit that I
| was wrong.
|
| I don't get why people on your side still think that
| saying shit like this makes you sound smart. That ship
| has long sailed.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Ah yes, illegal immigration is like the new "terrorism"...
| _everything_ must be done to stop it which includes giving
| CBP and ICE unchecked power.
| EnPissant wrote:
| In reality, CBP and ICE have very little power.
| macintux wrote:
| ICE has very little legal authority and is yet the
| current president's ground troops to lock up everyone who
| looks foreign. I'd say they have all the power they need.
| vasco wrote:
| ICE can walk into your house / pull you out of the car
| with masks on and kidnap you without showing you any
| papers. That's more power than a lot of other agencies
| almosthere wrote:
| why not legally migrate, millions have done it in the past.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| It's the same as the Republican slogans of being the party of
| "fiscal responsibility" despite under-performing the Democratic
| party in nearly all financial metrics and constantly blowing up
| the deficit or being the party of "family values" while having
| leaders and 'respected' voices who are the complete opposite.
| bbarnett wrote:
| While you're not wrong, not sure it applies here. This is an
| all-party thing:
|
| _Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related
| activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has
| expanded over the past five years._
|
| Some of the lawsuits (cited in article) to fight this, and
| illegal pull overs, go back years.
|
| Really? It shows how this tech can be used in ways you don't
| like, when your party is no longer in power. How whatever laws
| you pass, surveillance you enact, powers you give, aren't just
| for you.
|
| But also your political adversary.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Small government without control of who comes in is borderline
| anarchy, and they never claimed to be for anarchy. Small
| government internally requires border controls, and if the
| border controls failed in the past do you expect them to just
| shrug? I can see disagreeing with them, easily, I just don't
| see obvious hypocrisy like you are suggesting.
| praptak wrote:
| Small government without [big thing I happen to like] is [bad
| thing] therefore it's okay to make the government big in [the
| aspects I like] and I don't see any hipocrisy in that.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Its been proven many times over that the majority of
| "illegal" immigrants, whether they come US and either
| overstay their allowance, or manage to skirt by on refugee
| status, are all predominately doing it for financial reasons,
| willing to work jobs for lower pay that Americans will never
| do, which is a huge benefit for economy.
|
| This idea that border control somehow failed is a lie sold to
| you by republicans. Also Trump killed the CBP funding bill in
| early 2024 that would have addressed a lot of issues.
| newfriend wrote:
| > willing to work jobs for lower pay that Americans will
| never do, which is a huge benefit for economy.
|
| Pushing wages down for low-skilled work is possibly good
| for the economy, but it's very bad for low-skilled American
| workers.
|
| > This idea that border control somehow failed is a lie
| sold to you by republicans.
|
| There are millions of illegal aliens in the US. From 2021
| to 2024, several millions more entered the US.
|
| > Also Trump killed the CBP funding bill in early 2024 that
| would have addressed a lot of issues.
|
| Conjecture. Trump was not in office in 2024. That bill may
| or may not have addressed some issues, while also creating
| new issues or making things worse.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >Pushing wages down for low-skilled work is possibly good
| for the economy, but it's very bad for low-skilled
| American workers.
|
| Thats why minimum wage laws specifically exist. Everybody
| wins.
|
| >There are millions of illegal aliens in the US. From
| 2021 to 2024, several millions more entered the US.
|
| The border bill that Trump killed would have increased
| funding to CBP to speed up the process of determining who
| is fit to stay and who isn't because so many people were
| entering that there wasn't enough staff to process cases
| quicker.
|
| >Conjecture.
|
| Nice try lol. I know yall LOVE to rewrite history, but
| that doesn't fly anymore. Everything is on record on why
| Republicans voted against it.
| nomdep wrote:
| > willing to work jobs for lower pay that Americans will
| never do
|
| WTF? So your arguments is that stealing American jobs and
| not paying taxes "it's good for the economy"?
|
| Even if that were true, slavery is also "good for the
| economy", but that doesn't make it a good thing
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And yet, while a visa overstay is a misdemeanor,
| assisting someone to stay or work while unauthorized is a
| felony, that does more damage to the economy, but this
| administration seems "remarkably" unwilling to prosecute
| that.
|
| Undocumented Tyson Chicken employees handed over
| paperwork _from Tyson_ that was given to over 900 of them
| where the company told them how to fill out
| government/tax/payroll forms when undocumented so as to
| stay under the radar... and CBP said that wasn't part of
| the scope of their investigation into Tyson, and did
| precisely nothing about that.
|
| Hormel, much the same.
|
| The bitching and moaning about "the economy" by
| Republicans is so amazingly selective - it's funny how
| they focus on that, while ignoring how _awfully
| convenient_ it is to farm, livestock, food production and
| other employers and businesses it is to have access to
| that same labor pool.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Oh my bad, I forgot that republicans have reading
| comprehension of 8th graders. Let me explain it in
| simpler terms.
|
| You have a restaurant. Bathrooms need to be cleaned. You
| can't hire any American to clean them, because you can
| only afford $12 an hour, and high school kids who grew up
| in middle class neighborhoods where your restaurant is
| sure as shit not going to do that when they can make
| chatgpt write them prompts for viral videos. So your
| restaurant has smelly bathrooms and nobody comes in,
| therefore you don't get business and restaurant has to
| close.
|
| Or you hire an immigrant, who is very well willing to do
| the job because in his home country, he would only get
| paid equivalent $6 an hour. Bathroom stays clean, you get
| customers, restaurant functions. Immigrant takes the
| money, and buys food and other things from local sources,
| thus putting that money back into the economy, with
| profit being made every step of the way, thus improving
| everyone financial situation.
|
| Understand now?
|
| Also, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in
| federal, state, and local taxes in 2022
| lbrito wrote:
| If Americans don't want to do the job for the pay, is it
| still stealing?
| int_19h wrote:
| We're literally discussing a mass surveillance dragnet
| _throughout_ the country (not just at the border) here; the
| kind of stuff that is normally reserved for dystopias in
| fiction.
|
| To argue that it is somehow okay because it enables "small
| government" to exist is very much in the spirit of "war is
| peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength". When thugs
| in uniform stop and interrogate Americans on the roads
| because their movement patterns are "suspicious", there's
| nothing small about it.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I'm not saying it's okay, but I am not a small government
| person. Illogical arguments just bother me. I think small
| government is impossible for other reasons.
|
| The republicans have been the party of massive military
| since forever. I don't really see how this is different.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Your comment feels unsubstantiated. What do you mean by that?
| Or do you just mean the current government has Republicans at
| the top.
|
| Can you share data on how people of one party are supporting
| ALPR and the other are against it? I was looking for a public
| poll on this question and couldn't find one.
|
| edit: Why am I being downvoted?
| hypeatei wrote:
| Polling this year consistently shows that Republicans support
| all the actions being taken with respect to immigration under
| this admin. Sorry I don't have any links handy at the moment,
| but you can see it in this thread: "too many people crossed
| under Biden, look what you made us do!"
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| I don't see anything in the article that says anything
| about immigration. From the info provided, this is about
| suspicious behavior ID'ed via ALPR, and they don't specify
| suspicious of what. That seems very broad and something a
| reasonable person would expect many people of all parties
| to be wary of, not just people of one party.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > I don't see anything in the article that says anything
| about immigration
|
| Article starts with: "The U.S. Border Patrol is
| monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide"
| BeetleB wrote:
| The same party that gave us the Patriot Act?
|
| They've not been "small government" since forever.
| havblue wrote:
| While 62 house Democrats voted against it, Patriot Act had
| bipartisan support, which is why Obama never repealed it.
| bluGill wrote:
| They have been the party of small government when the
| democrats are in power since forever. When they have power
| though...
| colejhudson wrote:
| Hard to blame this squarely on the Republicans. Access to
| private license plate readers was granted under the Biden
| admin, and no doubt each of the last four administrations
| played some part.
|
| To me, the CPB and ICE are looking more and more like an
| American Gestapo.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| > Access to private license plate readers was granted under
| the Biden admin,
|
| Nope.
|
| Nice try tho. The "both sides bad" argument used to work, not
| anymore.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Access to private license plate readers was granted under
| the Biden admin
|
| Apropos of anything else, this access was granted in 2017,
| and Biden might be surprised to learn he was President then,
| not Trump.
| darknavi wrote:
| If you're interested in some reflection on that, What's the
| Matter with Kansas? (2004) by Thomas Frank explores some of
| this, but centered around Kansas. Pretty interesting (and
| frustrating) stuff.
| supportengineer wrote:
| The logical conclusion of all this oppression is that everyone
| will just stay home, and go out no more than necessary, and
| spend no money that isn't absolutely necessary.
|
| Is that a win for the oligarchs?
| fhdkweig wrote:
| It is for the ones that do deliveries. I never looked up the
| numbers, but my gut feeling is that Amazon did well during
| the pandemic.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Well at least post 9/11 unconstitutional escalation required
| legislation and the creation of agencies like the DHS and TSA.
| Now, a political culture that is willing to break norms and
| abuse technicalities is silently expanding powers to the max,
| and that's far more insidious. But maybe it'll result in a
| strengthened democracy in the long term if new laws or
| amendments are passed to contain this problem.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > except it's only one side supporting it this time.
|
| I wish.
|
| Very early on in this Trump admin there was a bipartisan bill
| passed which greatly expanded the capabilities of ICE to deport
| [1]. Democrats have been well aligned with the republicans when
| it comes to immigration policy. You'll find few that will
| actually criticize the actions of ICE/DHS.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laken_Riley_Act
| wffurr wrote:
| 156 Democratic congressmen voted no on that bill.
| cogman10 wrote:
| 46 voted yes. And just a few months prior democrats tried
| to pass this [1] [2]. Which only failed because Trump
| didn't want Biden to be able to show a "tough on the
| border" stance.
|
| Again, you'll find few democrats that have a stance on the
| border that contradicts the Republican stance. There are a
| few, but most are just staying silent. The only reason they
| vote against these sorts of bills is because of pure
| partisanship, not out of some ideology alignment.
|
| [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-
| bill/436...
|
| [2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senate-hold-election-
| year-sh...
| Dig1t wrote:
| We've had a generation of leaders allowing in tens of millions
| of people to flood into the country, the American people have
| voted against it every time they are given the chance and still
| nothing is ever done about it. The right wing voting base
| doesn't care about small government, we care about stopping the
| flood and undoing the damage that decades of these policies
| have caused. Look at polling data, especially among young
| people, border enforcement and deportations are what we want.
|
| Look at the recent actions in Charlotte: ICE raids started and
| 25% of the school kids didn't show up to school. Which
| indicates that likely 25% of the population is illegal. It is a
| massive problem.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > ICE raids started and 25% of the school kids didn't show up
| to school. Which indicates that likely 25% of the population
| is illegal.
|
| you're downvoted but this is a very real thing, especially at
| the elementary school level. My kids had regular classes in
| first/second grade taught in Spanish because they were the
| one single English speaking student in the room (this was
| fixed when my wife and I found out). The level of illegal
| immigrants in schools goes down over time as they drop out.
| My son is now 16 and a sophomore in HS, SEM Magnet, and in a
| class of about 100-125 he knows maybe 10 that have told him
| they're here illegally.
|
| /Dallas public schools
| bdangubic wrote:
| > border enforcement and deportations are what we want.
|
| this is not what "we want" - this is what ruling party wants
| you to think and obsess over while they pillage and make your
| life otherwise miserable.
|
| the same young votes voted for Biden in 2020 knowing very
| well what the immigration policy would be (and they were as
| bad as it gets the first two years)
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| To be fair, the current Republican Party bears almost no
| resemblance to the "classic" Republican Party of....10 years
| ago.
|
| The Newt and the Tea Party started the slide, normalizing
| hatred and bombast and FU-politics, and MAGA perfected it.
|
| Whether you love it, hate it, or are indifferent, what you are
| dealing with now are not really Republicans. They are MAGA-
| folks. They should really rename themselves the Solipism Party.
| Nothing matters but the current state of your own head.
|
| And yes, I know parties change and evolve with the times, but I
| would argue this time is very different.
| masklinn wrote:
| The current Republican Party is the exact same as 10 years
| ago, just further along.
|
| 10 years ago was basically Trump 1. And 10 years before that
| was GWB starting the endless wars with an admin outright
| denying reality. Which Reagan also did. And of course Nixon
| literally broke into the opposition party's.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| .. 10 years ago. Yes it fucking does, it's just become more
| brazen. Those are the motherfuckers that passed the patriot
| act and then reupped it over and over.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Obama and the Democrats were surprisingly heavy on
| surveillance and curtailing rights during Obama's
| Presidency.
|
| So you can include them in the "reupped it over and over".
| greedo wrote:
| That's why all of these efforts to corrode civil
| liberties needs to be fought and contested by both sides.
| Otherwise the ratcheting effect makes if impossible to
| reclaim these liberties.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > To be fair, the current Republican Party bears almost no
| resemblance to the "classic" Republican Party of....10 years
| ago.
|
| In other aspects, perhaps. But the "small government" or
| "pro-economy" branding of the Republican Party has been an
| absurdity for more like 75 years. Democratic administrations
| have performed better on virtually any conceivable economic
| metric with very few minor exceptions.
| int_19h wrote:
| It's not like those Tea Party folk appeared out of the blue.
| They _grew_ , but the core constituency has been pandered to
| by mainstream Republican leadership since at least Nixon.
| concinds wrote:
| The "old" GOP also loved 3 letter agencies, unitary executive
| theory, and mass surveillance. They did the Patriot Act. And
| Scalia hated the 5th Amendment, was weird on the 4th, and
| dramatically increased police powers.
| estearum wrote:
| The GOP has been this same contemptible thing at least since
| Reagan.
|
| The ideology and philosophy is all identical, the only thing
| new (which is substantial and dangerous) is the complete
| shamelessness of it today.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Meh. I think political parties in the states are really there
| just to make money. Why else would the dems keep pelting you
| with adds for $5? I think both parties are saying whatever they
| need to say to convince people to give them cash. The number of
| people who care about privacy seems smaller than the number of
| people who want to be entertained by politicians, so it's
| unlikely to change anytime soon.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I've talked to some of these people at the local level and
| they really believe what they're saying. So I don't really
| buy your explanation.
| John23832 wrote:
| An interesting fact is that "the border" technically extends
| 100 miles from any actual border.
|
| Guess how many major metros are in that area.
|
| https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/your-rights-bord...
| ncr100 wrote:
| To the GOP, lying (in stated intentions "small gov", et al)
| aligns with their core values:
|
| GOP is the party of capitalism (free-market, laissez-faire).
| Capitalism is the pursuit of self-interest and the profit
| motive.
|
| And when the opportunity permits, this creates an ethical
| incentive structure for lying to be deployed for tactical gain.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| You can't even call the GOP the party of capitalism either.
|
| The party that took a 10% stake in Intel to at least
| partially nationalize it. The party of tariffs, the party of
| special interest tax loopholes giving taxpayer subsidies to
| fossil fuels, real estate, and agriculture, the $400 million
| equity stake in MP materials.
|
| Sure sounds like they are picking winners and losers, the
| antithesis of free market capitalism.
| Lammy wrote:
| There's no need to partisanize this. Why would you immediately
| turn off half of your possible audience when speaking about an
| issue that affects everyone equally? San Francisco is _covered_
| in Flock cameras just like the ones pictured top-right in the
| article, and you won 't find a more-Democrat-leaning place. One
| cannot analyze and act on data that does not exist:
| https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/sf-takes-historic-step-to-s...
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Flock is sort of a new kind of animal in the LPR space.
| Before that there were a lot of LPR companies out there but
| none of them were providing data in such a way that law
| enforcement could do what it's doing. LPR has been in use for
| tolling and for parking enforcement for decades now. It's the
| same kind of shell game Ring has been running by putting
| surveillance cameras on everyone's house and then selling
| access to law enforcement.
| ajross wrote:
| > There's no need to partisanize this.
|
| On the contrary, the _only_ way to drive change in a
| democracy is via partisanship. Demanding we all adhere to an
| artificial both-sides framing is manufacturing consensus for
| the status quo. Politicians only change their positions if
| they think they 'll lose votes because of it.
|
| Also, obviously, because the analysis in this case is clearly
| wrong. This is a 100% partisan issue. Period. There are good
| guys and bad guys in the story, and if you won't point out
| who they are you're just running cover for the bad guys.
| Lammy wrote:
| > Politicians only change their positions if they think
| they'll lose votes because of it.
|
| And you won't convince any of that party's voters to care
| about location privacy enough to make it a vote-changing
| issue if you open your argument by criticizing their party
| (which, yes, almost universally sucks) instead of talking
| about the _actual issue_ , which is location privacy.
| api wrote:
| The party of small government thing hasn't been true for a long
| time, if it ever was.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The only thing fascinating is that anyone believed any of that
| crap.
|
| Everything that Trumpists are doing was peddled in the 1990s by
| such distinguished figures as Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani.
| Usually with a nauseating appeal to "rule of law". The
| "surprise", and "this behavior may be the path to
| authoritarianism" stuff in the NY Times makes it hard to read
| without an eyeroll.
| neilk wrote:
| It has never been about small government. You can just look at
| the Republican record on deficit spending or military funding
| to dismiss that. "Small government" was just an acceptable way
| to say you were for reducing benefits to people deemed
| undeserving.
|
| There are people who called themselves Republican who started
| to believe their own propaganda, but it's never been an
| empirical fact in the modern era that Republicans acted to
| reduce government spending in toto.
| burnte wrote:
| They were never for small government, they just want it
| crippled enough that it can't regulate them but can still be
| used against other people.
| csours wrote:
| 100 Mile Border Zone - https://www.aclu.org/know-your-
| rights/border-zone
|
| Your rights are limited in interactions with CBP, or to state the
| inverse: CBP have claimed more powers than traditional law
| enforcement. This has been true for quite a while; they have at
| various times been more and less careful about your rights while
| exercising those powers. They are being less careful now.
| codegeek wrote:
| "Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over -- often for
| reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong
| window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view.
| They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no
| inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement's
| radar."
|
| Wow, this is incredibly concerning. So they can pull me over, lie
| about why and then try to manufacture something ?
| tclancy wrote:
| Yes, it's very important to let them lie about it or else they
| will have to reveal the actual giant surveillance state and all
| the technology behind it and that would cause us to lose WWII.
|
| Oh wait, I think we just did, given what the Coast Guard has
| been up to today. https://www.juneauindependent.com/post/coast-
| guard-says-swas...
| LocalH wrote:
| It _should_ be illegal for law enforcement not currently
| participating in a proper sting operation to lie to the person
| they wish to investigate. But it 's not.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| It is in some jurisdictions. In Illinois and Oregon, laws
| have been passed that prohibit law enforcement officers from
| using deception when dealing with suspects under the age of
| 18. Other states, such as Washington, Connecticut, Delaware,
| and New York, are considering similar legislation that may
| extend these prohibitions to all individuals being
| interrogated.
|
| https://www.timesleaderonline.com/uncategorized/2022/11/poli.
| ..
| adolph wrote:
| > Wow, this is incredibly concerning. So they can pull me over,
| lie about why and then try to manufacture something?
| Parallel construction is a law enforcement process of building
| a parallel, or separate, evidentiary basis for a
| criminal investigation in order to limit disclosure as
| to the origins of an investigation. In the US, a
| particular form is evidence laundering, where one police
| officer obtains evidence via means that are in violation
| of the Fourth Amendment's protection against
| unreasonable searches and seizures, and then passes it on
| to another officer, who builds on it and gets it accepted by
| the court under the good-faith exception as applied to
| the second officer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
| avidiax wrote:
| Wait until you hear about parallel construction.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
|
| https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2014/feb/03/dea-paral...
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >Wow, this is incredibly concerning.
|
| Well, maybe now you understand that when people were saying
| Trump is an actual fascist, it wasn't just memes.
|
| Its only gonna get worse. At some point, CBP is gonna shoot
| someone, nothing is gonna happen, and that will be the turning
| point of when they can just arbitrarily start shooting citizens
| with no repercussion.
|
| If you don't have a plan to GTFO the country by now, you are
| behind.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Not CBP but see Carlos Jimenez for an example of what's
| currently happening.
| standardUser wrote:
| > often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal,
| the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener
|
| Police shouldn't be able to pull someone over for an air
| freshener or tinted windows. They can send a fix-it ticket
| without wasting the time and resources, and without causing the
| inconvenience or diversions in traffic. And, as a private
| citizen, I strongly prefer the police have the minimal necessary
| powers to detain me.
| simonw wrote:
| License plate scanners are one of the most under-appreciated
| violations of personal privacy that exist today.
|
| It's not just government use either. There are private companies
| that scan vast numbers of license plates (sometimes by driving
| around parking lots with a camera), build a database of what
| plate was seen where at what time, then sell access to both law
| enforcement and I believe private investigators.
|
| Want to know if your spouse is having an affair? Those databases
| may well have the answer.
|
| Here is a Wired story from 2014 about Vigilant Solutions, founded
| in 2009: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/license-plate-tracking/
|
| I believe Vigilant only provide access to law enforcement, but
| Digital Recognition Network sell access to others as well:
| https://drndata.com/about/
|
| Good Vice story about that:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/i-tracked-someone-with-licen...
| baggachipz wrote:
| Flock is extremely egregious.
|
| https://deflock.me
| vkou wrote:
| WA state has figured out a solution to the Flock problem.
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-
| rules...
|
| If they are going to be used by the government and law
| enforcement, they are clearly _government-collected data
| about you_ - and thus, are subject to (the state equivalent
| of) a FOIA request.
|
| This puts an onerous compliance requirement on Flock and the
| ciites that allow it to operate.
|
| Hopefully, WA's state legislature will decline to give them
| any exemptions, which will kill that company's operations in
| the state.
|
| ---
|
| Among other things, these cameras have been illegally used to
| spy on people who were getting an abortion in WA. Flock's
| executives (and the engineers who implemented that feature)
| belong in prison.
| Lammy wrote:
| Relevant federal payola
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-
| lobbying/clients/summary...
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-
| lobbying/clients/lobbyis...
| joe5150 wrote:
| Flock has a series of bizarre, obviously LLM-generated blog
| posts trying to convince the public that they are working
| "toward a future where compliance and community trust walk
| hand in hand"....
|
| [1] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/policy-pulse-compliance-
| doe...
|
| [2] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/policy-pulse-the-work-
| alrea...
|
| [3] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/policy-pulse-
| transparency-c...
| smoser wrote:
| Toyota was working on a feature for its cars that would report
| license plates from amber alerts to authorities.
| https://x.com/SteveMoser/status/1493990907661766664?s=20
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| That would frankly be a narrow, reasonable application.
|
| The problem is the database building. Law enforcement queries
| should all be forced to be 1. Require a warrant or an active
| emergency and 2. Be strictly real-time, for a set duration,
| and store no information about cars that are not subject to
| the warrant.
|
| If either of those is not hardcoses into the technology, I
| don't want my local police department to be allowed to use
| license plate scanners whatsoever.
| chaps wrote:
| Okay now, how do you show that it's not being abused? FOIA?
| Good luck.
| greedo wrote:
| Exactly. Witness how Texas has failed to provide emails
| between Musk and the governor... Well, they released
| them, but they were redacted 99.99%.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I mean, its possible to subpoena cellphone records and
| geographically track your movement based on which cell towers
| you connect to.
|
| But regardless, I always find it funny that most of the
| rhetoric for personal liberties revolves around being able to
| do illegal things.
| simonw wrote:
| That is exactly my point: no subpoena or warrant is required
| for access to license plate scan databases.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I want you to tell me in exact words that you firmly
| believe that when the current regime starts requesting
| records without any legal oversight, cell companies won't
| comply, because users trust is worth to them more than
| shareholder value.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| The most important reason for privacy is that without it,
| social norms calcify.
|
| If a norm is outdated, oppressive, or maladaptive in some way
| and needs to be changed, it becomes very difficult to change
| the norm if you cannot build a critical mass of people
| practicing the replacement norm.
|
| It is even harder if you cannot even _talk about_ building a
| critical mass of people practicing the replacement norm.
|
| For many norms, like the taboo on homosexuality which was
| strong in the US and Europe until recently and is still
| strong in many places today, the taboo and threat of
| ostracism are strong enough that people need privacy to build
| critical mass to change the norm even when the taboo is not
| enshrined in law, or the law is not usually enforced. This
| was the mechanism of "coming out of the closet": build
| critical mass for changing the norm in private, and then take
| the risk of being in public violation once enough critical
| mass had been organized that it was plausible to replace the
| old oppressive/maladaptive norm with a new one.
|
| But yes, obsolete/maladaptive/oppressive norms are often
| enshrined in law too.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > revolves around being able to do illegal things.
|
| The problem is, what is legal today might not be tomorrow.
| Especially depending on the regime in power at the time.
|
| Mass surveillance can implicate someone in a crime if later
| on some regime decides that what they did or where they went
| is now a crime when it wasn't before.
|
| Remember the push back against Apple's proposed client side
| scanning of photos to look for CSAM? What happens when the
| hash database starts including things like political memes,
| or other types of photos. What used to be legal is now not,
| and you get screwed because of the surveillance state.
|
| Absolutely no data should be available without a warrant and
| subpoena, full stop. Warrants issued by a court, not a secret
| national security letter with a gag order either. Warrants
| only issued with _true_ probable cause, not "acting
| suspicious."
| sroussey wrote:
| Absolutely all your data is available for sale by data
| brokers. Need to get rid of those first. Then the
| government would need warrants where they don't need
| warrants to just _buy_ your data.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| If you've worked in government, you'd know that that bar
| for getting a subpoena or warrant is far lower and less
| strenuous than getting a purchase order.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Which is also a problem that needs fixed. A search
| warrant should be extremely difficult to get. "The person
| is suspicious and we think we will find xyz illegal item"
| is not enough. An arrest alone shouldn't be enough
| either. Police/detectives should have to prove, beyond
| all reasonable doubt, that what they are looking for is
| actually there to get the warrant.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's not the standard for a warrant. That standard is
| "reasonable belief".
| sroussey wrote:
| Ouch
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Police are not filling out purchase orders to query an
| API they already have a contract with.
|
| _The purchase order was already taken care of a long
| time ago_ , because police loved being able to get around
| warrants and love dragnet surveillance.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The idea that US citizens actually give a fuck about
| defending anything is laughable. All of this is
| performative virtue signaling.
|
| US literally has ownership of guns codified into
| constitution, specifically to allow citizens to defend
| themselves from oppressive regimes that fit CBP to the
| letter (i.e violence against US citizens), however a CBP
| officer is yet to be shot in a confrontation.
|
| Its to the point where Trump can literally start
| confiscating guns, and the amount of armed resistance will
| be negligible, and most of it originating from organized
| gangs. When it comes to all the "dont tread on me" people,
| when armed forces are surrounding their house, and the
| chance of losing the easy comfortable life they have lived
| for the past 3 decades is very real, all of them are going
| to bend over and lube up so fast that they will get
| whiplash, without a doubt.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| For good reason. Being "investigated" for illegal things is a
| key way to violate personal liberties. If you believe in
| freedom, you have to accept that some people who are not nice
| people benefit from those human rights. You may find yourself
| an "enemy of the people" for a variety of reasons.
|
| In most cases, cell tower data is sold in the open market in
| aggregate. A commercial real estate developer can buy
| datasets that provide the average household income of passers
| by by hour of the day and month of the year, for example. The
| police can request tower ping data, generally by warrant.
| There are exceptions, especially in the federal space.
|
| The Feds have a massive surveillance network. Every journey
| on the interstates between Miami and the border crossings
| near Buffalo, Watertown, Plattsburgh, Vermont and Maine all
| the way down to Miami is logged and tracked by a DEA program,
| which has likely expanded. You can get breadcrumbs of LPR
| hits and passenger photographs throughout the journey.
|
| Flock is a cancer, as it is deployed by individual
| jurisdictions (often with Federal grants) and makes each node
| part of a larger network. They help solve and will likely
| eliminate some categories of crime. But the laws governing
| use are at best weak and at worse an abomination. Local cops
| abuse it by doing the usual dumb cop stuff -- stalking
| girlfriends, checking up on acquaintances. The Federal
| government is able to tap in to make it a node in their
| panopticon. Unlike government systems, stuff like user ids
| aren't really governed well and the abuses are mostly
| unauditable.
|
| The private camera networks are a problem for commercial
| abuse and Federal abuse. They aren't as risky for local PDs
| because they generally require a paper trail to use.
| Corrupt/abusive cops don't like accountability.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >The police can request tower ping data, generally by
| warrant.
|
| Or Trump can just put legal pressure on cell providers and
| they will bend the knee like everyone else, and CPB can
| easily have that data without problems.
|
| Lets not pretend that that is the line they won't cross.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Those companies have been selling the data to the
| government without warrant for quite some time actually.
| No pressure necessary. Cops have money and Verizon wants
| it.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| Only a review of your dossier by the House Un-American
| Activities Committee+ can verify you have not demonstrated
| any subversive behavior, citizen.
|
| + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-
| American_Activities_C...
| into_ruin wrote:
| > [M]ost of the rhetoric for personal liberties revolves
| around being able to do illegal things.
|
| What are you basing that on? Conjecture?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| No, simple logic and how society is evolving.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| Don't new cars just directly record your location as you drive
| them?
| sleepybrett wrote:
| One wonders if any given tesla is harvesting the plates the
| other cars it see in traffic as well.
| nmeagent wrote:
| Do you think that corporate erosion of (or outright hostility
| to) privacy is somehow a compelling reason to deny rights to
| those of us who make different choices in an attempt to
| protect them? Just because some people decided to buy a
| smartphone on wheels, do I have to suffer and have my freedom
| of movement narrowed and protection from arbitrary inspection
| by government agents denied?
| drnick1 wrote:
| They do, but it is relatively easy to nuke the onboard modem
| to permanently disconnect your car. Unfortunately, most
| people don't know or don't care that their cars are actively
| spying on them.
| torginus wrote:
| My guess would be that your car would develop some covert
| or overt fault if you did that. You might even lose
| warranty as the manufacturer could claim that the issue
| they fixed via a software update couldn't be installed on
| your car - or couldn't monitor some diagnostics which are a
| prerequisite for in-warranty repair.
|
| Most telco execs would sell their own mothers before
| offering reasonable data plans - that your car comes with
| one for free should be very telling
| sroussey wrote:
| So does your phone. And the government just buys the data
| from data brokers.
| hulitu wrote:
| > It's not just government use either. There are private
| companies that scan vast numbers of license plates
|
| Welcome to capitalism. It is very hard, in EU and US, to tell
| where the government ends and the private companies begin.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| especially when private companies can buy politicians. At
| this point there is no line and the two have become one.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Counterpoint: when you're sharing a public road, the license of
| your car to share that road isn't private information.
|
| ... But I echo the concern with how the collection and
| aggregation of the data can be abused. I just don't have a
| great solution. "Don't use shared public resources to do secret
| things; they're incompatible with privacy" might be the rubric
| here.
| 9dev wrote:
| As much hate as it gets, the GDPR has pretty clear guidelines
| for situations like these. Essentially, the purpose of the
| data collection matters. Your license plates may be public
| information as in they are visible in the public, but that
| doesn't mean collecting the information is, or providing
| others access to it - without your consent.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm curious what you think the solution is?
|
| Taking a photograph of a car with its license plate is legal.
| As is selling a photo you've taken, whether it has a license
| plate or not.
|
| Therefore taking millions of photos in public of cars, and
| turning their license plate numbers into a database is legal,
| as is selling that information. It's all data gained in public.
|
| Obviously it's now scary that you're being tracked. But what is
| the solution? We certainly don't want to outlaw taking photos
| in public. Is it the mass aggregation of already-public data
| that should be made illegal? What adverse consequences might
| that have, e.g. journalists compiling public data to prove
| governmental corruption?
| Teever wrote:
| The solution is to wake up and start treating this like it is
| which is mass stalking. Sousveillance against the people who
| profit from these disgusting antisocial behaviours should be
| common place.
|
| If an individual was to do this to a single person they'd
| considered a creep and the cops would rustle them out of a
| the bushes and seize all their cameras as evidence of their
| stalking behaviour.
|
| The act of incorporating and doing the same thing en masse
| doesn't make it legal.
| batisteo wrote:
| There is a huge overlap between legal and immoral
| vkou wrote:
| > I'm curious what you think the solution is?
|
| The solution is simple. If there's a judge that signed off on
| a warrant to track a _particular_ vehicle or person, cameras
| should be permitted to track its movements.
|
| Otherwise, cameras should only be allowed to track people
| _actively_ breaking the law - such as sending tickets to
| people running red lights. They should not record or retain
| any information about drivers that are following the rules.
|
| Fishing expeditions are illegal and immoral. Mass tracking of
| innocent people is immoral.
|
| ---
|
| Judicial warrants exist as a counterbalance between two
| public needs (The need to not be harassed by the police for
| no good reason, and the need for the police to be able to
| conduct active, targeted investigations of a particular
| crime.)
| sejje wrote:
| Come on, it's not that hard to think of a solution.
|
| Pass a law making it illegal to do a combination of
| collecting and storing personally identifying information,
| such as a license plate number, in a timestamped database
| with location data. Extra penalty if it's done for the
| purpose of selling the data.
| huem0n wrote:
| Glad to see I'm not the only one that thinks its obvious
| ianstormtaylor wrote:
| Not saying I agree with OP, but for the law you described:
| any photo you take of a license plate on your smartphone
| would fit that description (unless you've explicitly
| disabled the automatic location and time stamping default).
|
| So you'd need to further distinguish to preserve that
| freedom.
| bigmadshoe wrote:
| Then make the act of selling it or storing it in a
| database with the intent to track people illegal?
| baconner wrote:
| Its not hard to distugush individual pictures that
| contain trackable attributes like a license plate number
| from building a large scale database of them for sale. Or
| making such a database not legal to sell access to
| without removing that information, etc. It doesn't need
| to center on the contents of a single photo.
| 9dev wrote:
| There's a difference in intent, and you're aware of that.
| Aggregating photos of license plates for the express
| purpose of building a database of license plates with
| location and other metadata to make profit from granting
| access to that database is clearly different to most
| other cases of taking, storing, and even selling
| photographs. There is no overlap here at all.
| triceratops wrote:
| > any photo you take of a license plate on your
| smartphone would fit that description
|
| I don't normally do that, unless I'm involved in an
| accident.
|
| > So you'd need to further distinguish to preserve that
| freedom.
|
| And you think it's very hard to do that, legally
| speaking?
| Sesse__ wrote:
| Let's call it GDPR. :-)
| TylerE wrote:
| In your universe, how do I make a hotel reservation?
|
| That requires at least my name, a date, and a location.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Thing is, I am not /really/ worried about private citizens
| with access to this. There are just limits to what a
| private citizen or even massive corporation can do. What
| concerns me is when governments get involved and aggregate
| these private databases. The government is the one that can
| violate your 4A rights. It exists to protect us FROM the
| government. Not from private citizens and that exposure is
| very different. A private citizen can't for example,
| prosecute me, etc.
| iamnothere wrote:
| > There are just limits to what a private citizen or even
| massive corporation can do.
|
| You're just not being creative enough. Car insurers could
| increase your premiums if you often travel through
| dangerous intersections, employers could decide to pass
| you over for promotion if you're often at a bar, etc.
|
| Even better, make the law flexible enough to encompass
| all data brokers.
| intrasight wrote:
| Car insurance can't wait to know everything about you.
| They will be crafting insurance policies that are
| specific for you and that will make unregulated insurance
| a very lucrative business proposition. Not sure if you
| can even call it insurance at that point.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Then OCR'ing the camera roll on your phone would be
| illegal. Every photo is stamped with time and location, and
| your camera roll is a database.
|
| That's why it actually is hard.
|
| Plus, what about legitimate purposes of tracking? E.g.
| journalists tracking the movements of politicians to show
| they are meeting in secret to plan corrupt activities. Or
| tracking Ubers to show that the city is allowing way more
| then the number of permits granted. Or a journalist wanting
| to better understand traffic patterns.
|
| The line between illegitimate usage and legitimate usage
| seems really blurry. Hence my question.
| huem0n wrote:
| Require commercially used photos to not contain identifying
| information (face license plate) without consent of the owner
| (of the license plate/face).
|
| This already happens a lot on Google street view.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| License plates are owned by the government.
| cwillu wrote:
| So what?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Require commercially used photos to not contain
| identifying information...
|
| So CNN can't put Trump's photo up unless he consents?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Just like copyright you'd have an exclusion for news
| reporting. A lot of these apparent 'gotchas' will be well
| known to lawyers and law drafters.
| cwillu wrote:
| Lots of countries already have nuanced laws around public
| figures vs private citizens.
| cycomanic wrote:
| There have always been different standards for a person
| of public interest compared to the general public. So
| what is your point?
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| It should be illegal for the government to do so, further
| make it illegal for businesses to do so AND for city, county,
| state, federal governments to utilize third party databases.
| martin-t wrote:
| Restrictions and oversight should increase proportionally
| to the power an entity has.
|
| This is a very under-appreciated concept.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _make it illegal for businesses to do so AND for city,
| county, state, federal governments to utilize third party
| databases_
|
| Local control and storage should be a requirement.
| LazyMans wrote:
| You do not want local govt each building their own
| "secure" system.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Get rid of license plates.
| 9dev wrote:
| How to easily identify a car in a myriad of scenarios then
| that may or may absolutely not involve digital devices,
| like quickly remembering someone fleeing from an accident?
| kragen wrote:
| It would be surprising if the solution were not worse in
| _some_ way than the status quo ante; after all, we 're
| looking for a solution to the new problem of mass
| surveillance, not taking advantage of a new opportunity.
| xnx wrote:
| Ironically, you'll have more privacy in a Waymo than your own
| car.
| Animats wrote:
| No, you have to have a Google or Apple account tracking you
| under their terms.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| But that data is not shared anywhere, where companies
| like Flock sell it to a number of third parties.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Your phone IMEI is being tracked everywhere.
| xnx wrote:
| Yes. Should we even worry about license plates
| specifically?
| xnx wrote:
| Right, Google would certainly know, but the rest of the
| world would not.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| _> Taking a photograph of a car with its license plate is
| legal. As is selling a photo you 've taken, whether it has a
| license plate or not._
|
| _> Therefore taking millions of photos in public of cars,
| and turning their license plate numbers into a database is
| legal, as is selling that information. It 's all data gained
| in public._
|
| One absolutely does not follow the other; there are all sorts
| of things that are legal only if done for certain purposes,
| only below a certain scale, etc. The idea that we must permit
| both or neither is a false dichotomy.
| wmeredith wrote:
| E.g. I have the personal liberty to host card game for
| money at my house. But if I require a house take, now I'm
| running a gambling business.
| jMyles wrote:
| That's not a difference in scope; it's a difference in
| kind.
|
| And even the latter is fraught with hazards to liberty.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Hacker solution: open/crowd source a pirate camera network.
| People submit feeds of traffic from whatever camera they
| have. We build tiny/concealable cameras to plant all over
| state capitals. Client-side software detects plates and
| reports only those on the target list. That list: every
| elected leader. The next time they hold a privacy-related
| hearing, we read out the committee chairperson's daily
| movements for the last month.
|
| Other idea: AI-enabled dashcam detects and automatically
| reports "emergency vehicles" to google maps hands free.
| Goodbye speed traps.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| You don't even need something so complicated. Those Flock
| cameras are so vulnerable you can easily make a botnet from
| them and make them serve your own malicious purpose.
| wolpoli wrote:
| They just might write a law that makes the act of publicly
| disseminating travel data for future and past official's
| illegal.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _curious what you think the solution is?_
|
| Require a warrant for law enforcement to poll these
| databases. And make the database operators strictly liable
| for breaches and mis-use.
|
| For all we know, "suspicious" travel patterns may include
| visiting a place of religious worship or an abortion clinic.
| For a future President, it may be parking near the home of
| someone who tweeted support for a J6'er.
|
| (And we haven't even touched the national security risk Flock
| poses [1].)
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/03/lawmakers-say-stolen-
| polic...
| kragen wrote:
| Are you also going to require a warrant for paramilitary
| insurgent groups to poll these databases? Maybe you
| intended to propose for them to be abolished entirely.
| floor2 wrote:
| Maybe it's time to do away with license plates.
|
| Police could switch to using VIN for tracking of warrants and
| such, which can be obtained after a car is pulled over.
|
| Modern technology allows for every citizen to be tracked more
| comprehensively than the most wanted mob bosses or suspected
| soviet spies just a few decades ago.
|
| Or simply outlaw the mass collection and sale or sharing of
| the data. We already outlaw sharing copies of music or
| movies, so I don't want to hear any complaints about
| enforcement- sure there'd still be _some_ data floating
| around from random photos with a car in the background, but
| you wouldn 't have repo tow truck drivers scanning 20,000
| license plates a night or cameras in parking lots and such.
| salawat wrote:
| It is a matter of law that no digital database of firearms
| data can be made. The friction is a feature. I'd propose
| something surrounding license plates, phone info, SIM's and
| VIN's may be needed. Of course, LE and tax authorities would
| scream bloody murder, but if we didn't see such flagrant
| abuse of sensitive identifiers, then maybe they could be
| trusted with nice things.
| cogman10 wrote:
| IDK that I even have a problem with such a database
| existing (just like I don't really care about a firearms db
| existing). What I care about is access to the data. It
| should absolutely require a warrant before it can be
| accessed. That means the agency that wants to access it
| needs to prove to a judge that the person they are trying
| to track has done something wrong or worth invading their
| privacy over.
|
| As it stands, we allow joe bob to access that database so
| he can harass brown people working on my roof.
| salawat wrote:
| No, no, no.
|
| >just like I don't really care about a firearms db
| existing)
|
| You might not care, but even before computers were a big
| thing, and people thought "Computer" and IBM mainframes
| were synonymous, it was put forth in law that no central
| digital registry of firearms was to be made available to
| the Federal Government.
|
| View regulations under
|
| https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12057
|
| In short, NFA, GCA, and FOPA basically synergize to
| outlaw centralized registries of firearms owners in the
| U.S. due to the recognition of the particular temptation
| and value in organizing activities resulting in disarming
| the populace.
|
| It is absolutely the case other identifiers and activity
| can be restricted to prevent foreseeable abuse, and to be
| honest, that this type of abuse wasn't foreseen is
| frankly testament to either our forebearers being
| comfortable with a surveillance dystopia or just being so
| disconnected from technical possibilities that they
| didn't understand the fire we were working with.
| mmooss wrote:
| If it exists then people will use it legally and
| illegally. Sometimes you find out about the illegal
| activities years later, sometimes you don't.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Isn't the law that the federal government can't create a
| digital database of firearm ownership?
|
| Presumably many FFLs hold records digitally tracking their
| sales/transfers, as do manufacturers. And several states
| require firearm registration.
| salawat wrote:
| Correct, but FOPA prohibits those records from entering
| the custody of BATFE/DoJ, and even if handed off, no
| funding can be provided to digitize them.
| analog8374 wrote:
| Make everybody secure, happy and sane enough that using such
| powers for ill becomes uninteresting.
| simonw wrote:
| Not great news for people who want to have affairs. Or (a
| better example) escape from an abusive relationship.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2261A
| kragen wrote:
| Eliminating license plates would be a good step. As I
| understand it, license plates were established as a
| compromise between privacy and accountability: they made it
| possible to track down evildoers without entirely eliminating
| anonymity in public. Now, due to advances in computer
| technology, they entirely eliminate anonymity in public.
| Therefore we should abolish them and invent an alternative
| that strikes a better balance between these concerns.
| Encrypted radio beacons, for example, which beep to alert the
| driver when they are being probed.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Encrypted radio beacons, for example, which beep to alert
| the driver when they are being probed.
|
| That thing would ping so often that everyone would just
| turn it off. You'd also want to require it to always be on
| so that, for example, someone can't do a hit and run.
|
| The problem that needs to be addressed is the fact that the
| american police force has WAY too much power and funding.
| Particularly the DHS.
|
| The tracking sucks, but what sucks more is the police using
| that tracking in pretty much any way imaginable.
| kragen wrote:
| You'd need to have some causal pathway from it pinging
| too often through people getting irritated to removing
| the scanners that were doing the excessive tracking.
|
| Police forces are not the only ones who can use this
| information. Foreign intelligence agencies, violent
| insurgencies, and drug cartels can also use it.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The rub is that the information is something that regular
| drivers need access to.
|
| If I get into a car accident, I need some way to know who
| hit me in the case they bolt from the scene.
|
| And that's what makes this a hard problem. I don't think
| there's a solution that allows me to address a hit and
| run and would prevent the groups you mention from
| similarly tracking people.
| kragen wrote:
| As I said in another subthread, it would be surprising if
| the solution were not worse in some way than the status
| quo ante; after all, we're looking for a solution to the
| new problem of mass surveillance, not taking advantage of
| a new opportunity.
| vl wrote:
| With network of cameras large enough you can trivially
| profile and identify all cars without license plates.
| kragen wrote:
| It's possible that you could learn to recognize every
| individual car from things like the pattern of scratches
| on their hoods, yes, but this ability has not been
| demonstrated and may prove more difficult than you think.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Instead of pieces of metal physically on the car, you want
| all cars to have a radio transceiver attached to a computer
| with crypto?
|
| That doesn't seem like a privacy win.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| License plates are there not to "catch evildoers". They're
| there because cars are heavy and kill people even when non-
| evildoers are operating them. The problem is not that cars
| can be tracked, it's that we design cities to mandate
| people travel in heavy metal boxes that kill people. When
| we made walking inconvenient, we also surrendered our
| rights.
|
| In other words, cars were a fascist[0] long-con - a project
| of societal engineering to deliberately control
| Americans[1] by offering the illusion of freedom. I don't
| even think the panopticon of license plate readers was in
| the thoughts of the people who designed this nonsense, but
| all the major figures involved with the
| institutionalization of cars would have _loved_ being able
| to bulldoze those pesky 4A /5A rights.
|
| [0] Fords and Volkswagens are the original model
| swasticars.
|
| [1] And, arguably, make segregation survive the Civil
| Rights Act - but that's a different topic for another day.
| Look up what Robert Moses did to highways on Long Island if
| you want to know more.
| analog31 wrote:
| I think the data itself has to come under attack in a variety
| of ways. Thinking off the top of my head: Possession of the
| data could be made illegal. The data could be treated as a
| public record. Defendants could be guaranteed access to all
| data about them in the government's possession.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Ride a bike! I half-kid, but it's interesting to consider
| that cycling is a right which can't be taken away in the US,
| while driving is a privilege that can be revoked.
| ddalex wrote:
| > cycling is a right which can't be taken away in the US
|
| Why not ?
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Practically, because bicyclists aren't licensed. It is
| true that in some jurisdictions cyclists have to register
| or license their bicycles, so potentially failure to do
| so could get you fined or even have your bike impounded.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| If riding a bike was as common as a car it'd be regulated
| all the same.
|
| You already see "certain demographics" that suspiciously
| always seem to feature prominently in any given decade's
| policy failings screeching about how e-bikes need
| registration because they let people they don't like have
| easy geographic mobility.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think we have a mass re-assessment coming for how we think
| about data collected in public spaces. The realities of mass
| surveillance and mass data correlation come to very different
| outcomes than they did when we established our current rules
| about what is allowed in public spaces.
|
| I don't really know what a better system looks like - but I
| suspect it has to do with the step where the info is provided
| to a third party. We can all exist in public and we can all
| take in whatever is happening in public - but it's not clear
| that passing that observation on to a third party who wasn't
| in public is an important freedom. Obviously this cuts both
| ways and we need to think carefully about preserving citizens
| rights to observe and report on the behavior of authorities
| (though also you could argue that reporting on people doing
| their jobs in the public space is different than reporting on
| private citizens).
| mikem170 wrote:
| > we can all take in whatever is happening in public
|
| People have the right to take in what is in public, but
| maybe cameras should not?
|
| This could apply to everyone in public spaces. No video,
| audio or surveillance without obtaining permission. Better
| blur anything you share, or you might get busted. The least
| we could do is restrict corporations from possessing such
| data.
|
| Similar to what Germany does with doorbell cameras, making
| it illegal to film anything outside of your property, like
| a public sidewalk or the neighbors house. It is my
| understanding that people there will confront someone
| taking pictures of them without their consent.
| lkhasgflk wrote:
| > [I]t's not clear that passing that observation on to a
| third party who wasn't in public is an important freedom.
|
| It's not hard to imagine a restriction on reporting one's
| observations failing any number of First Amendment
| challenges.
| aftbit wrote:
| I think the solution is simple - make it legal to hide your
| license plate, but make the hiders required to be remotely
| openable by an authorized law enforcement user. The plate
| hider should keep an audit log of the time, name, and badge
| number of the cop that required it to be opened. Anyone who
| wants to read license plates for a private purpose (not law
| enforcement) can either ask you nicely to open the hider, or
| screw off.
| intrasight wrote:
| Then we just get rid of license plates and have them
| implemented with digital telemetry. Which is probably gonna
| happen regardless.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Doing this as a private citizen is one thing. When the
| government does it the implications are vastly different.
| That is kind of the whole point of the constitution.
| codexb wrote:
| License plate holders that obscure the license plate on
| private property.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > But what is the solution?
|
| Don't allow the commoditization of public imagery, ie being a
| tourist is legal and being a business is not.
| jdiff wrote:
| Owning a baseball bat is completely legal. Swinging it in
| your immediate vicinity is completely legal. Standing within
| baseball bat range of other people is completely legal.
|
| But you'll quickly find yourself detained if you try to
| practice this innocent collection of legal activities
| together. The whole is different from the sum of its parts.
| It's a very common occurrence.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > I'm curious what you think the solution is? > > Taking a
| photograph of a car with its license plate is legal. As is
| selling a photo you've taken, whether it has a license plate
| or not. > > Therefore taking millions of photos in public of
| cars, and turning their license plate numbers into a database
| is legal, as is selling that information. It's all data
| gained in public. > Collecting and selling PII without a
| person's consent is certainly not legal in many places.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Taking a photograph of a car with its license plate is
| legal.
|
| And perhaps it was legal because before mass surveillance and
| automatic license plate readers it was difficult to
| impossible to abuse that.
|
| Perhaps it shouldn't be legal in the same way anymore.
|
| These days they can just photograph everyone and then go back
| later and figure out where they were when that person is of
| interest. It's pre-emptive investigation of innocent people
| for future use.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| The solution is to make it illegal to record individuals in
| public for the purpose of tracking.
| xnx wrote:
| > License plate scanners are one of the most under-appreciated
| violations of personal privacy that exist today.
|
| Worse than cell phone tracking? Cell phone tracking is higher
| fidelity, continuous, and works everywhere.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| The difference is you can opt out by leaving it at home.
| legitster wrote:
| I mean... the whole point of a license plate is that it's a
| public identifier. It should not be that controversial that's
| publicly registered information. In the same way that flights
| are tracked.
|
| Multiple Supreme Courts have also made it clear several times
| that they believe you do not have a right to privacy in public
| spaces. So all the traffic camera databases do is automate and
| make easier something that is currently definitively legal.
|
| The more pertinent issue in this case is that driving patterns
| should not be grounds for detainment without a warrant.
| Especially if you have no evidence to link the driver to the
| car. But unfortunately, the recent Supreme Court decision made
| suspicion of being an illegal immigrant grounds for detainment.
| 9dev wrote:
| This line of argument enables all kinds of criminals to do
| stuff you absolutely do not want them to. From stalkers
| figuring out the best time to rape their victim to organised
| crime planning cash truck robbery routes.
| pton_xd wrote:
| > Multiple Supreme Courts have also made it clear several
| times that they believe you do not have a right to privacy in
| public spaces. So all the traffic camera databases do is
| automate and make easier something that is currently
| definitively legal.
|
| I propose we simplify things and replace your cars license
| plate with a placard stating:
|
| First and Last Name
|
| Address and Phone Number
|
| Drivers license number
|
| Age and net worth
|
| Prior convictions
|
| Maybe there's a few more factoids we could add on there? I'd
| really like to know who is parked next to me. I mean, you're
| in public and have no expectation of privacy afterall.
| relwin wrote:
| Here's a vid describing DRN & Resolvion supplying car location
| data to repo companies. I didn't realize they'll strap a camera
| pack on your car and pay you a commission on the license plate
| data you collect.
| https://youtu.be/xE5NnZm9OpU?si=oEkSvUjNmBhQD-xI&t=138
| titzer wrote:
| Don't use Google Location Service (GLS) on your phone. It's
| built into Google Play Services, aka the enormous rootkit from
| Google and does...stuff...with high accuracy location data
| because lawyers think they can argue in court that that data is
| "anonymized".
| lbrito wrote:
| This is what the world's most perfect democracy looks like. Peak
| Freedom.
| nxor wrote:
| According to Pew Research, more foreigners make up the US
| population today than ever recorded. People here are allowed to
| question who is coming.
| walthamstow wrote:
| What even is a foreigner in a place like the USA?
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| I will always find it weird that people who think the fact
| their consciousness randomly popped into existence through
| pure luck in a privileged country means that they deserve it
| more than someone who popped into existence somewhere else.
|
| Even that aside, how does that give them the right to
| infringe on the rights and privacy of citizens?
| lbrito wrote:
| Not sure about the "ever recorded" part - how far back are we
| talking? There were some pretty massive waves of illegal
| aliens flooding the East Coast back in the 1600s.
| newfriend wrote:
| The United States didn't exist in the 1600s.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >People here are allowed to question
|
| I don't get why you have to obfuscate like this. You aren't
| against limitations for questioning. You wont find any
| sensible person that is against immigration enforcement
| completely.
|
| What you want is the ability for your side to carry out its
| will unobstructed by any legal process, because you
| fundamentally believe what they are doing is right, and the
| other side is evil.
|
| Just say that instead of pretending that its about the law.
| 65 wrote:
| > more foreigners make up the US population today than ever
| recorded
|
| This is a dog whistle for "non-whites"
| ActorNightly wrote:
| To be fair, we are also free to own guns and defend ourselves
| against illegal acts. Too bad people just want freedom when its
| easy, not when its hard
| saubeidl wrote:
| The people with the guns and the militias are the ones in
| support of the tyrant, unfortunately.
| triceratops wrote:
| Guns can't help protect you against illegal acts like these.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Over the past decade we've seen large numbers of Trump and MAGA
| supporters on HN.
|
| Has their life improved because of ICE and CBP crackdowns? Are
| they happier now that all those undocumented immigrants have had
| their lives ruined? Are they proud of the destruction of our
| democratic norms and the attack on our civil liberties? Do they
| enjoy watching the rights of American citizens being trampled on
| a daily basis by a wannabe dictator?
|
| They've been very vocal and aggressive here in the past, where
| are they now? Will they continue to spout misinformation,
| disinformation and whataboutism with unprecedented presidential
| power grabs, the economy faltering and the Constitution being
| ignored?
|
| I wonder how they feel now that literally every fear that
| progressives warned about are coming true? Are they willing to
| accept that they are and always have been completely wrong?
|
| Please feel free to reply and show your full throated support for
| this administration. I'd like to see how many HNers are so
| stubborn as to ignore reality.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Not sure the phrasing of "undocumented immigrants have had
| their lives ruined" is the angle you want.
|
| The angle should be that CBP is causing a lot of unjustified
| problems for legal residents and citizens. People having to
| spend 20k to get back property that the government never
| should've taken is not good for deterring undocumented
| immigrants. When CBP agents need to spend 20 days of the month
| rounding up people on farms and home depot to meet quota those
| are 20 days _not_ spent searching for drug dealers.
| nxor wrote:
| Iryna Zarutska's life was ruined. When liberals downplay events
| like these, it pushes people to the other side, even if the
| other side has issues. It's not hateful to want less crime.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Sure, and Charlie Kirk was murdered by a US citizen. It's
| okay for us to correlate a rising trend in political violence
| with something other than immigration.
|
| It's not as pleasant or vindictive as saying "the nonwhites
| did it" but it certainly seems to hold true when the
| political pot boils over. It's rarely the immigrants taking
| potshots at the president or storming the capitol, but
| instead deluded ideologues who are naturalized Americans.
| javascriptfan69 wrote:
| Are you sure it's liberals downplaying these events? Or is it
| conservatives amplifying these events because they're
| politically useful?
|
| I'm pretty sure everybody has condemned Zarutska's death.
|
| Remember that Joe Biden had a border bill that Donald Trump
| told republicans to kill because Trump wanted to keep the
| border as a election issue.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >When liberals downplay events like these
|
| For casual observers, this is where the fallacy is.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I don't support any politicians. Trump may be more blatant
| about things, but nothing has fundamentally changed. Civil
| liberty was aspirational at the start of the USA, was once
| almost real, and then immediately began reversing.
|
| A person in the USA has approximately zero of the rights
| guaranteed in the Bill of the Rights. The average person is
| relatively free, but the government can change that at will and
| the target of government power has little recourse.
| PKop wrote:
| Of course we support this, but it hasn't gone far enough yet.
| Housing costs, crime rates, healthcare costs, insurance rates,
| and in general political outcomes will be improved by deporting
| million of illegal aliens. Competition for resources,
| territory, and political power are zero sum. Why would we
| support a mass importation of millions of foreigners? Trump ran
| on "mass deportations". He hasn't really gotten close to that
| yet, but he's a massive improvement over the previous admin who
| increased illegal immigration by millions.
|
| The interests of foreigners mean nothing in comparison with the
| interests of the nation and it's own citizens. You live in an
| ahistorical fantasy world where the entire globe can just
| coexist in one place without conflict and consequence and
| citizens and their political leaders should serve these people
| at the expense of their own. It's insane, and it's not good for
| the country or Americans.
| _joel wrote:
| Aren't your healthcare costs going to rapidly increase soon?
| Also with an approval rating so low, most Americans seem not
| to agree.
| PKop wrote:
| You mean aren't there already massive problems with high
| healthcare costs here? Yes. And housing costs. And car
| insurance costs. And property tax costs.
|
| Having millions of foreigners here who are net-costs to
| taxpayers doesn't make it better it makes it worse. Cost of
| living goes down massively if we were to deport 30 million
| illegal aliens.
|
| Then there's the H1B and other visas fiasco. Wages go up
| for Americans if this program is scrapped. Part of the
| discontent with Trump is he is not acting aggressively
| enough on any of this. So he has approval problems from all
| sides. And whether people agree with those like me that
| identify cost of living pressures as caused in large part
| by immigration, those same people and everyone else are
| going to have general "disapproval" and unhappiness with
| the effects.
|
| When you have an average of 2.4 million new people pouring
| in for 4 years, the collateral damage is bad and eveyone is
| feeling it now.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Which funny definition of illegal alien are you using
| that adds up to 30 million?
|
| I did some idle googling and neither "no legal status"
| nor "no lawful presence" amount to that many.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Probably remove status to people who had a legal status.
| Which they did already quite a bit in that
| administration.
|
| If legal people are suddenly illegal, that sure helps
| their rhetoric.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Yes, that occurred to me, but the full number of foreign-
| born residents is in the 50-60mill range. I assumed if
| that was the goal they would have gone with the larger
| number cause it looks scarier, but no. There must be some
| weird middle ground where they only want to denaturalize
| _some_ people, and I kinda want to know where they draw
| that line.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Hey, if it isn't "blood and soil" rhetoric. Very early 20th
| century. Back in vogue, I suppose.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Let's talk about those unfortunate migrants who are having
| their lives ruined. In West Oakland, much ado was just made
| about ICE attempting to pick someone up near an elementary
| school [0]. Some locals swarmed the cops to try to protect the
| poor man from being "kidnapped."
|
| Turns out ICE conducted a targeted immigration enforcement
| operation to arrest Gonzalo Ramirez Martez, whose rap sheet
| includes multiple arrests for DUI, domestic violence, driving
| on a suspended license, etc. I don't know of a developed nation
| that wouldn't deport a habitual drunk driver who beats women.
|
| In my county, every local ICE apprehension has been the result
| of targeted operations against criminals with substantial
| records, to include domestic violence, rape, aggravated
| assault, and meth trafficking for the cartels among others. No
| exceptions have been found by the local press, and it's not for
| lack of trying.
|
| Is my life better because these criminals are being deported?
| Yes. So long as one "side" pretends it's all innocents being
| kidnapped, the rest of us will ignore you, because it's
| obviously and demonstrably not the case. I don't want woman-
| beating violent felons in my immediate location, and if an
| American were doing the same thing in another country they
| would absolutely deserve to be sent home in handcuffs.
|
| Do I have trepidation about the methods being used? Sure, it's
| why I'm in this thread. But let's not pretend there's no
| benefit to what's going on, because it seems pretty clear to
| this observer that removing repeat offenders is a good thing.
|
| [0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/ice-hoover-
| eleme...
| saubeidl wrote:
| The Gestapo, too, got the occasional actual criminal. It
| still wasn't a good organization.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45991257
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| In the last admin I used to think that "abolish ICE" was
| hysterical.
|
| I now believe we need to not only abolish ICE, but puts the
| politicians and officers on trial. CBP needs to be purged and
| rebuilt from the ground up.
| greenavocado wrote:
| Modern cars log their GPS coordinates about every 60 seconds and
| maintain weeks of records at minimum. Police regularly obtain
| search warrants to view weeks of GPS logs from your infotainment
| system.
| gosub100 wrote:
| just saw this [1] today where the police chief was using license
| plate readers to stalk and harass "multiple victims". This is why
| you don't collect the information in the first place. I am sure
| the lawyers are one step ahead, but I think Flock should pay
| these victims directly (in addition to the PD) for failing to
| stop the misuse of their technology.
|
| https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/braselton-police-chief-arre...
| pstuart wrote:
| It's germane to point out the War on Drugs(tm) is a war on the
| people and has never been about "keeping people safe". I know
| that a lot of people say that cannabis is ok but hard drugs
| should not be legal to keep people safe. Look at how well that's
| worked out, as well as how the people involved with those drugs
| are treated (users are treated like dangerous criminals rather
| than with substance abuse issues).
|
| This war along with the War on Terror(tm) give pretense to all of
| these abuses of power and need to be undone. The problems they
| profess to address can be addressed in much simpler, cheaper, and
| humane ways.
| billy99k wrote:
| Canada has been authoritarian for awhile, while trying to claim
| to be 'nice'. The protestors during Covid got de-banked, fired,
| and arrested.
|
| Democracies with Liberal leaders can quite literally get away
| with murder.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > Democracies with Liberal leaders can quite literally get away
| with murder.
|
| I mean, so can Saudi Arabia and Israel. It's less about being a
| democratic liberal, and more about having the right
| connections.
| arnonejoe wrote:
| You can sue the government for violating your 4th amendment
| rights.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Intentionally driving suspiciously to get illegally detained
| sounds like an easy lawsuit.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Remind me, why do we need license plates?
|
| If there's a reason for having them, why don't we require them
| for people? Let's make everyone walk with their id at the front
| and back. We're for public safety here, right?
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Does anyone know if ALPRs are being combined with Bluetooth/TPMS
| scanning to associate devices across vehicles or if TPMS is
| getting associated to vehicles (like if a stolen plate is put on
| another vehicle because the TPMS doesn't match)?
| scblock wrote:
| > "detaining those with suspicious travel patterns"
|
| Detaining those they _deem_, without oversight to have such.
| Padriac wrote:
| This is good news. Punish the wrongdoers so we can live in a
| peaceful safe society.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| What bugs me the most about all this surveillance is that crime
| clearance rates dont seem to be improving, I guess it just makes
| law enforcents job easier, they just click click click instead of
| actual shoe leathering.
|
| Murder clearance rates in the 50s was in the high ninety percent.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I drive back-country roads all the time to go hiking and camping.
| I guess that makes me an outlaw now. Great. /s
| cratermoon wrote:
| "Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over -- often for
| reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong
| window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view.
| They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no
| inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement's
| radar."
|
| So, standard driving while black (or brown, or Muslim, or
| whatever is demonized in $CURRENT_YEAR), but extended to new
| categories? I guess now that it's impinging on the comfortable
| it's news.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Anyone can be targeted, anyone can be pulled over, anyone can be
| detained, anyone can be labelled a terrorist, anyone can be
| deported to a black hole in el salvador. These are dark times.
| superkuh wrote:
| The border patrol should only be able to do this within the 100
| mile no constitution zone that extends from all foreign borders
| (including internal borders like the great lakes). If they do
| this in Minneapolis, Minnesota or Denver, Colorado it would be
| unconstitutional.
| hising wrote:
| It is so tragic to see where the US is going in real time from an
| outside observer. So much for "freedom".
| ddalex wrote:
| Land of the free.....
| whatsupdog wrote:
| > Once limited to policing the nation's boundaries, the Border
| Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the
| country's interior
|
| Well, that's what happens when you blur the line called the
| border.
| jdprgm wrote:
| It feels like the past 25 years has been a continuous slowly
| constricting circle just chipping away at privacy and freedom and
| it almost never goes in the other direction or even just reverts
| a policy back to baseline. People largely don't seem to care
| though and I don't think there are any politicians seriously
| fighting against it and prioritizing as a primary policy.
| greedo wrote:
| Technology is going to change a lot of things...
|
| Imagine a drone swarm that follows you wherever you go. Tracking
| and photographing every step you take in public. When you go into
| a building, a ground drone follows you in, notes where you've
| gone, and when you leave, hands you off to the flying swarm.
| Creating a trail of all your activities. Legally there may not be
| anything you can do to stop it.
|
| The expectation that you have no privacy in public is what fuels
| this.
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