From: Ross A. Finlayson (raf@tiki-lounge.com)
Date: Thu May 04 2000 - 14:06:42 MDT
One problem here is that it is hard to determine who to target as perpetrator of
these kinds of erosions of freedom.
For example, in this red-light camera situation, it is obvious that Lockheed
Martin, privately making money off some kind of law enforcement, is somewhat to
blame for advancing this violation not only of privacy but of the Consitution
which states quite bluntly that citizens are innocent by default.
Yet it is too simple to assign blame to them when Anthony Williams has succumbed
to the the idea there were ever any red-light runners in the district. There
simply weren't that many, ever. Sure, it used to have the highest murder rate
in the country (because of drug prohibition), but people are generally pretty
good about red lights.
Perhaps Williams thought that this setup would be as good for the city as its
parking meters, which is one of the largest sources of income for the district,
which means there are very many meter-readers. Perhaps moreso L-M payola.
Overridingly, this is some kind of pilot program to gauge how far the public can
be shafted by those who would shaft. I say to make it quite obvious that those
would-be shafters should go about shafting themselves and leave the rest of us
alone.
Anyways, I say this before, it seems quite obvious, any automated
law-enforcement like a red-light runner camera is a violation of every citizen
who passes through that intersection's right to presupposed innocence under the
Constitution.
Also, the fact that this is privatized and thus provides a financial incentive
to the contractor for each ticket issued is an extremely bad precedent as the
profit could be seen as a reason to further overstep the contractor's bounds.
So, it is absolutely certain that the contractor or other private provider
should be required not to be paid more for each infraction reigstered, that is
to say, the profit incentive to violate any driver's Consitutional rights should
be removed. That is completely simple, the city must arrange to pay one fee for
operation and all transactions, until such time as it is proven unconstitutional
and the whole thing scrapped.
Well, along these lines, drug prohibition is bad for our country on the whole,
and should be abolished. Relegalization and clemency for non-violent drug users
would be a step in the right direction.
Who's violating your rights today? It's hard to tell exactly who, and also it's
not so obvious to each of us that each of the rest of us has also had their
rights violated. So, along those lines, everyone who feels that Constitutional
rights are good things should be against this privatized program and find ways
to unite generally for freedom.
Mr. Brown, you state that you think that it is not easy to require the
government to not monitor its citizens. Well, its bad enough now and that is
why we need proactive measures and law to protect the citizenry's explicit right
to presupposed innocence. It's in some ways as simple as suing the government
to prevent them from doing so.
It's pretty bad that we have one elected official and his appointed thug "doing
a hold-up of the law."
Just because a law is on the books, it doesn't mean that is a) right, b) moral,
c) ethical, and/or d) Constitutional (ethical, mostly right). Many are. Let's
take a good look at the books.
Ross F.
Billy Brown wrote:
> Ruthanna R Gordon wrote:
> > And freedom is slavery.
> >
> > Does anyone know if there is any legislation being talked about to
> > prevent these cameras from being used for other than their claimed purpose
> > of catching red light runners? Whether or no, as has been previously
> > pointed out, people are being made, little by little, used to
> > being watched. I personally don't care if the power behind the camera is
> > government or corporate, I'm against it.
> >
> > When I became part of the 'cryonics crowd,' I made a deal with myself that
> > I wouldn't become frightened enough of death to live a longer life less
> > worth living. That means I'm still willing to sacrifice my life for
> > others if I see the need, and that I'm very cautious about sacrificing
> > freedom for the sake of security.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't see any way to avoid public surveillance in the long
> run. We can stage a holding action to slow down government efforts for a
> while, and I definitely think this is worth doing. However, eventually
> (10-15 years) wearable computers with audiovisual recording capability are
> going to become so commonplace that you'll have to assume anything you do in
> public is being picked up on someone's camera. At that point it isn't going
> to be practical to keep government from doing the same thing.
>
> I do, however, think that we can draw a solid boundary between surveillance
> of public and private spaces. Setting up cameras inside someone's home is
> far more expensive, less reliable, and more intrusive than putting cameras
> on street lights. It also requires a much greater degree of consent -
> stopping the government from putting cameras on their own property is much
> harder than stopping them from putting cameras on yours. Fortunately, there
> isn't much prospect of the government ever getting that level of consent
> (after all, they would have to put cameras in your bedroom, and almost no
> one will go along with that).
>
> Billy Brown
> bbrown@transcient.com
> http://www.transcient.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:28:24 MST