Big Brother Is Here!!

[+ Gar1eth]

Opinion | What You Need to Know About Police Surveillance - The New York Times

WWW.NYTIMES.COM

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New tools allow law enforcement agencies to track us at an unimaginable scale.

 

[jeezifonly]

Someone once said "never do anything you wouldn't want depicted and described on the front page of the New York Times" 

I guess we simply expand that with "or in a federal indictment"

 

[+ sync]

Present day technology appears to be channeling the idiom of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

[+ friendofsheila]

On 9/20/2025 at 10:08 PM, jeezifonly said:

Someone once said "never do anything you wouldn't want depicted and described on the front page of the New York Times" 

I guess we simply expand that with "or in a federal indictment"

 

and maybe never email anything that you would not want someone tot forward to everyone on their email list accccidentally.

[+ PhileasFogg]

I have a friend who visited a very large city of 18 million few of us would have ever heard of.  Cameras everywhere!  No crime, no speeding, etc.  Apparently, when crimes occur, time to apprehension is measured in minutes/hours rather than days/weeks.

I have mixed emotions because I see the benefit, but I also know such coverage offers opportunity for abuse. 

Edited Friday at 11:36 AM by PhileasFogg

[mike carey]

1 hour ago, PhileasFogg said:

I have a friend who visited a very large city of 18 million few of us would have ever heard of.  Cameras everywhere!  No crime, no speeding, etc.  Apparently, when crimes occur, time to apprehension is measured in minutes/hours rather than days/weeks.

I have mixed emotions because I see the benefit, but I also know such coverage offers opportunity for abuse. 

Somewhere like Chengdu?

[+ PhileasFogg]

6 hours ago, mike carey said:

Somewhere like Chengdu?

ShenZhen

[DMonDude]

On 9/26/2025 at 4:35 AM, PhileasFogg said:

I have a friend who visited a very large city of 18 million few of us would have ever heard of.  Cameras everywhere!  No crime, no speeding, etc.  Apparently, when crimes occur, time to apprehension is measured in minutes/hours rather than days/weeks.

I have mixed emotions because I see the benefit, but I also know such coverage offers opportunity for abuse. 

That really is the problem with stuff like this, like how governments are wanting to have tech companies make back doors into encryption for them that they say is so they can stop crimes but obviously they wouldn't stop there (especially when what is considered "crime" can change drastically depending on who's in charge...). It always is presented first with the possible benefit, usually the guise of reducing crime. But it never ever comes without the abuses and overreaches. The former is always used to sneak in the latter and people have to decide how much privacy/rights violations of themselves or others they think they're ok putting up with in exchange for the illusion of being crime free.

Edited 10 hours ago by DMonDude

[CuriousByNature]

On 9/26/2025 at 4:35 AM, PhileasFogg said:

I have a friend who visited a very large city of 18 million few of us would have ever heard of.  

20 hours ago, PhileasFogg said:

ShenZhen

Most of us Canadians know where Shenzhen is.  We grew up in schools with maps that included other countries besides our own    LOL

 

[Luv2play]

1 hour ago, CuriousByNature said:

Most of us Canadians know where Shenzhen is.  We grew up in schools with maps that included other countries besides our own    LOL

 

When I was in school, Beijing was Pekin. 

[wsc]

The first time I was planning a drive from Virginia to a family Thanksgiving in central Ohio, the obvious choice was to use the Pennsylvania Turnpike. There were three reasons, however, that made me not want to. First, it was a toll road, and second -in spite of the toll income- it was badly maintained with almost as many potholes as the moon had craters.

The third reason were the reports I'd heard that when you exit the turnpike and stop to pay your toll, the machine will do a time & distance check and if your time indicated you exceeded the speed limit, you got a ticket on the spot, no questions asked. And no human witness to your alleged malfeasance.

Turns out I didn't have to use the turnpike after all as I saw a sign heralding "new interstate west" and used I-68 through Maryland, then and ever since.

So, screw you, Big Brother!

Other examples of technology-based intrusions are red light cameras in-town and speed cameras on the interstates.

Quite some several years ago, I heard of a proposal in Britain that chips be installed in mile-markers on the sides of the roads that would communicate with a mandated receiver attached to your vehicle and which had your license and registration data. If your speed between two markers showed you having exceeded the speed limit, the local constabulary was notified electronically, and you would -eventually- receive a ticket.

Repugnant as some of this is to my civil liberties sensibilities, the pragmatist in me now accepts it as inevitable and the wannabe lawyer within sees it as likely legal under some application of a plain sight argument in a public space.

So, screw me, Big Brother.

[+ PhileasFogg]

4 hours ago, CuriousByNature said:

Most of us Canadians know where Shenzhen is.  We grew up in schools with maps that included other countries besides our own    LOL

 

When I was in school, Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing village of less than 300,000…yes, a little more than 0.0003 of China’s population at the time. So I’d ask that you not make any “Americans are arrogant” insinuations 😉

[CuriousByNature]

3 hours ago, PhileasFogg said:

When I was in school, Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing village of less than 300,000…yes, a little more than 0.0003 of China’s population at the time. So I’d ask that you not make any “Americans are arrogant” insinuations 😉

It was just a joke!  I know your maps also included Cuba and the USSR.  (That was another joke)

All of the Americans I know are neither arrogant, nor ignorant.  But it seems that some in this forum are quite easily offended.... 🤷‍♂️

Edited 1 hour ago by CuriousByNature

[+ PhileasFogg]

30 minutes ago, CuriousByNature said:

It was just a joke!  I know your maps also included Cuba and the USSR.  (That was another joke)

All of the Americans I know are neither arrogant, nor ignorant.  But it seems that some in this forum are quite easily offended.... 🤷‍♂️

😉.  It’s still the Gulf of Mexico to me