If you survey which judges cast which votes, you’ll find that it is conservative justices such as Scalia who cast their votes in favor of law enforcement when there are conflicts between individual right and the authority of the police.

The conservative justices are inclined to maintain a “law and order” approach when reviewing cases involving police authority. The conservatives are predisposed to supporting whatever it is that the police do, including cases during which it is acknowledged that the police overstepped their bounds. In those cases, Scalia et. al. are inclined to give the police the benefit of the doubt.

You can expect this trend to continue. Law-and-order conservatives will be inclined to vote in favor of surveillance, because of their support for the police. Let’s remember that it is law enforcement agencies that wanted these cameras in the first place, so you already know that’s with whom the conservative justices will place their sympathies.

As for whether I want to be constantly surveilled, the answer is a most emphatic NO. Likewise, I have enough faith in a large enough proportion of American citizens that they are intelligent enough to make reasoned decision (as long as they are NOT on illicit drugs) so that they too, should NOT be constantly surveilled by Big Brother, no matter who is in charge of the levers behind the curtain (i.e. in charge of the so-called republic).

First-”worthless” eliminates the possibility of “harmless”, IMO. Someone always ends up carrying them, they influence others (say the “young and impressionable”) to ruin/waste their lives. They raise kids in a mess that propagates lousy live for them.
The “no man is an island” thing.

Which brings us to the “Was this harm actual physical harm done to other people, or was it “they behave in ways I don’t agree with and I don’t like it”?”
This question seems to suppose that these are the only two answers. Which is manifestly incorect.
There are a vast swath of social, economic and relational damage in between the two extremes and over simplification will not remove the problems.

The people I am thinking of are people I care about and affect people I care about, I recognize their “personal sovereignty” and respect it.
That does not mean that their are no victims of their actions and that they do no harm.

I think you are asking the wrong questions if you want to find the truth.

My thoughts,

Bunter

Wait… who’s monitoring who?

I’ll avoid the temptation to turn this into the Trinity Broadcasting Network, but suffice it to say, the LA Sheriff’s Department is not exactly packed full of heathen leftist moral relativists.

This is not a matter of left vs. right. There are plenty of folks of all sorts of religious and political ilks who would like to dismantle our privacy rights. They all have their excuses for doing it. (Hell, some of them want cameras to protect their Christian friends from the heathen leftist moral relativists.)

Ironically, given the tendency of US Supreme Court rulings, you would likely need liberal courts to do away with these intrusions. An extremely strict conservative interpretation of the Fourth Amendment will not lead you to the conclusions that I have reached. Taking issue with the monitors is a function of the intent of the Founders, not what they specifically said. (Obviously, they didn’t plan for camera surveillance, but it doesn’t mean that they would have liked it.)

The fundamental issue is basic — do you want Uncle to watch you or not? I don’t, and I have my reasons. You don’t, but your reasons come from a different place. I don’t need to pray to anything or anyone to interpret the Constitution as I have, and a lot of other don’t, either.

Ask a Jewish survivor from Aushwitz about what they think, because it isn’t just Christians under threat. It’s all of us, really.

God bless.

One could say the same logic applies in regards to the second amendment and gun control. There is no way our founding fathers could have ever anticipated the incredible firepower of modern weapons just like nobody in the 60’s could have anticipated the power of today’s computers. BTW I don’t have a problem with you owning a gun as long as you are responsible with it. I only brought it up b/c of the comments in the King Ranch thread.

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage

Where are we now? We’re on the last line, that’s where. Everything else is just “commentary”.

Some of us still have spiritual faith, courage, and a desire for liberty. We’re mocked, laughed at, marginalized and stripped of our civil rights, if we don’t toe the PC line. Our leader, Jesus Christ, told us it would be so. We’re also liable to lose our livelihood if we speak out, and liable to lose our freedom (ironically, as many of you not amongst us also are) once this once great nation slips into bondage. As in, a police state. Yep, this is Amerika, but in some ways, for some of us, compared to what it once was, it may as well be Soviet Russia or
East Germany.

I’m part of a minority of a minority, since I just read today that 67% of Americans don’t believe there is any absolute right or wrong. What they do believe in is called moral relativism.

Interestingly, God’s nature abhors relativism, prefers absolutism. One little example: you can SAY “well I don’t believe that I’m going to fall off the cliff if I walk off the edge” but when you do, that first step is a loooong one.

The minority of a minority part comes in the fact that less than half of the 33% of Americans who actually do believe there is absolute right and wrong, actually also believe in God’s word. As in the parts that form the founding statutes and documents of the country we all still inhabit, if we be Americans in America.

So, in reality, true constitutional and libertarian, non-relativist Christians are but a small minority in this nation. But we are the only minority that it is “okay” to treat the way the blacks were treated until some 50 years ago.

Now, go back up to the top of my posting and read it again, and try to tell me we aren’t getting just what most of we Americans have “asked for” and yes, deserve.

Traffic law disobedience is merely a symptom of the overall issue I’m describing. And the knee-jerk police-state mentality of our “esteemed leaders” is merely what should be expected with the overall situation we find ourselves in now. As in, where are we on the list? Just coming back into bondage. Except, surprise, surprise, surprise. All of us get to be in bondage, even the very few elites who think they rule the roost. Because there is more than one kind of bondage.

The moral? vote in the people who won’t take away our every last bit of privacy, and vote out the ones that do. Although that system is a bit broken too..

Right now I think the laws we have are reasonable, with the exception of punishing potheads who could just grow their own stuff and not harm anything or anybody, and I’m sure the government would be bored as hell if they spent any appreciable amount of time monitoring my lame existence, but I’ve been to places where people still feel uncomfortable about speaking ill of the government in public. History isn’t full of examples of extremely powerful governments using that power for the good of their people.

An argument could be made that, in the founders’ time, almost everyone lived in small towns and knew one another. Today’s cameras, monitoring, and networking just mimic that ’small town’ network.

Also, don’t discount the possible backlash once it is shown (via FOIA video releases) that enforcement is selective for certain people or times. Or enforcement results in a sizable chunk of the populace deemed ‘criminal’.

I agree with you that there’s potential danger here, but not to your degree.

The Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The intent of the Fourth Amendment is to ensure that the government does not subject you to threats of criminal prosecution unless it has genuine cause to do so. A large part of that protection is that they cannot investigate you just for the hell of it. If they are going to even start compiling evidence against you, they need to have a reason to start. It is not the government’s place to just randomly pick you out of a hat and start looking for reasons to pursue you.

The mass electronics spit in the face of that intent. They use the monitoring to actively look for reasons to prosecute you and snare you into the court system.

It’s akin to laws against wiretapping — the state is supposed to have a damn good reason to monitor your phone chatter, they aren’t supposed to be able to start snooping just for fun, as implied in the Fourth Amendment. They certainly aren’t supposed to do it randomly and to everyone.

Digital cameras married to other technologies provide access to a degree of premature snooping that is unprecedented and well out of line with the intent of the Founders. It’s a very slippery slope, it won’t take much to slide headlong down this one.

You may be right about there being no reduction in crime rates. However, will there be an increase in crime solving? Like, will more criminals get caught for their actions?

Somebody should do a study on this: one city have no surveillance and and another rely on surveillance. Then they should compare crime rates and capture rates. I pretty much am against “big brother” but this would still be an interesting study.

Good point. Given the tendency of the law to focus mostly on speed, and given that most people speed several times per day, I have a hard time trusting those in authority will put the data to good use.

Worse is the potential for abuse – I have my doubts about black-box data security. If use of black-box data becomes widespread, there will be strong incentive$$$ to hack the data.

Actually, the case could be made that since it’s YOUR black box, YOU have every right to modify data in real time.

A scenario: A jury full of Oprah watching addicts hands down a $10 million damage award against a Ferrari driver whose black box pegged him at 5MPH over the limit. Ferrari driver claims he was cut off by the driver of the 12 year old minivan when it pulled out of the mall lot.

If a story like that ever hits the media, they’ll be a VC stampeed to develop a unit to wipe/modify black boxes. The market always adapts.

Yeah, now that I think about it, I’m kind of in the same boat as you as far as the black market goes. The only real examples I can think of are like fake fashion accessories like purses and sunglasses. I guess the appeal for those is that the fake stuff is cheaper than the real thing (like remakes of Gucci handbags or something). So maybe a black market for drugs would provide cheaper drugs, which I’m sure many poor addicts would love.

And I think a black drug market in a society that has legalized drugs would be similar to the drug dealing we have now, but maybe on a smaller scale. Regardless, I think our government has a good stance on drugs and that we shouldn’t give up on the “war on drugs”.

if drugs were legalized everywhere (all countries), i bet the high black market prices would fall across the world.

as for black markets for all industries–i wonder why that is. is it because they’re dealing in illegal things (like suitcase bombs), or are they just trying to avoid taxes? off the top of my head, the only black markets i can think of are for illegal things. at this point i am very weakly speculating, but wouldn’t that indicate that when there is no government involvement making things illegal or taxable, there is no black market trade? i don’t really know.

if you can think of any examples, let me know–it’s friday night and i think my brain is about empty. i won’t be able to think for myself much longer :)

It’s possible the drug violence in your area would be reduced if drugs were illegal but would it really be eliminated? There’s a “black” market to almost all industries. Why would it be any different for drugs? Besides that, beyond your area, or our country, would it be eliminated? Drugs are legal in all other countries that they pass through to get here.

I hear you as far as drug violence in the States is concerned but it’s a much broader issue. Drugs would still be able to have negative effects on family and friends as those who are addicted to drugs, whether it be pot or heroine, will go to many lengths to appease their addiction.

Hell No!

NICKNICK-”the soft ones (say, pot) won’t cause anyone any trouble”

I’ve known way to many pot-heads to buy this.
They hurt themselves and everyone around them.

Bunter

Really? My experience is the opposite of that. All the potheads i’ve ever known have been harmless. often worthless, but always harmless. they usually just holed themselves up with video games and snacks. not the way i choose to live, but whatevs.

B-Rad :
April 4th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
“Even if you only smoke pot in the privacy of your own home and you have no friends or family, your use of pot still has consequences on other people, primarily those who are in the business of drug dealing…”

That’s kinda what i was getting at. If they were legal, there wouldn’t be any money in drug-dealing. the violence would then stop. how much killing is there over cigarettes and beer? pretty much zilch. during prohibition? WAY different story.

i don’t use the junk myself, but i want it legalized so the drug violence in my area will stop so i don’t have to be afraid to go out at night.