Well, I can't argue with you there.

But then again, they need all those cameras to protect themselves from CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN

(reference to sci-fi/horror novel)

It is only difficult to do it the other way around. That is, if you have a user ID it is hard to figure out which person it applies to.

But finding out the user ID of a person whose travel schedule you know is ridiculously easy. If you know four facts - 1) the person uses the bike program, 2) where they work, 3) where they live, and 4) what time they have to be in work, then you can easily figure out their userID

Apparently England is fine letting everyone know where you have been.

Look at it from the perspective of a stalker.

Note, that stalker may be a wife, ex-wife, husband, ex-husband, etc.

The stalker can pretty easily find out where you live and work, if they don't already know. Then easily use this website to get all of your other visits.

Your ex-husband, who you left because he hit you one time, can now track you down. Oh, and he now knows the rough location of where you new boyfriend lives.

Clear violation of privacy to me.

Oh. That I can explain, it is quite obvious why it would help the situation. There are three possible situations:

Situation 1) No law requiring people to buy healthcare, no law blocking insurance companies from denying you healthcare for pre-existing situations. They can even deny you healthcare for brain cancer because you have diabetes. (or worse, accept you, then deny coverage because you failed to disclose you had diabetes). People that get screwed: a) anyone that is not 100% healthy and also b) anyone that risks going without insurance but ends up needing it.

Situations 2) Law requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions, but no law requiring people to buy insurance. People that get screwed: Insurance companies, as people wait till after they get sick to buy insurance. Then after insurance companies all go bankrupt, everyone gets screwed.

Situation 3) Law requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions and also a law requiring people to buy insurance. People that get screwed: Anyone that wanted to risk going without good insurance and would have been lucky enough not to need it.

The first situation was what we used to have. The second situation is what we tried to avoid. The third situation is what we have now. Please note it only screw up assholes that tried to take ridiculous gambles and happened to be lucky enough to win the gamble.

We had a choice - screw over the sick, screw over insurance companies (which would have eventually led to a truly government controlled healthcare), or require everyone to buy insurance. We wisely made the best possible decision.

P.S.I am employed and have good healthcare - which I desperately need because I got sick (nasty virus) in college and my kidneys have slowly been dying over the past 20 years, despite the fact that I don't drink, etc. I have maybe 5 more years till I need a transplant and am clearly one of the people that will very much benefit from Obamacare.

Those numbers are also limited - it doesn't show how many people: 1) Bought off the exchange - but bought policies enhanced by the AHCA law. 2) Got Medicaid now but could not have gotten it before (of course, that only applies to GOP states that did not decided to screw over their poor... to save a tiny amount of money - less than 10% of the cost) 3) Were put on/stayed on their parents plans because of the AHCA law that let them stay on.

1) Because Health insurance is not there to pay for things like health checkups, it is there to pay for things like breaking every bone in your body, cancer, heart bypass, etc.

2) If your doctor charges you $40, but you have a $50 copay if you use insurance, it is because your doctor is illegally charging you less money than the insurance company. He may be stealing from them, or giving you a break, but he is breaking the law.

3) If you get in a car accident your car insurance will NOT pay for your medical - it pays the guy you hit medical, not yours. (Unless you paid extra for worthless insurance).

4)If you get injured at work, the company may pay - or it may screw you over. Been known to happen.

5) If you get injured at a home, most people do NOT have the kind of insurance that pays for medical bills. I personally have insurance that will pay you $10,000, that's it. Anything else, you have to go to court to sue me, and I would have to sell my home to pay you off. Good luck with that lawsuit by the way, your lawyer would get 1/3 of whatever I could pay.

The only point I see is someone that radically overestimates how much insurance everyone ELSE has while complaining about how much he personally is being told to buy.

If you are unemployed then you can get Medicaid - unless the State congress has decided to refuse to grant it to you.

But don't go blaming the Affordable Health Care Act for the problems you have getting Medicaid.

If you are employed, the AHCA simply prevented a bunch of liars from selling you expensive wallpaper and pretending it was healthcare.

Your plan was cancelled not because the rates went up, but because the Blue Cross plan in Alabama was NOT the equivalent of a gold plan.

Whoever told you that it was the equivlenet of 'gold' lied to you outright.

Specifically, the old Blue Cross plan did not meet the minimum requirements for a Bronze plan. Your plan sucked. The only reason they tricked you into buying it was because you were not an insurance agent and did not know the many things it did not cover

You my good sir had an opinion to start with and ignored all facts that disproved your opinion.

Fact 1) 7.1 million were the number that signed up using exchange. NOT all the people that got insurance, just the number that signed up.

Fact 2) It did not include the people that were told they were approved for Medicaid.

Fact 3) It did not include the people that picked their own insurance not on the exchanges.

Fact 4)It did not included the young people now signed up on their parents plans.

You need to compare apples to apples. That is, 60 million without insurance before hand vs ??? million without insurance after hand. Trying to do 7.1/60 just demonstrates your complete inability to do honest math.

You are mistaken about how cockpit voice recorders work. They record much more than "the last two minutes of talk before a crash". They typically record two hours on a continuous loop, and in the wake of the MH370 event that will probably be increased to eight hours or more.

Cooling generally is not an issue on ships. Nuclear reactors need a better cooling system than the capacitors do.

>It shouldn't be hard to come up with *something* convenient.

It isn't hard, it's actually easy. These are all solved problems. The issue is that the powers that be don't want the problem to be solved, because it benefits them.

I'm leery of reducing a job as important as police officer to call-center working conditions.

That's a straw man argument. Nobody has recommended that we "reduce police officer(s) to call-center working conditions". Recording their on-duty interactions is as appropriate for police officers as it is for pilots. When something goes wrong and innocent people die, the public deserves to know why so that lessons can be learned. That's why we have cockpit voice recorders, and that's why we should have video and audio recording of all police interaction with the public.

If they aren't doing anything wrong, they have nothing to hide, right...?

Let me get this straight. You think we should build a railgun loop so powerful it can fling objects into orbit.

Such a thing has been called a space fountain. Google it.

But after building this incredible device designed to deliver small cargo to outer space, you want to use it as a weapon, as opposed to sending men, robots and other supplies to space?

Man, you need to fix your priorities.

P.S. Building said space fountain requires more money than the Manhattan Project and the Space Race combined - and is untested.

We probably will do that - but only after we finish putting rail guns on all of our naval ships.

As I read these responses, I'm forced to wonder: would any of the posters tolerate having every spoken word recorded by The Boss throughout their shift? Even one of you?

That's the case for a great number of ordinary workers, and especially for those whose jobs entail great responsibilities, particularly the safeguarding of human life.

Pilots' every spoken word are recorded by "the boss" during flight. Call center employees interactions with customers are often times recorded by "the boss", heavily scrutinized, and used to evaluate the employee's performance. US government employees with high clearances surrender their privacy almost entirely, and fully expect that their communications are monitored.

The job police do is vital to the functioning of society, but it carries at least as much potential for abuse than any of these others I just mentioned. A police officer who does not perform his job appropriately puts the public at an extreme level of risk. It is appropriate that, given this extreme degree of power, we monitor, check, and balance their behavior through a commensurately extreme degree of supervision.