Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re: Oh Noes! (Score 1) 56

What use is the constitution then if the government just has to hire a private entity to do the things the constitution blocks?

Good point. It's something that really should be addressed. But the Constitution was designed as a limit solely on the government's powers, and it's up to the government as described in the Constitution to write laws that restrict what private entities can do, within the bounds of their enforcement powers as provided by the Constitution.

This isn't a new problem. After Snowden, the US realized they could pretty much just outsource the NSA's spying. And they have.

And the other thing is: none of this is really relevant. There's nothing unconstitutional about sitting in a public space and recording the license plate of every car that passes. There's nothing unconstitutional about building a network of people doing that and storing it in a giant database. It was just infeasible to have a bunch of people doing that. Now it can be automated.

There's nothing unconstitutional about compiling data about people that people agree to hand over as part of the license agreement for using a thing. Once that information is owned by a private entity, there's nothing unconstitutional about the government buying it from that private entity. It's just the government receiving data that was either generated in a public setting or that was willing given in a private setting. (At least, legally. I doubt most people realize how much data on their lives companies collect, and I doubt most people realize they agreed to hand it over.)

Maybe handing over data collected in this fashion should be against the law. Maybe there should be privacy laws preventing it from being gathered in the first place. But there aren't, and neither party is interested in changing that. Which leaves us with the reality that nothing Flock was doing is illegal, and that the replacement systems localities are using aren't illegal either.

Comment Re:Oh Noes! (Score 1, Insightful) 56

Which part of the Constitution are they allegedly violating?

I really wish more people understood this. The Constitution only protects you from the government. It does nothing to protect you from private companies collecting your information, and do they ever. As electronics get more advanced, the amount of information private companies are collecting is ever increasing. TVs listen in on every conversation. VR headsets map out your house. And cameras installed on street lights record every vehicle they see.

Which brings me to the second very important point about Flock cameras people forget: pretty much every town that is canceling contracts with Flock isn't getting rid of license plate scanning cameras. They're just replacing them with cameras from other companies that do the same thing. Companies that people haven't heard of and that therefore haven't raised the same complaints.

Comment Re: Embrace and Extend. (Score 1) 91

Yet the whole unison game engine uses it.

Wow, a whole game engine?

A lot more than that uses C#, but C# didn't take over, which of course is what Microsoft wanted. But it was never going to happen for many many reasons. That's why Microsoft has to use the EEE strategy, which at least is somewhat successful for them. Their ability to use it is waning as they become less relevant, but they remain hugely influential due to their massive installed base so they can still fuck things up pretty good and will likely be able to for decades yet.

Comment Re: Are we in a "post-information age" now? (Score 1, Flamebait) 77

If you think you can avoid politics when discussing anything important, you are delusional.

Everything important has political relevance.

It's a well-known fact that Reagan first shit up education in California and then went on to do it nationally. It's a less well-known fact, but still a fact, that it was done for the purpose of getting rapeublicans (which hilariously autocorrected to "trollbags") elected by avoiding an "educated proletariat" (those are the search terms that will get you more citations than you can eat.)

You can't avoid politics when talking about how shit education is in America because it is for fundamentally political reasons.

Comment Re: Cui Bono (Score 1) 77

I live in Humboldt which is chock-full of maggots. It's sad. I've seen more Confederate flags here than I did in Texas, even year on year. Plus a shitload of "dead pedophiles don't reoffend" stickers on obvious rapeublicans' vehicles, fucking weirdo hypocrites.

But California is still majority blue, so it's not all that relevant.

What I think is more interesting is states like TX where they are only whatever color because of bullshit maps.

Slashdot Top Deals

Nothing makes a person more productive than the last minute.

Working...