I too hate the surveillance, but the good guys need tech at least equivalent to the bad guys to stand any chance of catching the bad guys. The bad buys will use whatever tech they can to get away, regardless of the rules.

How about this: The cops can have and use the tech to track people, but if it is shown to be unjustified (ie: privacy invasion does not prove guilt) that person can sue for a large amount, enough to discourage misuse. "Fruit of the poisonous tree" evidence would be allowed (if it proves the crime), but would be very costly to cops if it does not prove the crime.

The catch: the penalties would have to be enforced, and at present we don't even enforce the penalties for the crimes that are caught, so I don't know of a way to actually apply this. I'm open to suggestions.

It does help fish out the incompetent ones, the others are careful and good enough not to be caught.

Minor correction: signatories to the Budapest Memorandum were Ukraine, US, UK, and Russia... France and China gave individual assurances in separate documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Trump had two assassination attempts (July 13, 2024 – Butler, Pennsylvania rally and September 15, 2024 – West Palm Beach, Florida), they just happened to miss. Whether he deserved it or not is a matter of your viewpoint, but I suspect the threats and negative feelings increased only because of the times, nothing to do with the Meta speech rules. There are other channels to express viewpoints, and I suspect they're also increasingly against current politicians.

Trump is a businessman, that's how he runs his businesses. He's experienced, he declared bankruptcy six times, and he plans to do the same with the American economy (hey, it worked six times already, why not?).

Think how dumb the government agencies are. Now think about how you voted in the government and put them there.

Already solved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

.. All your base are belong to us! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

... is that they could have done this long ago, but it never even crossed their minds until Trump started his 'war of choice' and they were forced to consider their options. He agitated them enough to cause trouble, so they did. America's weaponry is large enough to destroy Iran, but it's too large to control Iran and still keep the parts America wants.

Can't see how that would ever get passed, part of that is accountability (the ability to sue Federal agents for things like this). All the ICE agents would have to remove their face masks when kidnapping or shooting citizens, foreign or American, and admit to their screw ups, and how they spy on everyone to try to find a few criminals (or just to meet their quota of captures).

Government agencies are already buying publicly-available databases of this kind of thing, not collecting it themselves (https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/26/0541202/privacy-advocate-accuses-us-government-of-investing-in-ai-powered-mass-surveillance). Get in on the ground floor: Start a company to track cell phone data, sell it to the government as they want it, everyone's happy .... Oh, wait, that's exactly what happened here except that the government agency didn't pay for it this time.

Mark clones himself with AI (https://meta.slashdot.org/story/26/04/13/1642228/mark-zuckerberg-is-reportedly-building-an-ai-clone-to-replace-him-in-meetings) ... then increases complexity with real people (https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/04/21/1849217/meta-to-start-capturing-employee-mouse-movements-keystrokes-for-ai-training-data) ... then reduce staff 10% by replacing with AI capturings? Once the first batch are suitably digitized, then incrementally the rest will be. No staff costs, no management meetings, all Mark will have to do is sit back and receive money. He may actually have a plan here.

Of course, I'd trust this government to honour the decision of the courts and pay back what they've unfairly taken. There are SO MANY things I trust them on....

First step is to enhance your memories. Next step is to supplement your memories (plug-in modules like the Matrix, so you "remember" how to fly a helicopter). The step after that is to apply memories and thoughts not your own, so someone else can take over your body ... Might be good for backup/restore at some point, but I can see the possibilities for misuse too.

A little off-topic, Myamoto Musashi, the sword-saint of Japan (the greatest swordsman of his time, late 1500s) had 21 tenets for a good life. Number 19 is: "Honor Buddha and the Gods, but don't count on them for help"