Portland Gestapo Ask Homeowners, Businesses To Register Surveillance Cameras

"Savageduck" wrote
|
| For you to deny those things would be immature,
|
| Deny what things?

Simply that not every cop is a saint. That's all.
Corruption happens. Just as if you said you were
cheated by a contractor I wouldn't simply assume
it was your own fault because I'm a contractor.
That's what's immature.

But actually that's not so
much the issue. Law enforcement usually mean
well, but the technology is getting ahead of us.
Why did the NSA have AT&T split their Asian
phone line coming into the West Coast in order
to get their own copy of every single phone call?
Because they could. Not nasty people.
Beancounters having a field day.

This started with whether there's a down side
to everyone putting up cameras and sharing the
footage.

You may not see so much of surveillance society,
not living near a big city. A couple of weeks ago
I was watching the local TV news. (I know. That's
my own fault. They had cellphone footage of a
middle-age, hispanic laborer on the subway, seemingly
fondling himself. It was hard to tell. Not much footage.
It didn't look lewd. Was he just scratching? Adjusting
things for better comfort? Was he a creep harassing
innocent college girls? Or were spoiled Harvard
princesses simply offended at having to sit across
from a dirty, ill-bred immigrant?

We have no idea what the story was. Neither did the
news station. But the girls sent in video and the station
got a story out of it. They cooked up their own
homemade APB: "Call NewsCenter 5 if you know anything
about this man!" Everyone's walking around with potential
surveillance now and it's a very cheap, easy way for
news programs to cook up content. Is that kind of
funhouse mirror peer pressure the sort of society we want
to live in? You have a disagreement at the supermarket
and suddenly SD the raging maniac is this week's viral
video.

This has also become a problem for cops. If you think
of surveillance as only helping law enforcement that
would be another naive assumption. A cop slams a
teenager to the ground. 3 seconds of grainy footage.
We're getting that almost daily now. What
happened? No one knows, but the cop is on leave,
the teenager's family is suing, there's a protest scheduled
for tomorrow, and there's a national debate about
police brutality. Who needs justice when we have
titillating video?

"Tony Cooper" wrote

| How was it a "scam"? If the speed limit was posted, and you were
| exceeding the posted limit, you were not scammed.
|

I seem to have hit a sore spot with you.
But read your own next paragraph. You just
explained it as well as I can.

| Florida. Small towns that depended on traffic fines did things like
| dropping the limit from 65 mph to 30 mph without any advance signage
| and around a bend in the highway. A motorist unfamiliar with the
| situation would be in the 30 mph area before he knew it, and the local
| cop would be sitting right on the line.

| He started
| asking all sorts of questions, like where was I going?
| Who did I work for? I finally said none of his questions
| had anything to do with my infraction.
|
| Most probably, he called in your information and was killing time
| waiting for information back on you. |

No. That's not what it was. But I can see
you've already made up your own version of
this story that you like better than mine.

| If you are getting stopped by the police time and time again, you've
| met the problem, and it is you.
|
How have you managed to paint me as a threat
to society from one speeding ticket episode? You're
showing your age there, gramps.

That stop was about 5 years ago.
About 5 years before that I had another ticket. Both
were for 30 mph limits on restricted access, 4 lane
roads with center dividers, where the average speed
is 40-55 mph.

"nospam" wrote

| Do you suppose the friendly officer might give you a break
| at that next speed trap scam?
|
| learn how to find and avoid them.

Actually I don't run into them very often.
But once every 6 years is enough to lose
the $120/year safe driving credit on my
insurance bill indefinitely.
I sometimes wonder whether the cops are
not in cahoots with the car insurance companies.
They seem to be good at getting me every
6 years.

In article , Tony Cooper
wrote:

I don't have much sympathy for people who get caught breaking a law
and then complain the law is unfair. You've said below the speed
limit is posted. You knew what it was. You chose to exceed it.
Just because you didn't see the cop doesn't make it a trap.

rosa parks knew what the law was.



That stop was about 5 years ago.
About 5 years before that I had another ticket. Both
were for 30 mph limits on restricted access, 4 lane
roads with center dividers, where the average speed
is 40-55 mph.

What is the "speed trap" aspect? There's no trap involved if the cop
is simply timing motorists and writing tickets to those who exceed the
limit.

it's a speed trap according to the california vehicle code.

If the speed limit is 30, and the other motorists are going 40-55,
that doesn't allow you to go 40-55.

when you have a law that 99% of people break, the law itself is bad.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:


| Do you suppose the friendly officer might give you a break
| at that next speed trap scam?
|
| learn how to find and avoid them.

Actually I don't run into them very often.
But once every 6 years is enough to lose
the $120/year safe driving credit on my
insurance bill indefinitely.

once is all it takes.

I sometimes wonder whether the cops are
not in cahoots with the car insurance companies.
They seem to be good at getting me every
6 years.

no need to wonder, because that's *exactly* what happens.

many (if not most) insurance companies donate radar/lidar guns to
police departments so that they can write more tickets.

geico is well known for doing that, and actually contributed to the
development of the lidar gun itself, with the ability to buy the lidar
guns for manufacturing costs. rather profitable 'investment'.

geico is also well known for unlawfully canceling insurance policies if
they find out the policy holder owns and/or uses a radar detector,
which is *not* illegal.

"Tony Cooper" wrote

| Why would you write: "Everyone knows the only way to get along with
| such cops is to grovel. They need to be boss. It's happened
| to me time and again." if you have had only two contacts with police
| in 10 years?
|
| Either only two contacts is a lie or the part about "time and again"
| is a misrepresentation to make your story better and a slur against
| policemen you've not had contact with.
|

I was never talking about cops. I was talking
about the risks of mass surveillance. One risk
is the psychology of the sadistic, petty tyrant;
a type often attracted to positions of authority.
That's where the cops come in. Law enforcement
is people. No better and no worse. They're not
angels who took birth on Earth to save your front
lawn from hoodlums.

You took my point and twisted it into the lies of
a reckless, scofflaw, cop-hater. You decided to
indulge yourself in an elderly good guys vs bad
guys fantasy, cooking up your version of my story
without ever really reading what I'd written. I
imagine that right about now you're fantasizing
about Charlton Heston, or maybe Walker, Texas
Ranger, taking me out in order to save the fabric
of modern society. So I guess I should let you
get back to your movie.

"nospam" wrote

| There's a street near my house that used to be
| posted 25 mph on one side of the street and 35 mph
| in the other direction, at the same spot!
|
| without seeing photos of the street, that doesn't mean much of anything.
|

True. They eventually switched it back. They also
switched some 25mph signs back to 30mph. Our town
had got a reputation as one of the two worst in
the state for speed trap scams. I like to think that
shamed people in charge and they cleaned up their
act. But I really don't know. Maybe it all just had
to do with city tax income.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

"Tony Cooper" wrote
| Why would you write: "Everyone knows the only way to get along with
| such cops is to grovel. They need to be boss. It's happened
| to me time and again." if you have had only two contacts with police
| in 10 years?
|
| Either only two contacts is a lie or the part about "time and again"
| is a misrepresentation to make your story better and a slur against
| policemen you've not had contact with.

I was never talking about cops. I was talking
about the risks of mass surveillance. One risk
is the psychology of the sadistic, petty tyrant;
a type often attracted to positions of authority.
That's where the cops come in. Law enforcement
is people. No better and no worse. They're not
angels who took birth on Earth to save your front
lawn from hoodlums.

You took my point and twisted it into the lies of
a reckless, scofflaw, cop-hater. You decided to
indulge yourself in an elderly good guys vs bad
guys fantasy, cooking up your version of my story
without ever really reading what I'd written. I
imagine that right about now you're fantasizing
about Charlton Heston, or maybe Walker, Texas
Ranger, taking me out in order to save the fabric
of modern society. So I guess I should let you
get back to your movie.

tony twists everything he reads, solely to argue.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:


| There's a street near my house that used to be
| posted 25 mph on one side of the street and 35 mph
| in the other direction, at the same spot!
|
| without seeing photos of the street, that doesn't mean much of anything.

True. They eventually switched it back. They also
switched some 25mph signs back to 30mph.

and everyone still drives 40...

Our town
had got a reputation as one of the two worst in
the state for speed trap scams. I like to think that
shamed people in charge and they cleaned up their
act. But I really don't know. Maybe it all just had
to do with city tax income.

speed enforcement is all about income.

"nospam" wrote

| tony twists everything he reads, solely to argue.

This is getting doggone surreal.