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It's amazing how you well WSJ has spun everyday things. Of course car companies only care about your license and ability to pay? What the else should they be ch

It's amazing how you well WSJ has spun everyday things. Of course car companies only care about your license and ability to pay? What the else should they be checking? Apparently it's also terrible that the terrorists stayed in a hotel. I just realized something else that was left out of the article. The terrorists were probably buying food too. You know those grocery stores don't vet their customers other than requiring payment. Scary, right? I don't normally wear my tinfoil hat in public, but it's hard to see this article as anything but an attempt to sway public opinion on encryption and monitoring laws.

nedwin 11y ago
I think the suggestion they're making is that if intelligence agencies instead tracked data like who is renting cars/ hotels etc they would be able to better track potential extremists activities. Tracking license plates + who is renting hotel rooms is common place in many parts of the world and is less intrusive than reading everyones email.
- scintill76 11y ago
  So then low-paid hotel night-clerks are part of the front lines of the intelligence services. I just rented a hotel room with no reservation in the US a few nights ago. I gave ID, credit card, and car's license plate number. I was like 80% sure I had my license plate number memorized, but didn't feel like going outside to check, so I just wrote what I thought it was (without even indicating which US state it was from, I realized later) because I figured it didn't matter if they weren't going to verify it. Hopefully my memory was right, or it's a good thing my ID was not a convincing fake and that I'm not a terrorist, because the clerk would have failed to feed Big Brother good data even if there was a real-time national system to enter it into. After writing that, I realized your "tracking license plates" may have referred to automated plate scanners. I think it would still be too easy to fake or mislead that, and it's going to cost a lot to deploy everywhere. After they are in every conceivable public location, another attack will happen and somebody will write, "if we had just known X car was in Y private house's garage..." and now we have to put surveillance equipment in every home, or concede that we're founded on ideas that preclude surveillance that intrusive and there will be times when that prevents law enforcement or national security.
  - nedwin 11y ago
    You can probably use fake ID + fake plates & a fraudulent credit card... However in this situation in France the terrorists - who were on watch lists - did none of these things. Not saying that data would have helped identify that an operation was in progress but it's data that exists that isn't being recorded. Meanwhile they want access to our metadata and more.
pcunite 11y ago
The media is slowly preparing us ... for something.

nedwin 11y ago

I think the suggestion they're making is that if intelligence agencies instead tracked data like who is renting cars/ hotels etc they would be able to better track potential extremists activities. Tracking license plates + who is renting hotel rooms is common place in many parts of the world and is less intrusive than reading everyones email.

scintill76 11y ago
So then low-paid hotel night-clerks are part of the front lines of the intelligence services. I just rented a hotel room with no reservation in the US a few nights ago. I gave ID, credit card, and car's license plate number. I was like 80% sure I had my license plate number memorized, but didn't feel like going outside to check, so I just wrote what I thought it was (without even indicating which US state it was from, I realized later) because I figured it didn't matter if they weren't going to verify it. Hopefully my memory was right, or it's a good thing my ID was not a convincing fake and that I'm not a terrorist, because the clerk would have failed to feed Big Brother good data even if there was a real-time national system to enter it into. After writing that, I realized your "tracking license plates" may have referred to automated plate scanners. I think it would still be too easy to fake or mislead that, and it's going to cost a lot to deploy everywhere. After they are in every conceivable public location, another attack will happen and somebody will write, "if we had just known X car was in Y private house's garage..." and now we have to put surveillance equipment in every home, or concede that we're founded on ideas that preclude surveillance that intrusive and there will be times when that prevents law enforcement or national security.
- nedwin 11y ago
  You can probably use fake ID + fake plates & a fraudulent credit card... However in this situation in France the terrorists - who were on watch lists - did none of these things. Not saying that data would have helped identify that an operation was in progress but it's data that exists that isn't being recorded. Meanwhile they want access to our metadata and more.

pcunite 11y ago

The media is slowly preparing us ... for something.