3 ms·

This is _not_ a defense of the proposed legislation, only my experience with local law enforcement in Kansas. TL;DR There are many professional and thoughtful

by nantes 15y ago

This is _not_ a defense of the proposed legislation, only my experience with local law enforcement in Kansas. TL;DR There are many professional and thoughtful police officers and deputies that take every precaution to protect citizens' privacy. Because of their hard work and professionalism, logs of the last 24 hours were more than enough to help their investigation. While working for a sizable WISP in 2010, we were approached by a local police office asking if we could help them pin point the location of a murder suspect on the run from Wisconsin. The suspect had used our wireless mesh network to access his MySpace account, which was being monitored. Because our logins reset every 24 hours and because of the NAT'd nature of our wireless network, we were able to give the police approximately 10 locations where the suspect might have been within a 200' radius. The police followed up on those locations and were able to find where suspect had been staying. Unfortunately, they missed him by a few hours and he was eventually caught in Colorado a few days later. It was an eye opening experience. The officers reiterated again and again that they wanted as little extraneous information as possible and did not want to involve anyone that had no connection.

cstavish 15y ago
This legislation would certainly aid responsible and trust-worthy law enforcement officers in catching criminals. Bush's (and now Obama's) policy of warrantless wiretapping may have also been effective against terrorism. Perhaps torturing indefinitely-held detainees in secret overseas prisons shed even some light on terrorist operations. That said, I vehemently oppose both of these policies, despite any good that may have come from them. The former is obviously by definition abuse, and the latter has a staggering potential for abuse. As citizens, we should be wary of any legislation where the potential for abuse is high, or where the consequences of any abuse could be severe.
MrUnknown 15y ago
I completely agree with this type of use. The issue is laws are generally written to allow unlimited access for any reason to any amount of data at any time. This allows abuse. While the law will allow your use for the greater good, it will probably also allow a police officer to request the logs of his daughter's current boyfriend. I haven't read the law, so my comment may be completely inaccurate, but I don't really have much faith in the law being written properly and providing real incentive to not abuse the power.

by nantes 15y ago

cstavish 15y ago

This legislation would certainly aid responsible and trust-worthy law enforcement officers in catching criminals. Bush's (and now Obama's) policy of warrantless wiretapping may have also been effective against terrorism. Perhaps torturing indefinitely-held detainees in secret overseas prisons shed even some light on terrorist operations. That said, I vehemently oppose both of these policies, despite any good that may have come from them. The former is obviously by definition abuse, and the latter has a staggering potential for abuse. As citizens, we should be wary of any legislation where the potential for abuse is high, or where the consequences of any abuse could be severe.

MrUnknown 15y ago

I completely agree with this type of use. The issue is laws are generally written to allow unlimited access for any reason to any amount of data at any time. This allows abuse. While the law will allow your use for the greater good, it will probably also allow a police officer to request the logs of his daughter's current boyfriend. I haven't read the law, so my comment may be completely inaccurate, but I don't really have much faith in the law being written properly and providing real incentive to not abuse the power.