3 ms·

I can think of a much longer list of ways we could detect and combat crime if policemen had a key and legal protection to enter any citizen's dwelling any time

by crusso 14y ago

I can think of a much longer list of ways we could detect and combat crime if policemen had a key and legal protection to enter any citizen's dwelling any time day or night for any reason whatsoever. The list gets even longer if they can leave always-on surveillance equipment in each citizen's home. They could: * Find meth labs without waiting for evidence that the meth was being brewed in the residence, which could cost lives. * FIND children taken without authorization by a non-custodial parent. * Collect tax cheat information from users' computers before waiting for them to slip up and break specific IRS auditing rules. * Detect spousal abuse without waiting for the spouse to show up in an emergency room. I mean, the list of ways that we could improve law enforcement is infinite if we would just give the State infinite power. Don't you see anything wrong with that argument? Liberties won against government are so unbelievably hard fought. Most of the time those gains involve bloodshed. Why would we be so quick to give away any liberties whatsoever without tarring and feathering the politician/bureaucrat proposing the idea?

tzs 14y ago
Exactly what liberty are we giving away if, say, a research biologist from a university funded by a research grant from the National Science Foundation is using a drone to track a tagged animal he is studying in a national wildlife refuge, and he sees someone dumping a body, and uses the drone to watch the dumper so as to gather sufficient information to lead the FBI to the dumper, and that drone-gathered evidence is allowed to be used in court to prosecute the guy who dumped the body? Paul's bill would ban the use of such evidence, unless the biologist had a warrant to track the body dumper. What's special about drones here? If that biologist was not using a drone, but was instead tracking the tagged animal visually from a distance with binoculars, and happened to witness the body dumping, should that also not be allowed in court?
- crusso 14y ago
  [ long painfully-tortured never-gonna-happen scenario ] Yeah, whatever. I would be fine if a politician came back to us later with a revised bill that includes very specific exceptions for situations like the one your example described and maybe something to allow for keeping images taken of aliens from outer space. For now, though, the liberty we're giving away 99.9999% of the time is our right to prevent illegal search and seizure plus we're giving away our implied rights to privacy. No thanks. Domestic drones should be shut down forcefully until we as a society think through the ramifications (which we obviously haven't because they're being allowed by default). > What's special about drones here? If you can answer the question of why the Govt wants to use the drones in the first place, you have my answer to why that's a bad thing.
  - tzs 14y ago
    > If you can answer the question of why the Govt wants to use the drones in the first place, you have my answer to why that's a bad thing. Some obvious places state and local governments will want to use drones: • Search and rescue. For the cost of one manned aircraft, a whole fleet of drones could be deployed, allowing for a wider search. • Fire monitoring. A park ranger who spots a remote fire could check it out much faster with a drone than on foot or horseback or ATV. • Traffic monitoring and crowd safety monitoring during high turnout events. For instance, major sporting events, or the informal large street celebrations that happen when the home team wins a championship. • Damage assessment after natural disasters or severe weather. A fleet of small drone helicopters could check power lines after a severe wind storm to find places where trees or branches have fallen into lines, for example. • After a snow storm, a school could send a drone to fly over the school bus routes to determine if they appear safe to send out the school buses, or if school needs to be cancelled. So how are these bad things?
    - ekianjo 14y ago
      These are bad things if there are no limits: - Search and rescue could easily become "search and track" whoever the police suspects. - Crowd safety monitoring could become a tool against demonstrators, used to prevent large groups of people from getting together by precise police intervention. - Traffic monitoring could lead to actual registration of individual plates leading to massive privacy concerns. Why is the government allowed to know where I am going? There's always a very narrow gap between something that is useful and something that causes harm. Without any clear provision, and by blinding trusting government, you easily end up with crowd controlling policies. The State is like Sauron's Ring: it wants Power.
    - crusso 14y ago
      So there's your answer. You're describing "features" that give more power to the government. They want it because it empowers them. I don't care how you candy coat it by cherry picking some neat special features of that power. I've been around long enough to know that the features used to sell you a product or service don't ever tell you the whole picture of what you're buying. Government tends to take authority given to them for ostensibly noble purposes and abuse that authority [1]. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" I prefer to consider the totality of what granting this extra power to the government would entail... and it's not all search and rescue. [1] http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/11/epa-power-grab-to-regulate-ditches-gullies-on-private-property/ http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/11/epa-power-grab-to-regu...
- archangel_one 14y ago
  The point is not about all the ways that they can be used that would generally be considered "good" - it's not hard to concoct an example such as yours that falls into that category. The point is all the ways they could be used that are perceived as "evil", and since it's very hard to draw a line between the two in law he's taking the stance to ban it completely. I happen to believe that it's better to risk that murderer going uncaught than to catch him by turning the country into a police state.
  - lukeschlather 14y ago
    We can write much better laws than ones where we just ban a specific technology. If police can't use drones for surveillance without a warrant, I don't see why they should be allowed to do surveillance at all without a warrant. This sort of law only muddies the issue by banning tools rather than actions (similar to banning BitTorrent to stop piracy.)
    - crusso 14y ago
      While I agree with your point that it's important to attack the root of the problem rather than dance around the edges -- shutting down drone activity before it even starts is better than waiting and hoping that some other legislator takes on the whole surveillance issue. Controlling drones is a lot bigger of a deal in the surveillance area than just controlling bit torrent is to file sharing. There are a lot of almost-as-good alternatives to bit torrent. Cheap arial surveillance only has drones. I will happily vote with you to support politicians who want to curtail unwarranted surveillance during upcoming elections; but I will take what I can get with this anti-drone legislation for now.

by crusso 14y ago

tzs 14y ago

Exactly what liberty are we giving away if, say, a research biologist from a university funded by a research grant from the National Science Foundation is using a drone to track a tagged animal he is studying in a national wildlife refuge, and he sees someone dumping a body, and uses the drone to watch the dumper so as to gather sufficient information to lead the FBI to the dumper, and that drone-gathered evidence is allowed to be used in court to prosecute the guy who dumped the body? Paul's bill would ban the use of such evidence, unless the biologist had a warrant to track the body dumper. What's special about drones here? If that biologist was not using a drone, but was instead tracking the tagged animal visually from a distance with binoculars, and happened to witness the body dumping, should that also not be allowed in court?

crusso 14y ago
[ long painfully-tortured never-gonna-happen scenario ] Yeah, whatever. I would be fine if a politician came back to us later with a revised bill that includes very specific exceptions for situations like the one your example described and maybe something to allow for keeping images taken of aliens from outer space. For now, though, the liberty we're giving away 99.9999% of the time is our right to prevent illegal search and seizure plus we're giving away our implied rights to privacy. No thanks. Domestic drones should be shut down forcefully until we as a society think through the ramifications (which we obviously haven't because they're being allowed by default). > What's special about drones here? If you can answer the question of why the Govt wants to use the drones in the first place, you have my answer to why that's a bad thing.
- tzs 14y ago
  > If you can answer the question of why the Govt wants to use the drones in the first place, you have my answer to why that's a bad thing. Some obvious places state and local governments will want to use drones: • Search and rescue. For the cost of one manned aircraft, a whole fleet of drones could be deployed, allowing for a wider search. • Fire monitoring. A park ranger who spots a remote fire could check it out much faster with a drone than on foot or horseback or ATV. • Traffic monitoring and crowd safety monitoring during high turnout events. For instance, major sporting events, or the informal large street celebrations that happen when the home team wins a championship. • Damage assessment after natural disasters or severe weather. A fleet of small drone helicopters could check power lines after a severe wind storm to find places where trees or branches have fallen into lines, for example. • After a snow storm, a school could send a drone to fly over the school bus routes to determine if they appear safe to send out the school buses, or if school needs to be cancelled. So how are these bad things?
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    These are bad things if there are no limits: - Search and rescue could easily become "search and track" whoever the police suspects. - Crowd safety monitoring could become a tool against demonstrators, used to prevent large groups of people from getting together by precise police intervention. - Traffic monitoring could lead to actual registration of individual plates leading to massive privacy concerns. Why is the government allowed to know where I am going? There's always a very narrow gap between something that is useful and something that causes harm. Without any clear provision, and by blinding trusting government, you easily end up with crowd controlling policies. The State is like Sauron's Ring: it wants Power.
  - crusso 14y ago
    So there's your answer. You're describing "features" that give more power to the government. They want it because it empowers them. I don't care how you candy coat it by cherry picking some neat special features of that power. I've been around long enough to know that the features used to sell you a product or service don't ever tell you the whole picture of what you're buying. Government tends to take authority given to them for ostensibly noble purposes and abuse that authority [1]. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" I prefer to consider the totality of what granting this extra power to the government would entail... and it's not all search and rescue. [1] http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/11/epa-power-grab-to-regulate-ditches-gullies-on-private-property/ http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/11/epa-power-grab-to-regu...
archangel_one 14y ago
The point is not about all the ways that they can be used that would generally be considered "good" - it's not hard to concoct an example such as yours that falls into that category. The point is all the ways they could be used that are perceived as "evil", and since it's very hard to draw a line between the two in law he's taking the stance to ban it completely. I happen to believe that it's better to risk that murderer going uncaught than to catch him by turning the country into a police state.
- lukeschlather 14y ago
  We can write much better laws than ones where we just ban a specific technology. If police can't use drones for surveillance without a warrant, I don't see why they should be allowed to do surveillance at all without a warrant. This sort of law only muddies the issue by banning tools rather than actions (similar to banning BitTorrent to stop piracy.)
  - crusso 14y ago
    While I agree with your point that it's important to attack the root of the problem rather than dance around the edges -- shutting down drone activity before it even starts is better than waiting and hoping that some other legislator takes on the whole surveillance issue. Controlling drones is a lot bigger of a deal in the surveillance area than just controlling bit torrent is to file sharing. There are a lot of almost-as-good alternatives to bit torrent. Cheap arial surveillance only has drones. I will happily vote with you to support politicians who want to curtail unwarranted surveillance during upcoming elections; but I will take what I can get with this anti-drone legislation for now.