5 ms·

"...they tried to get this written into the law back in 2010 and got their asses handed to them, so instead they've just been making it a condition of every new

"...they tried to get this written into the law back in 2010 and got their asses handed to them, so instead they've just been making it a condition of every new permit ever since. Because they think that they get to just make up laws, all on their own..." So by making administrative changes to business permits, police get effective warrant-free surveillance? It continues to amaze me how various government agencies are doing these end-runs around the legislature and voters by fiat.

protomyth 14y ago
I do wish we had an organization protecting the 4th & 5th amendments that was as aggressive and successful as the NRA is at protecting the 2nd.
- swang 14y ago
  Because its hard to fight against the general public's view that the police should do anything in their power to fight violence and drug dealers. Who cares if "criminals" rights to unreasonable searches is violated? They're "criminals" Watch any cop show. The "rogue" cop goes after the violent criminal despite being suspended from the force and valiantly captures the mob boss. Public generally finds it okay as long as the bad guy gets caught (nevermind if the bad guy is just some non-criminal average joe) PS I have nothing against cops in general, but the cops should be protecting _all_ citizens, especially against things like this.
- jeffesp 14y ago
  Unfortunately, there are not many companies that make a living from the 4th & 5th. The gun companies stand to lose a good bit on 2nd amendment issues so they help fund the NRA.
- njharman 14y ago
  ACLU, EFF to name a couple. And the 2nd has been eroded tremendously, maybe not as much as 4th, but plenty still.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    The ACLU and EFF are no where near as effective as the NRA. The NRA has a recent win in front of the Supreme Court that secured the 2nd on a state level, the EFF doesn't seem to do well in front of the Supreme Court. The ACLU protects part of the 1st and not much more.
    - eloisius 14y ago
      That's probably because freedom of speech and freedom from unlawful search are perceived as rights that can wax and wane, but can always be restored. The loss of the right to bare arms is perceived as an end-game. Once disarmed, there's no going back.
      - ihsw 14y ago
        The same can be said about any policy -- verification is very easy with the 2nd Amendment because it's clear and obvious to consumers on a personal level however censorship and surveillance are difficult to measure and quantify.
        eloisius 14y ago
        I agree. That's why I carefully used the word "perceived."
      - ch4ch4 14y ago
        "The loss of the right to bare arms"- I really hope they don't ban t-shirts!
        eloisius 14y ago
        Haha. Forgive my spelling.
    - aetherson 14y ago
      In all fairness, all the other Bill of Rights amendments were already applied to the states. The ACLU pretty regularly takes 4th and 5th Amendment cases.
- rdl 14y ago
  I think part of the issue is that the 4th and 5th generally are seen as protecting "bad" people who have already hurt "good people" and make it harder for other "good" people to do their jobs. Guns are pretty benign when they're just sitting there, and there are plenty of existing laws to criminalize bad things done with guns. The arguments for restricting the 2nd are mainly about preventing bad people from acquiring guns from good people, which is only an indirect thing. So, even an organization as effective as NRA/SAF/GOA would have a hard time being as effective in protecting the 4th/5th as they have been in protecting the 2nd. (of course, IANAL, and I assume someone like rayiner will say something much more intelligent here)
- strlen 14y ago
  > NRA is at protecting the 2nd NRA refused to argue cases on second amendment grounds until very recently. They strongly opposed taking Heller to court. Second amendment has been tremendously eroded. Heller was fought by a group of non-NRA affiliated lawyers. NRA works through campaigning and lobbying. They aren't as good at second amendment litigation (although they've been successful in litigating against bad gun laws using other constitutional amendments as well as the state constitutions -- which usually have stronger provisions for the right to bear arms than the US constitution). EFF and ACLU, on the other hand, work through litigation. They are not nearly as well funded. NRA is not just a political organization, they are also effectively a AAA for firearm owners: they provide safety training (they're famous for having coined the "3 rules of gun safety"), sell targets, provide discounts on everything from wine to hotels, etc... As much as it hurts for me to say, most people don't care about civil liberties. They want civil liberties for them: they want to carry a gun, they want to be able choose when to have or not to have a child, etc... Yet when it comes to more core liberties -- and despite being a strong 2A supporter and a gun owner, I think 1A and 4A are far more crucial than 2A today -- there's very little personal motive. People are very willing to give away their privacy to receive a discount at Safeway: http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/23/judge-alex-kozinski-the-fourth http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/23/judge-alex-kozinski-the-fo... Is there a silver lining? Actually, yes! I think the rise of Internet will make privacy a more paramount concern that everyone will take to heart. Consider, for example this email subject from ACLU (about CISSPA) that I received and that literally (and likely deliberately and by design) made me quickly jump out of my seat: 68359 + Mar 06 Anthony D. Rome ( 270) Your last Amazon.com order In short, people who are _not_ civil libertarians (unlike myself, who is an ACLU and EFF member -- along with a donor to NRA-ILA and SAF) need a personal stake in core civil liberties in order to care about them. Fortunately, the Internet will give them just that stake.
agwa 14y ago
The 2010 article linked to by jwz is about a proposed alcohol tax being defeated. I'm guessing that the opposition to it was mainly about the tax and the surveillance cameras were collateral damage. If you proposed merely that bars have surveillance cameras which the police can access, I'm sure it would be widely supported by both the voters and the board of supervisors. What the government agencies are doing an end-run around is the Constitution and sadly the voters and legislature are complicit. We have to change the average person's attitude about this sort of thing before we have any hope of meaningful change.
smsm42 14y ago
Because citizens accept that you need a government license to... do virtually anything of significance. And unlike laws passed by legislative bodies, nobody ever looks at these closely and checks what's in there, and since onerous license conditions are not considered rights violations, basically anything can be there unless somebody gets pissed enough to go to the court and lucky enough get a court ruling on a specific thing. Since most people don't have time/money to do this while trying to start a business, not surprising what happens there.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
I got into an interesting debate about nuclear weapons with a person who works on non-proliferation. Nuclear weapons are pretty stupid, especially today, since they do a huge amount of damage and provide limited to negative strategic advantage (if you nuke a city, just clearing the rubble it a 5 or 10 year project before you can even think about having it be functional again, so no advantage gained and a lot of work to have it re-contributing to the nation-state economy) His point was that nuclear weapons were seductive because they were cheap. And even though they might cost $100M and require $25M/year in maintenance, that was a pittance compared to training, equipping, and deploying a couple of armored divisions which could similarly level a city. So having a "cheap" nuke meant you didn't need a couple of divisions of marines. Cops have the same problem. There are only so many of them, and yet there is a lot of crime. So the combined forces of budget cuts and crime fighting pull them toward solutions of "efficiency" (which is code for more crime fighting for less money). At a logical (but immoral) extreme, if you have cameras recording everything on every street in a city 24/7 with cameras that can see in all conditions, and a crime occurs, you don't need cops you don't need witnesses, you just rewind the tape to when it happened, see who did it, and go arrest them. A police force of 150 officers reduced to one fat guy [1] sitting in a room full of monitors and recording devices. That is why these guys practically orgasm over things like the DARPA Argus-IS system [2]. Watching re-runs of Starsky and Hutch and Cagney & Lacey vs modern cop shows like Castle or NCIS gives you a good feel for the difference in efficiency that tech has brought into law enforcement. So the weird thing is that people demand these sorts of capabilities and tools for good reasons (crime mitigation, catching bad guys after the fact) and ignore the potential for abuse (which is more often covered up). When you see editorials that the biggest drug gang in LA used to be based in the Rampart police station you realize that no amount of "good intention" protects you from a few now truly well equipped "bad apples." I've proposed to my representatives a law that would make "violation of the public trust" a capital crime. It is the civil equivalent of treason. Not a lot of traction on that effort though. That is what it will take though to protect yourself from folks who would abuse these toys to do bad things. I can't see trying to deny them the efficiencies as a winning proposition you come out looking guilty. [1] Its a trope I see all the time, the guy watching the monitors is morbidly obese (always male) and generally portrayed as a loser. Of course their job is redundant so in the "real" world nobody would watch the monitors. [2] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2013/01/29/watch-this-view-from-the-worlds-most-advanced-surveillance-drone/#.UUtwJHHS92Q http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2013/01/29/watch-t...

protomyth 14y ago

I do wish we had an organization protecting the 4th & 5th amendments that was as aggressive and successful as the NRA is at protecting the 2nd.

swang 14y ago
Because its hard to fight against the general public's view that the police should do anything in their power to fight violence and drug dealers. Who cares if "criminals" rights to unreasonable searches is violated? They're "criminals" Watch any cop show. The "rogue" cop goes after the violent criminal despite being suspended from the force and valiantly captures the mob boss. Public generally finds it okay as long as the bad guy gets caught (nevermind if the bad guy is just some non-criminal average joe) PS I have nothing against cops in general, but the cops should be protecting _all_ citizens, especially against things like this.
jeffesp 14y ago
Unfortunately, there are not many companies that make a living from the 4th & 5th. The gun companies stand to lose a good bit on 2nd amendment issues so they help fund the NRA.
njharman 14y ago
ACLU, EFF to name a couple. And the 2nd has been eroded tremendously, maybe not as much as 4th, but plenty still.
- protomyth 14y ago
  The ACLU and EFF are no where near as effective as the NRA. The NRA has a recent win in front of the Supreme Court that secured the 2nd on a state level, the EFF doesn't seem to do well in front of the Supreme Court. The ACLU protects part of the 1st and not much more.
  - eloisius 14y ago
    That's probably because freedom of speech and freedom from unlawful search are perceived as rights that can wax and wane, but can always be restored. The loss of the right to bare arms is perceived as an end-game. Once disarmed, there's no going back.
    - ihsw 14y ago
      The same can be said about any policy -- verification is very easy with the 2nd Amendment because it's clear and obvious to consumers on a personal level however censorship and surveillance are difficult to measure and quantify.
      - eloisius 14y ago
        I agree. That's why I carefully used the word "perceived."
    - ch4ch4 14y ago
      "The loss of the right to bare arms"- I really hope they don't ban t-shirts!
      - eloisius 14y ago
        Haha. Forgive my spelling.
  - aetherson 14y ago
    In all fairness, all the other Bill of Rights amendments were already applied to the states. The ACLU pretty regularly takes 4th and 5th Amendment cases.
rdl 14y ago
I think part of the issue is that the 4th and 5th generally are seen as protecting "bad" people who have already hurt "good people" and make it harder for other "good" people to do their jobs. Guns are pretty benign when they're just sitting there, and there are plenty of existing laws to criminalize bad things done with guns. The arguments for restricting the 2nd are mainly about preventing bad people from acquiring guns from good people, which is only an indirect thing. So, even an organization as effective as NRA/SAF/GOA would have a hard time being as effective in protecting the 4th/5th as they have been in protecting the 2nd. (of course, IANAL, and I assume someone like rayiner will say something much more intelligent here)
strlen 14y ago
> NRA is at protecting the 2nd NRA refused to argue cases on second amendment grounds until very recently. They strongly opposed taking Heller to court. Second amendment has been tremendously eroded. Heller was fought by a group of non-NRA affiliated lawyers. NRA works through campaigning and lobbying. They aren't as good at second amendment litigation (although they've been successful in litigating against bad gun laws using other constitutional amendments as well as the state constitutions -- which usually have stronger provisions for the right to bear arms than the US constitution). EFF and ACLU, on the other hand, work through litigation. They are not nearly as well funded. NRA is not just a political organization, they are also effectively a AAA for firearm owners: they provide safety training (they're famous for having coined the "3 rules of gun safety"), sell targets, provide discounts on everything from wine to hotels, etc... As much as it hurts for me to say, most people don't care about civil liberties. They want civil liberties for them: they want to carry a gun, they want to be able choose when to have or not to have a child, etc... Yet when it comes to more core liberties -- and despite being a strong 2A supporter and a gun owner, I think 1A and 4A are far more crucial than 2A today -- there's very little personal motive. People are very willing to give away their privacy to receive a discount at Safeway: http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/23/judge-alex-kozinski-the-fourth http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/23/judge-alex-kozinski-the-fo... Is there a silver lining? Actually, yes! I think the rise of Internet will make privacy a more paramount concern that everyone will take to heart. Consider, for example this email subject from ACLU (about CISSPA) that I received and that literally (and likely deliberately and by design) made me quickly jump out of my seat: 68359 + Mar 06 Anthony D. Rome ( 270) Your last Amazon.com order In short, people who are _not_ civil libertarians (unlike myself, who is an ACLU and EFF member -- along with a donor to NRA-ILA and SAF) need a personal stake in core civil liberties in order to care about them. Fortunately, the Internet will give them just that stake.

agwa 14y ago

The 2010 article linked to by jwz is about a proposed alcohol tax being defeated. I'm guessing that the opposition to it was mainly about the tax and the surveillance cameras were collateral damage. If you proposed merely that bars have surveillance cameras which the police can access, I'm sure it would be widely supported by both the voters and the board of supervisors. What the government agencies are doing an end-run around is the Constitution and sadly the voters and legislature are complicit. We have to change the average person's attitude about this sort of thing before we have any hope of meaningful change.

smsm42 14y ago

Because citizens accept that you need a government license to... do virtually anything of significance. And unlike laws passed by legislative bodies, nobody ever looks at these closely and checks what's in there, and since onerous license conditions are not considered rights violations, basically anything can be there unless somebody gets pissed enough to go to the court and lucky enough get a court ruling on a specific thing. Since most people don't have time/money to do this while trying to start a business, not surprising what happens there.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

I got into an interesting debate about nuclear weapons with a person who works on non-proliferation. Nuclear weapons are pretty stupid, especially today, since they do a huge amount of damage and provide limited to negative strategic advantage (if you nuke a city, just clearing the rubble it a 5 or 10 year project before you can even think about having it be functional again, so no advantage gained and a lot of work to have it re-contributing to the nation-state economy) His point was that nuclear weapons were seductive because they were cheap. And even though they might cost $100M and require $25M/year in maintenance, that was a pittance compared to training, equipping, and deploying a couple of armored divisions which could similarly level a city. So having a "cheap" nuke meant you didn't need a couple of divisions of marines. Cops have the same problem. There are only so many of them, and yet there is a lot of crime. So the combined forces of budget cuts and crime fighting pull them toward solutions of "efficiency" (which is code for more crime fighting for less money). At a logical (but immoral) extreme, if you have cameras recording everything on every street in a city 24/7 with cameras that can see in all conditions, and a crime occurs, you don't need cops you don't need witnesses, you just rewind the tape to when it happened, see who did it, and go arrest them. A police force of 150 officers reduced to one fat guy [1] sitting in a room full of monitors and recording devices. That is why these guys practically orgasm over things like the DARPA Argus-IS system [2]. Watching re-runs of Starsky and Hutch and Cagney & Lacey vs modern cop shows like Castle or NCIS gives you a good feel for the difference in efficiency that tech has brought into law enforcement. So the weird thing is that people demand these sorts of capabilities and tools for good reasons (crime mitigation, catching bad guys after the fact) and ignore the potential for abuse (which is more often covered up). When you see editorials that the biggest drug gang in LA used to be based in the Rampart police station you realize that no amount of "good intention" protects you from a few now truly well equipped "bad apples." I've proposed to my representatives a law that would make "violation of the public trust" a capital crime. It is the civil equivalent of treason. Not a lot of traction on that effort though. That is what it will take though to protect yourself from folks who would abuse these toys to do bad things. I can't see trying to deny them the efficiencies as a winning proposition you come out looking guilty. [1] Its a trope I see all the time, the guy watching the monitors is morbidly obese (always male) and generally portrayed as a loser. Of course their job is redundant so in the "real" world nobody would watch the monitors. [2] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2013/01/29/watch-this-view-from-the-worlds-most-advanced-surveillance-drone/#.UUtwJHHS92Q http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2013/01/29/watch-t...