4 ms·

I wish you guys the best. But it does make the whole "USA IS A POLICE STATE!!!1" claims a bit harder to take seriously. I keep trying to imagine East German ci

by mpyne 12y ago

I wish you guys the best. But it does make the whole "USA IS A POLICE STATE!!!1" claims a bit harder to take seriously. I keep trying to imagine East German civil libertarians publically crowd-sourcing requests to the Stasi to divulge the particulars of their surveillance appartus, in ways that don't result in the murder of themselves or their families. I don't mean this to be snide though, this kind of civil action and distrust of authority is precisely what it means to be an American, and precisely what is needed to ensure that our various police forces don't actually become a modern day Stasi, so keep it up! :)

maxerickson 12y ago
What's a true police state? Something like a sobriety checkpoint, where a technical measure of blood alcohol level is used to assess guilt, at least gives wink and a nod to social control. (I don't really mean to speak against the checkpoints, I just wonder if "police state" has a clear enough definition to provide an interesting framework for discussion of modern governments)
- mpyne 12y ago
  > I don't really mean to speak against the checkpoints, I just wonder if "police state" has a clear enough definition to provide an interesting framework for discussion of modern governments That's a really good point, but I suspect that those for whom 'police state' has the most meaning would also have the most incentive to keep the definition from ever getting too specific. That's not counting the idea that one person's "police state" is another person's "safe spot to raise my kids". But even non "police states" involve social control (e.g. against serial killing), there's no getting around that. Even anarchies involve social control—the members of each commune are expected to abide by the democratically-reached decisions. If I had to start on a definition I'd probably key off the difference between "social control for the benefit of the people/society" and "social control for the sole benefit of the government in power". There are implementations of sobriety checkpoints are not too hard to classify in the former.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    I don't think I've articulated it above, but there must be some way of separating out the police work that punishes actions that have clear negative consequences (murder, theft, etc) from the police work that punishes actions that tend to lead to negative consequences (said checkpoints).
    - mpyne 12y ago
      Perhaps. But I wouldn't describe "preventative maintenance" by police as necessarily bad, if (and that's the big question) it can help avoid direct negative consequences down the road where those negative consequences outweigh the hassle of what they're doing. At some point living with other people will necessarily inconvenience you, whether it's sobriety checkpoints, or directing traffic, or jury dury, or voting, or taxes, or any of the dozens of other things that go into the civic duties of maintaining the general welfare. Obviously there's a balance that must be chosen (e.g. the speed traps in rural Georgia that are so dense that you have to assume they are more for revenue than for safety), but I don't think police activity only becomes legitimate when it's directly focused on a specific and known criminal occurrence.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        Right, I'm not questioning the legitimacy of the activity or trying to say that it is bad (or at least, I'm not real concerned with that here). I'm speculating that it is really only different from more dire authoritarianism in degree. If that's true, then we've essentially chosen a police state (it just happens to usually be friendly and reasonably egalitarian).
        mpyne 12y ago
        > I'm speculating that it is really only different from more dire authoritarianism in degree. If that's the case, then everything is authoritarianism (to some degree) and then Syndrome's quote from The Incredibles applies.
morisy 12y ago
We're not claiming a police state, and certainly not the Stasi. I typically assume good faith on all sides, and I do genuinely believe that the program is being promoted by people with either the best intentions or simply trying to make a buck with easy federal money flowing, no sinister plot for a police state intended. But it's now pretty well documented that the federal government is currently encouraging, sometimes by force, local agencies to violate their state laws in order to keep secret a widespread federal program that has, at least by one circuit court, been found illegal. Given past experience, it's probably also incredibly wasteful, and without this you're giving local police that can literally barely operate a thumb drive the surveillance equivalent of a flamethrower, and just hoping nothing goes wrong. In other words, I don't think we're trying to expose a New World Order so much as a lot of legal and practical problems just waiting to explode.
- mpyne 12y ago
  Yes, I should have made it more clear that I was piggybacking on this story to make a more general observation. As a member of the military myself, the increasing militarization of law enforcement in the U.S. is something that has me concerned, which is why I hope your efforts are successful in identifying (and fixing!) any of the legal and practical problems with new technologies in the hands of untrained police departments.
  - virtue3 12y ago
    Hey it's not like there's script kiddies out there that like to send over militiarized and bored SWAT teams into unsuspecting houses for no reason at all. Oh, right. https://news.vice.com/video/swatting https://news.vice.com/video/swatting Because well-off suburban NJ needs a federally granted armored vehicle for... who knows what. You and me both are terrified.
MichaelGG 12y ago
On the other hand, what better way to say it's not a police state than allow requests to go through and redact info they don't want leaking? Sort of how people take White House petitions as meaningful in any way.

by mpyne 12y ago

maxerickson 12y ago

What's a true police state? Something like a sobriety checkpoint, where a technical measure of blood alcohol level is used to assess guilt, at least gives wink and a nod to social control. (I don't really mean to speak against the checkpoints, I just wonder if "police state" has a clear enough definition to provide an interesting framework for discussion of modern governments)

mpyne 12y ago
> I don't really mean to speak against the checkpoints, I just wonder if "police state" has a clear enough definition to provide an interesting framework for discussion of modern governments That's a really good point, but I suspect that those for whom 'police state' has the most meaning would also have the most incentive to keep the definition from ever getting too specific. That's not counting the idea that one person's "police state" is another person's "safe spot to raise my kids". But even non "police states" involve social control (e.g. against serial killing), there's no getting around that. Even anarchies involve social control—the members of each commune are expected to abide by the democratically-reached decisions. If I had to start on a definition I'd probably key off the difference between "social control for the benefit of the people/society" and "social control for the sole benefit of the government in power". There are implementations of sobriety checkpoints are not too hard to classify in the former.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I don't think I've articulated it above, but there must be some way of separating out the police work that punishes actions that have clear negative consequences (murder, theft, etc) from the police work that punishes actions that tend to lead to negative consequences (said checkpoints).
  - mpyne 12y ago
    Perhaps. But I wouldn't describe "preventative maintenance" by police as necessarily bad, if (and that's the big question) it can help avoid direct negative consequences down the road where those negative consequences outweigh the hassle of what they're doing. At some point living with other people will necessarily inconvenience you, whether it's sobriety checkpoints, or directing traffic, or jury dury, or voting, or taxes, or any of the dozens of other things that go into the civic duties of maintaining the general welfare. Obviously there's a balance that must be chosen (e.g. the speed traps in rural Georgia that are so dense that you have to assume they are more for revenue than for safety), but I don't think police activity only becomes legitimate when it's directly focused on a specific and known criminal occurrence.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Right, I'm not questioning the legitimacy of the activity or trying to say that it is bad (or at least, I'm not real concerned with that here). I'm speculating that it is really only different from more dire authoritarianism in degree. If that's true, then we've essentially chosen a police state (it just happens to usually be friendly and reasonably egalitarian).
      - mpyne 12y ago
        > I'm speculating that it is really only different from more dire authoritarianism in degree. If that's the case, then everything is authoritarianism (to some degree) and then Syndrome's quote from The Incredibles applies.

morisy 12y ago

We're not claiming a police state, and certainly not the Stasi. I typically assume good faith on all sides, and I do genuinely believe that the program is being promoted by people with either the best intentions or simply trying to make a buck with easy federal money flowing, no sinister plot for a police state intended. But it's now pretty well documented that the federal government is currently encouraging, sometimes by force, local agencies to violate their state laws in order to keep secret a widespread federal program that has, at least by one circuit court, been found illegal. Given past experience, it's probably also incredibly wasteful, and without this you're giving local police that can literally barely operate a thumb drive the surveillance equivalent of a flamethrower, and just hoping nothing goes wrong. In other words, I don't think we're trying to expose a New World Order so much as a lot of legal and practical problems just waiting to explode.

mpyne 12y ago
Yes, I should have made it more clear that I was piggybacking on this story to make a more general observation. As a member of the military myself, the increasing militarization of law enforcement in the U.S. is something that has me concerned, which is why I hope your efforts are successful in identifying (and fixing!) any of the legal and practical problems with new technologies in the hands of untrained police departments.
- virtue3 12y ago
  Hey it's not like there's script kiddies out there that like to send over militiarized and bored SWAT teams into unsuspecting houses for no reason at all. Oh, right. https://news.vice.com/video/swatting https://news.vice.com/video/swatting Because well-off suburban NJ needs a federally granted armored vehicle for... who knows what. You and me both are terrified.

MichaelGG 12y ago

On the other hand, what better way to say it's not a police state than allow requests to go through and redact info they don't want leaking? Sort of how people take White House petitions as meaningful in any way.