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Having a number to report suspicious activity is a great idea. There isn't a single thing Orwellian or unpatriotic about it. Unfortunately too many people don't
by phaus 12y ago
Having a number to report suspicious activity is a great idea. There isn't a single thing Orwellian or unpatriotic about it. Unfortunately too many people don't really have any experience identifying suspicious behavior, so they end up reporting all kinds of benign activity.
Its really just a sad case of human nature making a good idea impractical to use in the real world.
In spite of the popular belief in this thread, terrorists do take photographs of their targets quite frequently. Unfortunately, they look just like innocent people taking photographs, so the practice of harassing everyone that takes a photographs isn't going to catch us very many terrorists.
However, there are many different types of suspicious behavior, and some of them will have a much lower false-positive rate than photography.
- wutbrodo 12y agoI used to think that way about a lot of things until I realized it makes a lot more sense to redefine "good idea" to exclude things that assume all humans will act ideally and rationally.
- colordrops 12y agoSo in other words it's a bad idea.
- phaus 12y agoIn other words, if humanity lived up to even a small fraction of its potential, it would be a good idea in both theory and practice. Unfortunately, most people can't be bothered. So, yeah, its a bad idea in practice.
- Zigurd 12y ago> In spite of the popular belief in this thread, terrorists do take photographs of their targets quite frequently. My bullshometer pegs every time assertions are made about what terrorists frequently do. How does one acquire a visceral sense for terrorist picture-taking habits? And I mean everyone, right up to the consultants selling snake oil anti-terrorist training to companies renting out minwage security guards. How does that happen?
- phaus 12y agoWell, I wasn't in a terrorist cell, so maybe I was just in the military like hundreds of thousands of other people are at any given moment.