On 09/15/2010 01:37 AM, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Clearly, your hearing is impaired. Anonymous travel is becoming nigh
impossible within the United States.
If I have a current plate on my car, a driver's license in my pocket,
and money for gas I can drive just about anywhere I want. Every few
years I might get pulled over for a burned out bulb or forgetting to
renew my tag, but no one expects an ID otherwise. Hotels and airplanes
have always required ID for obvious reasons.
I haven't noticed that much outward, objective change in the past few
decades, except that the police and highway patrol (especially in rural
areas) are likely to be better trained and more consistent.
That said, there's been a huge increase in the number of fixed cameras
watching the roads. It's likely that many traffic cameras are reading
and recording license plates. In my town, the patrol cars have cameras
pointing every direction which recognize stolen (and recently expired
:-) license plates. There are enough fixed traffic cameras around town
that they never really need to chase anyone with lights and sirens like
they used to.
To what extent this data is recorded, retained, and centralized I don't
know. It's probably a fair guess that more data is collected than can be
efficiently searched, yet few entities can bring themselves to throw it
away either. Eventually, it revenue-hungry states and municipalities
could try to monetize it by selling it to private entities such as
insurers, marketers, and credit bureaus. Genuine concerns over "identity
theft" have cut down on some of the enthusiasm for the sale of
government records in recent years.
The public debate about this data collection isn't really happening for
a couple of reasons I can think of. First, the early groups who began
objecting to the odd camera here and there tended to discredit
themselves by mixing it in with a general paranoia of the federal
government and international organizations. Also it's usually not
acknowledged who's receiving the surveillance feed, much less what their
data retention, information sharing, and privacy practices are.
So the ID requirements on my car and in my pocket have not changed one
bit. As for the back-end infosystems, I suspect no one really knows or
has a plan.
Forget about accessing any federal
building (for any reason whatsoever) anonymously - or even with legitimate
identity that has no State certified picture to accompany you.
It wouldn't surprise me.
But some context that people from other countries may not have when they
read a statement like that is many or most Americans will go their
entire lives without ever actually entering a US federal building.
Seriously, the biggest direct interaction a typical citizen under age 65
has with the federal government is filing a yearly tax form. Over 65 you
probably receive a monthly check. Oh, we also had to mail in a form this
year for the census which is every 10 years.
The US is
on the fast track to Oracleization on a complete and irreversible scale.
Like the database or like the ideal random function? The latter might be
more interesting.
- Marsh
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